/r/ELATeachers
A place for English teachers to share ideas and lessons and to brainstorm and collaborate on all things related to English Language Arts.
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/r/ELATeachers
Hi! This is my first Reddit post ever. I'm a high school senior and debating on going to college to teach high school English. I'm worried that it won't work out for me because of my personality but I LOVE reading and analyzing and helping people. I've had really great teachers the past few years who have inspired me to try to help other kids the way they helped me. Is there any advice you have? Any regrets? I honestly can't think of a job I would rather do but I'm afraid I'll sink money into college and regret it. My apologies if this is the wrong subreddit, I really didn't know where it should go🥲
Hi everyone, this is my first year teaching only Literature instead of ELA. I have 7th - 11th grades and they are all on a different novel. My 8th graders are going to start The Song of Roland, and I do not know how to approach it. I need help.
I found a study guide online, however it is for college level students. I need some activities/ideas or even lesson plans if you're willing to share for 8th grade students.
This is my first time with this epic poem, I have never read it before. Where do I begin?
I will be introducing creative non-fiction to my high school students and wanted to see where y’all think I should start. We have 2-3 weeks of this unit so wanted to see how you got your students engaged. Thank you!!!
Any examples of chapter titles from books that help readers “read between the lines” or add another layer to the reading? Doing a lesson using chapter titles, and I am struggling to think of an example for that point!
Hey folks,
So I am in a good situation and also looking for some help. My English major in undergrad was pretty history heavy. 13 years later I am teaching HS English for the first time. I am doing Macbeth with seniors in English IV. I have literally no curriculum or requirements except for our state standards. The expectation is to do British Literature with seniors and Macbeth is the dept chair’s only request (we just finished Beowulf). I also like Shakespeare and Macbeth. Our school is penniless and we were going to have to share old ass copies of a textbook with the play in it between classes on a cart. I have generously been given a class set of The Arden Shakespeare publication (which has summoned me from a deep depression about teaching in a low value places on education community with no budget).
So I get to teach Macbeth with new, well footnoted / introduced / appendix’d copies of the play. The only requirement is that I teach it. Obviously the play is almost infinitely rich with deep questions and themes to explore. But, as I’m reading the Arden introduction to prepare, I’m reminded of how much history one could teach with a Shakespeare play.
Most of my class hasn’t read Shakespeare and Beowulf was the hardest thing many have done in English. They are good students despite many obstacles in the community / culture and are amazing to teach.
So my question is what you would teach them about the English monarchy, Scotland, or Shakespeare himself? Are there good history books for the English monarchy / Scotland I could look to for that side of things at the HS or Community College level?
My thanks in advance.
I’ve heard that a no-homework revolution is on the horizon for my district. My question to anyone who currently does this- how do you get through a book without assigning pages for homework?
My next round of book clubs for students will focus on character arcs, and I want to include Eragon as a choice on the list. Has anyone here read it? If so, does it have a clear character arc for the main character? Thanks!
As far as the definition of central idea as related to the regents exam, how do you distinguish central idea and moral? From what I’ve seen, there’s a good amount of overlap. But is there any distinction at all?
With my students, I always explain that central idea is a one sentence summary of the authors main message, or what readers can take away. But, on the past regents exemplars, I feel like this often shows up as a moral. For students who are struggling, is it worth getting into the nuance, or will they be successful providing either on part 3?
Hi, this is my first semester teaching at the community college level. I've been teaching an English 101 Composition class, and next semester I've been hired for English 102: Intro to Literature. While I'm pretty confident with fiction/non-fiction, I am genuinely so ignorant of drama/poetry. Are there any anthology (or teaching related) books you might recommend I assign to my students? And something that I could follow myself for my lesson plans? I remember some I read in school that were pretty effective but of course don't recall the titles/editors. Thanks!
Hi! Does anyone have a copy of the 7th/8th grade argumentative writing curriculum you could email to me 😬🙏💜
so for some prior information, in my ELA class we are writing argumentative essays on topics that we could choose and i had the idea of doing it on mandatory lockdown drills being necessary in our schools. i wrote my rough draft and i did have some things in there that i thought about on my own (not saying there arent people that also thought of these things) like the fact we need to think about what if situations like if students are in hallways when we go into lockdown or if we are all in a pep rally or assembly. i talked about newer schools having a lot of windows into classrooms and common areas being very open along with the fact that students need to know the procedure in class. so i turned this in and when my teacher handed it back to me she said i needed to cite where i got the information from for those three ideas, and when i told my teacher that i didnt get them from a source and had come up with them on my own my teacher asked where i learned about those things and that i need to cite where i learned them from (i feel like these things are common knowledge, which doesnt need to be cited because it wouldnt be considered plagiarism) and when i tried to explain to my teacher that its not exactly something that no one else knows about my teacher refused to listen to what i had to say and said that i need to cite my school because they had talked once about what to do in two classes and no one else went over the procedure. im feeling like anything i would say to my teacher would be shut down simply because they're the teacher and what they say goes. i truly do not want to cite my school because i did it on that topic because my school doesnt have actual lockdown drills where we practice procedures for anything so i feel they dont deserve the credit for what i thought of. sorry about no caps and a lot of run on sentences and a bunch of other things but im upset and dont want to worry about making this super offical😭 ANY ADVICE HELPS
In our staff meeting today, we were instructed to discuss our homework and grading policies. I was the unpopular one for the following pedagogical choices:
I do not devote time to handwriting in middle school. It's not in the standards. I don't grade it. I don't even care what type of writing utensil is used (obviously, charcoal, craypod, and interpretive dance are non-viable choices in most cases, and typed is best 😀).
I "let" (require) students type their essays and extended responses. The teachers I was working with were shocked because "Google corrects their spelling and grammar! Where's the incentive to do it right?" and "what about copy/paste?". If Google and Grammarly flag an error and the student fixes it, then I can focus on their ideas when grading. It doesn't really matter though because my kids are paying attention to their corrections. I know this because sometimes the correction is only part right and they ask me for help. Copy/paste/plagiarism are obvious and I do not accept it, duh. Where is the problem?
I have an unlimited revision policy. It's been my policy for 10+ years. But unlimited revisions "lets the lazy kids get away with doing no/poor work the first time so they can just get the answers and turn it in again". Writing is a recursive process, and practicing a growth mindset works best when the task is identical, so why not give unlimited revisions? Plus, I don't/can't "give answers" on my writing assignments. Best I can do is a list of page numbers with potentially suitable passages.
I see dictation style spelling as ableist, outdated and, frankly, useless because English, as the joke goes, hides in alleys and shakes down other languages for vocabulary and loose grammar. The teacher I was talking to said "that's college crap and we can't talk about this because we're going to argue." Umm, what? Understanding the basic structures of the hodegpodge that is English is crap and not worth explaining, but memorizing a sequence of letters, which often do not correlate to a single consistent sound, in order to write them down when heard - that makes sense?
I don't check homework daily. It's obvious to me who does the work, and their grades are a fair reflection of their effort. None of my students have said "Mrs. X, I don't know why my grade is low." and a number have had that quiet (or not so quiet) pride when I pass back an assignment because they had to stretch for it and they (finally) did the thing.
I let the kids copy answers while reviewing an assignment together. You would think I had admitted to giving them an A for blinking and breathing (though some days I feel like some of the kids could fail that one, too, lol!). When I asked why I would spend time grading 2-3 textbook pages at the start of class to make sure they are doing the work instead of just going right to discussing the ideas, I was told "That's just being a teacher, welcome to the job". I almost walked out of the meeting.
To be clear, I collect student work. I grade it. I provide direct grammar and reading instruction and practice when it applies to the text, their writing, and the discussion. The work is a mix of individual, partner, choice group, assigned group, and full group. Students are held accountable for their work. I have due dates and a late work policy. My grade breakdown is compatible with the rest of the middle school teachers. I just approach it differently.
And the amount of pearl clutching over these choices has me wondering.
If you made it this far, are these truly unpopular opinions? Have I been teacher-ing too unconventionally? Do you have other unpopular opinions?
(FWIW: My students are generally highly engaged and tell me the classwork is around a 3 on a 4 point scale where 4 is that it's hopeless, but also it's their favorite class.)
Hi! I'm an ELA teacher in a middle school. We follow the model where ELA includes writing and reading in one homogeneous class.
Does anyone else out there have a different model in their middle school? Do you separate ELA into reading and writing classes? Do you have a separate literacy class? Are these classes successful?
I am struggling with the lack of time to teach these skills in one 55 minute class period where we have to cover both curricula when the kids are not where they should be. I have 6th grade students who cannot write a sentence let alone comprehend a text and respond to it with any thoughtfulness. To me, it feels like trying to teach both reading and writing in one class period barely skims the surface of teaching either skill set with any effectiveness.
Thank you!
Hi everyone, I created a series of mini podcasts (each are ~1 minute long) to teach students AP/SAT words via short stories.
You can find them here: https://open.spotify.com/show/5PHfGWswHiVaZGtrKEBZWu.
So far, I've made about 50. The goal is give students a resource they can use on the go.
Would love any feedback (positive or constructive).
If you think this would be helpful, please DM me and I can help create more content like this, or do other types of micro-learning podcasts. Thanks.
I’m teaching a lesson on Monday about different types of informative essays (descriptive, compare and contrast, cause and effect, etc.). Wondering if anyone has some good ideas for a bell work and interactive activity I can use to introduce those before turning the kids loose to work on an assignment
Hi everyone! I am looking for a free, online image labelling tool that can auto-detect and identify objects in an image and auto-create labels. The emphasis on the ‘automatic’ is because I have found several such tools but they are for machine learning and require some degree of coding, which is not what I’m looking for.
The purpose of this tool is to help ESL and EFL students to learn vocabulary. So far, I have tried Google search using these keywords or phrases: free online image labelling/tagging/annotating tool, automatic identification of objects in an image, etc.
If anyone knows of a website that can do this, I would really appreciate if you could share with me. Here’s an image to illustrate what I am hoping looking for. Thank you!
My school requires us to have our students do 30 minutes of Freckle time. Does anyone else teaching in high school use this?? I hate this platform so much I think it’s an incredible waste of time and the kids hate it more than I do. It’s also sucks at explaining what their reading level actually is. Bunch of random numbers and letters. What are your thoughts?
Hello! I am a first year teacher and I am teaching 2 courses: A) British Literature (9-10th) B) American Literature (11-12th)
My degree is in Social Studies, but the school needed me to do ELA. This leaves me with a lot to learn.
My biggest struggle is grading essays. I want to be as objective as possible and avoid grading based on my preferences. Thus, the only rubric categories I can think of for my students' analytical essays are: -Answered the prompt -Used proper grammar -Used sufficient [predefined number] evidence
Any other category I think of seems too arbitrary, subjective. Any advice?
Hi all! I'm trying to look at utopian short stories that were written specifically by men. Throughout this semester, we've looked at utopian novels and short stories by women, and looked at them through a feminist lens. For our final project, I'm wanting students to look at a male author utopian short story, and look at one of those through a feminist lens. All I've been getting is either novels or dystopias. Does anyone have suggestions?
I am humbly requesting suggestions for what I can do with three 30 minute sessions that have an ELA focus for GT students. They’re 8th graders, and we will only have this time to work on a project.
Thank you!
I saw a lot of people in the "number of books per year" thread say they allow students to choose a book or two each year.
I'd like to try it with my students, but how do you actually do it? What exactly do you do during those 3-4 weeks while they're reading their book of choice?
Also, do you limit their choices to books that you've read? If not, how do you grade their essays if you've never read the book?
It seems simple enough, but I'm got a lot of questions about the nuts and bolts, so I would really appreciate if someone would be willing to go into detail on how they do it!
I want to take my AP students on a field trip. I’m actually thinking more about shit that is purely for fun but that I can somehow tie to the subject. Admin is pretty flexible.
A lot of these kids are taking multiple AP courses. The world is falling apart. I just want them to have fun.
Ideas so far: Picnic somewhere cool where they can run around
An aquarium (not sure how I will tie that in)
There's been a debate recently about how the decline of reading among students, particularly high schoolers. This is a perennial discussion, to be sure, but what makes this current iteration different is that the English teachers are being blamed for assigning fewer books. (I'm referring to the buzzy Atlantic article, "The Elite College Students Who Can't Read Books," from this summer, and also a piece on Education Next from Doug Lemov, "Why Are Books Disappearing from the English Classroom?")
I'm curious: how many books do you assign per year? What are they? Are they whole class or independent reading? Do you assign fewer now than you did before?
Hi teachers -- does anyone who uses EL Education have insight into how the end of module performance tasks should be graded?
Hi all,
I’m a first year 9th grade English teacher. I also love Shakespeare. (Granted, they’re making me teach Romeo and Juliet, which is definitely not my favorite, but it’s Shakespeare nonetheless.) But, I’ve always felt that it was backwards to read Shakespeare first and then watch it. Since it is supposed to be seen, I would think that watching it first would make the text more accessible. In theory, getting the general structure of the story from the film would make the language less of a hurdle. They would have the big picture, and then we would go back through the text to break down sections, and analyze.
Because I’ve never taught Shakespeare, I’m not sure if there’s any major flaw in this approach that I’m not considering. Thoughts? Please let me know if you’ve tried this, and/or if it’s a terrible idea. Thank you!
Doing research as I earn my Master's of Education.
I'm looking for sources that address this question:
How can I explore ways to connect students with resources outside of the classroom to foster student engagement?
This Edutopia article was spot on, but I need a second source to explore. That article is about audience and how students write well when they have an audience that isn't the teacher.
The source could talk about field trips, guest speakers, etc.
I am needing to find a good grammar book for secondary ELA class but also I'm not great with grammar myself, so something that can help refresh my memory as well?
I'm a high school English teacher in the US. I teach at a private high school, and I teach all levels. I'm teaching the freshmen and the seniors this semester.
I was going through my MAPs data yesterday day, and I discovered that only ONE student out of the 9th and 12th graders is on reading level. I have two on a middle school level. The rest are reading at a 3rd or 4th grade level. While I am not surprised, it was still a sobering moment.
To make a long story short, I am meeting with administration because we need a game plan. I realize I am in a unique position where I can change my curriculum to specifically target literacy. As a private school, we are not beholden to the state tests. We can move away from the standards and focus on teaching the students to read. I'm, personally, of the opinion that teaching students how to read is more important than teaching the universal themes of British literature, etc.
Since I want to make a bold proposal to depart from the standards, I want to make sure I go in with a plan. While I know about some literacy strategies, I've never been in the position where I need to teach students how to read. I am trying to find a program that will give me structure and guidance. I know Saddleback has books meant for teens with low reading levels, but would that be enough? Basically, if you could change your curriculum to focus on the literacy epidemic without worrying about test scores, what would you do?
Also, for context, my school does not have a literacy specialist nor do they have the funds to hire one. I see the students for 80mins a day, but 20 of those minutes are set aside for independent reading per admins' request.