Are you looking for meaningful, standards-aligned strategies to have students respond to reading with distance learning? Digital one pagers can be an engaging way to simplify literary and informational text…

Did you arrive at this post after googling something like “Best ELA PD Books”? If you’re a secondary English teacher, whether you’re here on accident or on purpose, this post…

The bottom of reality as I knew it fell out. As I read the email at 8:30 the evening before remote learning began, the pit in my stomach expanded. We…

School closings can feel a lot like being stuck in the middle of a whirlwind. Remote learning is becoming more common, but that doesn’t mean that planning for eLearning days…

Inside this post: No matter the age, if you’re supporting struggling writers, there’s one key ingredient that is a game changer for building confidence and increasing achievement. During a writing…

As a new teacher, I had no idea how to engage students in learning. That’s not to say my class was a bore, but there were definitely days I knew…

What if you could blend differentiation, brain-based learning, collaboration,  and student engagement all into one power-packed lesson? It’s possible! In this post, you’ll find ideas for how to create learning…

“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music” (Aldous Huxley). Think about the last time you felt truly inspired. Was music a part of the experience?…

It’s hard to find a student that doesn’t like some form of art. Incorporating art in ELA classes is beneficial for several reasons. For one, it gives students who like…

Looking for high-interest young adult novels to add to your classroom library? You’ll find some of my favorites here. Closing in on the end of 2019, I was scrolling through…

If you’ve arrived in search of ELA blog posts, welcome! You’ll find a helpful roundup here. Education is a funny thing. As teachers, we are immersed in what we are…

Do you ever feel like there is something missing from your vocabulary instruction? Traditionally, students are given a list of words, and they memorize the definitions. Lists of words are…

Knowing how to help a reluctant student create a habit of reading is a game changer. Cultivating a reading lifeone of the most important lessons we can share the next…

With the rise of independent reading and workshop approaches, many secondary ELA teachers are looking for mentor text recommendations. How can we encourage students to connect whole-class lessons to independent…

When I think about student writing, one of the most difficult concepts to teach is sentence fluency. Much of excelling at fluent writing revolves around students’ background with literacy. Certainly,…

For the longest time, I thought anchor charts were for elementary classrooms. I’d see photos floating around on social media, but I never gave them a second thought in terms…

Looking for ways to help students with elaboration in writing? It’s a complex skill that requires mature thinking. In this post, you’ll find concrete ways to make elaboration in writing…

An important element of effective lesson design is content chunking. Often, it gets side-stepped due to time constraints or a push to get through the material faster. When teachers prioritize…

I’ve written a lot about how teaching vocabulary can be engaging as well as how to help students retain new word meanings. In this new post, I’m writing about specific…

Structuring an ELA curriculum is similar to wardrobe shopping. We all have our personal preferences, our go-to pieces, and our timeless shirts, skirts, or pants. Yet, shopping with friends is…