Going from my junior to senior year of college, I took an independent study summer course. The course was literary theory, the notoriously challenging upper-level English course, and my professor who thankfully signed on to tutor me one-on-one was my advisor and mentor, Dr. Rachela Permenter. For ...
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4 Ways to Add Fun and Games to Your ELA Classroom
Wouldn’t it be great if teaching could be all fun and games? Well, it literally can be for at least one lesson! Games in the classroom are a great way to test prep, reward students for excellent work, and present content. In fact, most of the options explained in this blog post can be utilized in ...
Why You Should Stop Copy Editing Students’ Essays and Do This Instead
Raise your hand if you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by that stack of essays just waiting to be graded? *Raises hand high* You pick up the first essay assuring yourself that this will go quicker than you think. As you begin, the reader in you tries to focus on the content, but the teacher in you just ...
How to Create an Essay Comment Bank for Quick and Effective Feedback
A comment bank is a pre-written list of essay feedback comments that you can use to quickly leave feedback on student essays. The goal is to pre-create comments for points that you find yourself making repeatedly on student essays. In addition, if created strategically, the comment bank can be an ...
How to Plan A Successful Writing Unit by Focusing on Revision
While I was working on my dissertation, I learned one of the most valuable teaching practices of my career: the art of revision. My dissertation committee didn’t set out to teach me this strategy, but perhaps, that’s why it impacted me in such a powerful way. Rather, I learned it through doing. The ...
How to Plan a Writing Unit for Manageable Grading and Student Success
During my first three years of teaching, I was completely and utterly overwhelmed with planning, teaching, and grading essays. Whenever I would look ahead at my plan book, I would immediately feel nervous thinking of how to plan the next writing unit. In college, my professors assigned a paper, and ...
