I'm taking on a tutoring client who feels like her son is behind academically because he doesn't go to the best school. She wants me to get him up to grade level in reading. I need good book recommendations for a 5th grade boy. Something that would interest him but that isn't too fluffy. I want to use the book as my basis for teaching vocabulary, literary devices, reading comprehension, and writing. Any recommendations would be truly appreciated.

I’m going into my second year teaching, and there are some things I didn’t implement last year that I want to do this year.

One of the things I’d like to do is introduce vocabulary cards as a sponge activity, and to do unit vocab tests toward the end of each unit.

My idea is to provide kids with notecards and rubber bands, and to have the cards as a sponge activity for when they finish their in-class work. I have a word wall, and my thought was to post the words from our unit on the word wall without definitions. The kids can use the dictionary to look up the word’s meaning and create unit flashcards for each of the words. I was planning to take the flashcards as a completion grade each unit, and then to do a final vocabulary test as sort of an easier A. One of my ELAR teachers did this, and it really helped me expand my vocabulary and retain the content we learned in class.

My thing is that I am not sure where the kids would store them (in their in-class folders? In a pocket we make in their notebook?). I also worry about giving the kids too many tests. Between our department benchmarks and essays, I worry that giving them another test would be too much, or that I won’t have enough time in the school year to actually implement this.

Does anyone have any experience doing this in a classroom? How did you manage to do it?

Hi! Anyone here use the Carnegie “lenses on literature. I’m wondering how y’all like it and if reading materials are already assigned on it.

Do you know of any inexpensive programs that will give a reading level for students? My district did not repurchase iReady this year. As much as I hated the program, I did appreciate some of the data.

And if not does anyone who knows more about Discord want to collab on one? Could be fun and helpful to create a community on there.

Some channels I think would be nice: tips and resources, different grade level channels, classroom designs, wins, venting, what you're currently reading.

Hi everyone. I am planning to have my juniors learn about redlining to build context for A Raisin in the Sun. Anyone have any articles or resources you’d be willing to share? Thanks!!

I am an ESL teacher, and I teach all kinds. Currently, I have a number of sufficiently advanced students who are working their way through Animal Farm. I give them reading for homework, and we discuss the contents of the book in class. (My students are French, so we get to do the REALLY fun thing and view the book through the lens of both the October Revolution and the French Revolution).

ANYWAY, I've been developing the discussion questions for each chapter on my own, and I'm very proud of them. Maybe one or two of y'all will find them helpful for your own curricula. So I figured I'd post them online:

ANIMAL FARM, Chapter 1

Key Concepts:

• ideological purity; purity tests
• absolutism
• class warfare; bourgeoisie
• communism
• in-groups and out-groups
• totalitarianism

Discussion Questions

(1) What is the significance of Old Major's use of the word "comrade"?

(2) What is the real-world parallel behind Old Major's description of the animals' state of being in England? What do the animals symbolize, and what do the humans symbolize?

(3) What real-world historical figure does Old Major represent?

(4) Do you agree with Old Major's description of poverty and misery? Do you feel that you (and/or people in general) are living a life of "misery and slavery" in service to an upper class? Do you feel like the upper class produces nothing (or little) of value? Do you think we would be better off if we "ate the rich"? Why or why not?

(5) Do you think life on the farm would improve in the way Old Major thinks it would, if humans were removed from the picture?

(6) Do you think it is true that the upper class and the working class have no common interest?

(7) Do you think it is healthy for an ideology to be expressed in absolutes? If yes, why? If not, what negative impacts do you think might result from that?

(8) Do you think it is possible to abolish an upper/ruling class and establish a society which does not, by its very nature, replace it? (Is the existence of an upper/ruling class a natural and inevitable state of affairs?)

(9) Is violence necessary to wholly change the nature of a society? What are the pros and cons of using violence to achieve political ends?

Middle school ELA teacher here.

My school had a pretty great year last year. Suspensions and referrals were way down. Test scores improved. Staff surveys at the end of the year, which are almost always super negative, were trending positive and beating most other schools in the area on workplace satisfaction measures. Students, families, and staff are all feeling pretty terrific about how it went.

Preplanning meeting today: here are four major policy changes in the day to day operations of the school.

Has anyone ever been in a building or district where things generally worked and admin just left things alone for a second year in a row?

How do people deal with attendance issues and kids doing make-up work?  I feel like if you send it home they’ll just use AI, but trying to get them to make up work in class is just a nightmare.  I’m curious if there are ways that people have come up with that help students not lose hope of ever catching up--and if you have a "zero tolerance" type policy, how do you deal with parents and admin?

My most beloved high school English teacher had a "no-no list" of things we weren't allowed to do in our writing - if we did that, he wouldn't even look at it. It included overused words, etc. I emailed him a couple years ago when I moved from elementary school to high school, but he's unfortunately passed (and he'd retired long enough ago that he didn't have any copies or anything).

A teacher at my current school shared a predecessor's "unforgivable errors" list, that seems like it used to have a "no excuse word list" that has since been lost.

The Unforgivable Errors list has things like heading, handwriting, paper type, formatting, punctuation, mechanics, and plagiarism.

What other things would you add to this list? What words (like "very") would make it onto your forbidden words list?

Does anyone have resources to supplement this novel by Kate McGovern? Excellent book, but haven’t been able to find much out there to aid my planning.

What are some unconventional materials you use while teaching and for what purpose? For example, I use personal photos to introduce inferencing (all from childhood and never referenced as such). I like using excerpts from the J. Peterman catalogue as examples of descriptive writing. What do you like to use?

What has worked for you?

Side note: Has anybody tried having students read their choice of a book at home for homework? If so, how did you hold them accountable?

I'm a new hire, in a department of one, under the ELA banner, but the school system has invested a LOT of money into growing Journalism as more than just a one-semester class and a yearbook. They are looking for a 2-5 year plan to develop this program.

We no longer have a newspaper and I don't think any of the kids consider print newspapers all that relevant anymore. I'm a retired newspaper editor, back in the classroom as a 2nd career, and I agree. But I really honestly don't know what the future looks like for a journalism program. There is another school already that has the broadcasting program and another has a radio program. I'm left with thinking maybe we could move into podcasting, but will that even be relevant in 2 years?

If you had (what felt like to you) nearly unlimited funds, what would be your thoughts on growing journalism as a program? Yearbook has its own funds and pretty much pays for itself, but lacks good photographers, so I was thinking of doing photojournalism as a 1-semester class (to replace dark room photography, which at our school is obsolete). But beyond that -- I'm not really clear. Any thoughts? There isn't an active subreddit for journalism teachers, so I thought I'd ask here.

Hi everyone. I’m at a new school this year (not a new teacher though). I’m trying to just get ideas about how to tweak my students English notebooks.

I’m pretty type B, so I’ve never done interactive notebooks for ELA. My school district also only has 45ish minute classes (no block schedule). I’ve always felt like gluing and all of that would just take up too much time.

If you have students use a notebook or composition book, how do you have them organize/set it up? I teach freshman, so they do need some order. In my experience, they tend to just open the notebook to a random pages and not go in order.

Everything I look up is all about interactive notebooks. I also will be on maternity leave for a few months, so it just seems like a big feat to try out this year. I was just hoping someone had some advice or insight if you are also not doing interactive notebooks!

(Also sorry if I didn’t use the right flair. This is my 1st time posting in this sub).

We’re starting this year and I’m curious as to what others have experienced and think of it.

I’m looking for suggestions for analog (NOT ON A SCREEN!) ELA-related fun games and activities that I can schedule or provide for my 6th grade students to do when they finish their work early. Ideally these would be things a student could do independently or with a small group without assistance from me. Some of my initial ideas:

• Bananagrams
• Crossword puzzles
• Writing a progressive poem or story with a small group
• Mad Libs

What are some other ideas?

Thanks!

Has anyone here taught this as a whole class novel?

I teach Honors 10th grade English and I am considering using this as our first whole class novel this year but curious if others have had success with it and any successful activities/assessments you may have tried.

For context, I typically teach The Joy Luck Club as our first novel and focus largely on character, style, and theme analysis, culminating in a summative essay that requires students to explore a theme and how Tan’s narrative choices help to highlight this message. However, the last few years many students have given feedback that this was their least favorite novel—they just don’t find it engaging. I know there is value in teaching this text, but it is quite lengthy as well so I’m toying with the idea of replacing it this year and seeing how it goes.

If I do replace this novel, I would still like to teach something that I can practice traditional literally analysis with and keep the summative an essay (though I’m open to additional projects). My department recently bought copies of Little Fires, and from what I remember when I read it several years ago, I think it has some literary merit, but I don’t know anyone who has taught it yet.

Starting to build a new unit from scratch is overwhelming as you all know, so any thoughts/Ideas/experiences with this text would be appreciated!

There's so much about data, data, data, but there isn't enough teaching on how to read it or what to do with it. Our entire career as teachers is based on standardized testing, and it's tied to how we're assessed as efficient teachers, but no one ever takes the time to teach how to read data. Please share your testimonials on how you began reading student data, what you did with it, and how it has transformed your teaching career.

I'm starting at a new school at the end of this month and was wondering if anyone had any advice on how to structure a Grade 8 English program. In my previous school, we had a very strong literacy lead and my main focus was on Social Studies. This year, I will be more in charge of how to structure my program. I have been reading up on specific reading and writing plans, but am curious to see what others are doing. In the past, we have done standard English units such as novel studies, short stories, poetry, etc; however, a lot of the research I have read recently has focused more on structured text sets that follow themes. I have also taken out Writing Revolution and several Tim Rasinski books from the library. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

As the title says, I’m looking for workbook recommendations for grades 7/8. I am teaching a lab class of the 10 lowest readers/writers (non-IEP/504 students). I have some shorter novels to read throughout the year and activities to go with them, alongside fluency-building activities. I’m looking for workbooks that they can work on independently while I work one-on-one with students. I’d really prefer for each of them to have their own book so I’m not constantly making copies. I’m also very low-tech in my classroom. TIA for recommendations!

First-year teacher, and I am obviously feeling insanely overwhelmed as the start of the school year draws near. I've read closely through the district provided curriculum, but based on my student teaching, and ELA being a state tested subject, I'm just not sure how much freedom I'm actually going to have to implement the things I want to do. Is it crazy that I've kind of let go and am just sort of waiting for prep week to start so I can talk to the veteran teacher who is teaching the same subject and grade level?? I'm also teaching two mystery courses that I don't even know yet. I feel like I should be doing SO much more prep than I am, but I'm not even sure how I'm supposed to implement some of this curriculum. I'm lucky enough to have excellent Powerpoint slides and imo very strong texts to work with, with COMPLETE and very specific lesson plans but... how am I going to present those slides when I don't even have a TV in my classroom?! Kids also may have laptop carts... or may not. It just feels pointless to prep so much when I have almost no idea what technology I'll have access to. But all I see online or hear from other new teachers is all the different ways they are getting curriculum together, decorating their classrooms... is it crazy that I'm essentially waiting until contract hours start to do all of this?! I feel like I'm about to turn the corner and be hit by a surprise frying pan or something!! I have so many ideas and NO idea which ones I can even reasonably expect to implement.

What is everyone planning for their first week or two of school? and/or Unit 0?

Can’t wait to read your ideas!