When I was a new AP Lit teacher I attended a one-day AP training, as many teachers do. During one of my trainings a brilliant veteran AP teacher was going over a writing skill, then mentioned offhand that she had recently spent a whole writing rehash working on that skill.After seeing our puzzled ...
Read More about Rehashing: How to Use it in the AP Lit Classroom
7 Titles Ideal for Use in World Literature
Last year, I was given the opportunity to teach World Literature for the first time in four years. In returning to the course, I decided to reorganize my course approach, moving it from a chronological approach to a thematic approach. I also spent my summer reading new titles and selecting new works ...
Read More about 7 Titles Ideal for Use in World Literature
8 Tips for Facilitating Ethical Research Practices in the ELA Classroom
I've been teaching research for my entire career. It began horribly, and honestly, it was because I was downright lazy. I demanded citations for everything but did little to teach my students how to make them. More importantly, I never instructed them why ethical research was important.After a few ...
Read More about 8 Tips for Facilitating Ethical Research Practices in the ELA Classroom
How to Integrate Creative Writing in AP Lit
Creative writing and AP® Lit don’t usually connect. In fact, if you were to examine the AP® Lit CED, the course document which explains the enduring understandings of the course, you likely wouldn’t see it mentioned at all. And because the course is usually used to prepare students for the year-end ...
Read More about How to Integrate Creative Writing in AP Lit
Media to Pair with Fahrenheit 451 in the Classroom
There are some texts that teachers absolutely insist on teaching. With AP Lit, I have to teach Frankenstein or Beloved. In World Lit, it's Cyrano de Bergerac. And with my sophomores, it's Fahrenheit 451. I think there are several reasons that I love the novel. First, I read it when I was a sophomore ...
Read More about Media to Pair with Fahrenheit 451 in the Classroom
On This Day in ELA: A Year of Literary Events
Back in 2019, I got the ambitious idea to research and identify a literary-related event for every day of the year. I published each under a now-defunct Instagram account and listed them on my old website. I even created posters for classroom use that had each daily event on it. Not long after ...
Read More about On This Day in ELA: A Year of Literary Events
