Hi, does anyone know how to request an accommodation for testing? Is it through TEA or Pearson Vue (I believe that's who is used as the testing center). Any support is appreciated.

Please lay out steps.

Hi there, I am teaching English as a foreign language and I am looking for a short story. The general topic is USA between tradition and change. Later on we will read The Hate U Give. For the UK topic I read A pair of Jeans and My son the Fanatic. Any ideas? Help is appreciated!

I’m currently studying to take the FTCE 6-12 English exam to add it to my certificate. I currently am certified in Elementary. It’s been several years since I’ve taken any of these tests but from what I recall some of the exact same questions were used every-time you took the test. Additionally, many of the same questions on the study guides were questions you’d see on the exams. Is this the same with this test? Any study tips? I’m currently using the Mometrix books and practice tests and am 1-5 questions away from passing each of the practice tests each time.

I keep one period a week for creative writing for my grade 7/8 class, so far we’ve done different writing activities but I want to guide them through writing a full, detailed story. I want to teach them to write descriptive setting, well rounded characters and interesting plot lines looking at character motivations and actions, both internal and external which would probably involve some character sketches. Has anyone built a unit or have some mini lessons they wouldn’t mind sharing? I’m trying to cut back on my workload but I really want to help my students with their creative writing. I teach five curriculums and have four weeks left of the current semester and will then start teaching two new social studies classes (grades 9 and 10) to a split class as well as my ELA classes and 7 and 8 social studies classes so looking for any help I can get. Thanks in advance

My mentors always advised me to just grade a paper, pass it back with circles here and there, and then expect them to come to me if they wanted to know what mistakes were there.

I (obviously) don't understand how that is helpful for the student. The vast majority are not looking at their mistakes, and a very tiny percentage come back and ask about what the circles meant.

How are you balancing giving feedback to students when you have 100 essays on your desk? I had planned on doing 1:1 writing conferences with each student, but the time just isn't there. I also don't have the time to mark 100 essays in great detail.

So much helpful info here. Thanks!

Hi, I was wondering if anybody had a strategy to sort of "liven up" the reading and annotating process. I teach 8th grade. Usually, when I go through a text with a class where I don't have any support from other teachers, I stagger annotations. I typically try to do it where I have the kids annotate a certain amount of the story individually, then they share their annotations with the other members of their group, and then they share their ideas out to the rest of the class. It just gets a little dry when you have to go through something for like a double period. Does anybody have a way to either up the pace or make it more interesting?

I will be teaching a class in January focusing on World Building and Role Playing Games. Kinda like D & D campaign writing. I'd love to incorporate short stories that feature varied and creative world development. Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Historical Fiction, etc...stories that would be super engaging for high schoolers and help them see how professional writers bring their stories to life through the creative details of their setting and characters.

Someone else recommended The Weird collection of strange and dark stories, and it looks amazing. Thank you in advance for any and all ideas.

I think my students would benefit from grammar posters in my classroom & all I have are literary posters. Punctuation, homophones, clauses, capitalization, so on and so forth. Anyone have any recommendations? High school ELA—wide range of abilities, so even posters for grades 5-8 would be helpful too.

Thankfully, I'm not required to use a text book at my school, but this has made my poetry a bit of a challenge. I'd like a book that isn't too large or cumbersome for students to carry around, but has enough diversity of voices and forms of poetry. Does anyone have suggestions?

Hi everyone! I am an 8th grade ELA teacher, and I need help finding a book to add to our ELA curriculum. For the last two years, we have tried to find a book to replace The Giver in our curriculum. One of our staff members didn’t like The Giver, so we removed it. However, the book review has not gone well, and we have struggled to find a book that we all like.

Does anyone have any suggestions for a book that might be appealing to 8th graders? I am looking for a book that is around 250 pages or under, has deep themes, and is relevant for kids at this age. In our school, The Outsiders and Ghost are already read at the 7th grade level, so that removes them from contention. Monster by Walter Dean Myers is also a no-go as our principal does not think it would be approved by our school board.

Thanks in advance!

TL:DR- has anyone here experimented with showing a relevant video before reading the text associated with it? Planning to try this with Romeo and Juliet after break, and looking for advice/feedback.

Context: 9th grade ELA in an urban school with high percentage ELs and most students reading at or below 5th grade level. 5th year teaching, first year with new, district-mandated curriculum. Admin strongly against going off-book, so all of this might get shot down the first time I try it. Planning on asking forgiveness rather than permission, though. Not being evaluated this year, so I'm more willing to fight and take risks.

I'll be teaching Romeo and Juliet when we come back from winter break. As noted above, my students are generally very low-level readers, with concurrently low levels of engagement. New district mandates prevent me from using more accessible versions of the text, so I'm trying to find ways to make the original Shakespearean language, and the story in general, more approachable for my students.

In the past, I've shown video versions of a text (Mice and Men, Oliver Twist, All Quiet on the Western Front, etc...) after reading the relevant text. However, I've noticed that my students didn't make the connection from text to video very well- mostly entirely disengaged during reading, and only partially engaged during the video. Since my goal is to increase engagement during reading and comprehension of the text, I'm planning to flip the script, so to speak, and show the film version of Act I before reading that section of the text, and so on throughout the whole play. (District Scope and Sequence sets this unit at 6 weeks, so it will be roughly one act/week.) (I'm planning to use the 1996 Baz Luhrmann [AKA the one with Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes] version, for those interested.) My hope is that having a more visually dynamic entry for each section, where the emotional content is more exaggerated, my students will have a better frame of reference and foundation for approaching the actual text.

Has anyone here tried this approach to a text before, particularly with lower-reading level and engagement students? What worked, what didn't, any advice? Thanks in advance!

^

I have a student in my honors-level 10th grade class who is bright but seems to have some kind of processing issue with spelling that I can't put my finger on. Anything handwritten that she turns in contains SO many spelling mistakes for very basic, low-level words. Her typed work, which I have watched her do, so I know it's her own, is great, because she has spell check. Grammar is not an issue. It's JUST spelling.

I brought it up to parents at conferences and they agreed that spelling has always been an issue for her but they weren't concerned much because so little is handwritten and it hasn't impacted her grades. I agree, to an extent. I think I want to reach back out and see if maybe they should have her tested for something? But what?

Here are a couple examples of spelling mistakes she made on our in-class exam essay:
"nicenest" for "nicest"
"reasurance" for "reassurance"
"ifluence" for "influence"
"adress" for "address"
"perspetives" for "perspectives"
"mysery" for "mystery"

A typical one-paragraph essay she will write contains anywhere from 5-10 spelling errors. I feel like something is going on besides rushing her work. Her standardized test scores (take on computer) are all 10th-grade level or higher.

I feel like maybe some kind of processing thing is going on? But what to advise parents to ask for? Is it worth pursuing if everything is on a computer anyway?

I Took 5039 a couple days ago and there was no preliminary score. Is this normal?

I am currently creating videos such as these and wondering if it might actually help students learn - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cT20sEXlwE0

I hope everyone's winter break is going well!

I am a first-year teacher who has quite a few preps. One of which is a Creative Writing course that consists of mostly remedial students in grades 10-12. Being a first-year teacher, along with a ton of preps, I've struggled with planning for this class during the first semester. There was no curriculum or direction given to me for this class.

What are some things that I can do for this class to help it go a bit smoother in the spring semester? Or any ideas on how to structure the class? So far, we've gone over short stories (plot, characterization, dialogue, etc), and some poetry (free verse and various structures). I think there is still room for us to get into more forms of poetry such as haikus and odes. Additionally, I wanted to cover personal narratives at some point during the upcoming semester. Keep in mind that the class consists of mostly low-level writers and ESL students.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Hi, fabulous ELA teachers! I hope you are all having a well-deserved holiday break. I've recently been assigned to teach a Journalism course for 12th grade. It will be a semester long course (half a year), and my literal only direction is that it needs to fit the 12th grade Common Core Standards for reading and writing.

Since I was basically given carte blanche, I feel super lost! Though I majored in anthropology and politics, I've never actually dabbled in journalism before (I assume there's a bit of crossover...?).

If you were teaching this course, what specific materials would you use to gain content familiarity (besides reading lots of news articles)? How might you organize and plan units that progressively increase rigor in skills? From my vantage point, it seems as if the bulk of teaching student journalism requires a focus on quality research and good story-telling -- but how do you stretch that out across 10-12 weeks? Thanks in advance, and have a great New Year!

Has anyone taught the "Promise & Progress" unit from the Savvas- My Perspectives curriculum? I like the overall goals and ideas from the unit, but would like any advice or suggestions on how to approach this unit?

Weeks ago I advised a teacher teaching To Kill a Mockingbird, The Hate U Give and another text, the title of which I cannot recall at the moment, a mock trial with the intention of showing how little our justice system has evolved since the writing of TKAM, as in The Hate U Give a young Black male is murdered by a police officer. I was countered by a historian who cited the historical incident which inspired Harper Lee to write TKAM, referred to as the Scottsboro Boys and the modern iteration, the Central Park 5. I am 60 years old and this does not excuse my callousness. Yes TKAM is about the sexual exploitation of a child, incest in addition to racism, and I did not mean to denigrate any of these situations by suggesting a mock trial. Perhaps looking at the record of the cases which inspired these works of art, we can collectively learn not only of the legal system’s flaws exploited by flawed individuals in power but the potentiality of justice if people would shed prejudice and learned cultural/institutional racism. The thing about Reddit is once it’s posted it’s posted and all of your flaws and prejudices and ignorance is there for all to see. I am sorry if I offended.

Hello, everyone! I’m currently working on my final project in preschool education, focusing on the importance of introducing foreign languages in preschool for children’s cognitive and socio-cultural development. As part of my research, I’ve created a short questionnaire to gather insights from teachers.

Your input would be incredibly valuable in helping me understand perceptions, challenges, and practices surrounding early foreign language exposure. The questionnaire is anonymous, takes only 5-10 minutes, and will greatly contribute to my study.

Link to my questionnaire: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSffjiHjJoZnJ-5Cgol3DMmjVfWVTTKw351ei70aun-8OBXG5Q/viewform?usp=header

Thank you so much for your time and support! If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to comment here or message me directly.

I’m preparing to teach a poetry unit to my middle schoolers and am trying to find some songs that I could use to teach structural elements such as rhyme scheme and meter plus some sound devices (alliteration, assonance, repetition). Does anyone have recommendations for songs you’ve had success with? I’d really like music that is relevant and interesting to them while also being appropriate in the classroom. I would appreciate any ideas!

I am trying something new, or would at least like to.

I'd like to provide some kind of packet for students that they need to work on while reading or after reading each day. We will only be reading for 20 minutes per day for about 3 weeks; many will not finish their books.

I have always had them do this bookmark while they read:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1H92tHZ7slfuTw8uJKxNHGQV8Q4mzTMlx/view?usp=drive_link

Feel free to take that, but I'd like something this year they can periodically work on for the three or so weeks and turn in before they work together with their group to do a presentation.

Anyone?

Hello Educators!

I was wondering if I could ask for help, yet again. I am currently working on a Gatsby Unit and wanted to, at some point in the unit, focus on color symbolism. Would anyone happen to know of any supplemental texts/articles that might illuminate to students the meaning of different colors throughout the novel? (I have tried to find some myself, but I am honestly not sure which I should use.)

Any and all suggestions, insights, or even general tips/advice would be greatly appreciated! Thank you all in advance!

Looking for topic/concept ideas for context & background research before teaching Hamlet to HS seniors (who may or may not have had any prior exposure to Shakespeare in general). Thank you!!!

Hi all-

I am getting ready to apply for some grants to build an updated classroom library. It's not as diverse and relevant for my 7th graders. I have to figure out how much money I would need in order to make this happen.

Would love suggestions for diverse books and graphic novels!

12th grade ELA, remedial and honors students. I've spent hours of personal time grading and providing feedback and it produces next to no results. 90% of my time after school is spent grading late work. It must be a problem with my teaching style. I don't feel like I'm assigning all that much work and I do everything in my power to engage the kids when they're in class.

What kind of workload do you find reasonable for 12th graders? How many assignments / projects / activities do you consider rigorous but doable for that curriculum? I need advice; I'm drowning.

EDIT: I appreciate all the suggestions. I should have included that my school‘s policy on late work is that it must be accepted until the end of the quarter.

Hi! I’m in my 5th year as a FACS teacher (middle school). I’m unhappy with some areas of my job that have me considering leaving Ed. However, I want to give another content area a try before I give up. There are things I love about teaching.

I chose FACS because I have a lot of interests and expertise that fall into the class content.

I’m frustrated with having 3 preps (this is nonnegotiable at my school), purchasing materials for labs and managing a budget, some components being impossible on sub days (sewing, cooking labs), and being under valued for my skill set. Also, most students only take the class to eat food during labs. This takes the fun out of teaching an elective. We’re also expected to host a CTSO club which requires coordination and travel to conferences (without pay). I have thus far refused that part of the job, but at any point they can ding me for noncompliance.

My husband is a HS ELA teacher, so I know there are challenges in this world as well. When I was deciding to be a teacher I considered FACS and ELA. I chose FACS because I thought it would be fun. That’s not to say I won’t enjoy English classes. I love reading and writing. English was always my favorite subject in school.

All that to say, should I leave education? Should I switch content areas? Should I accept the flaws in FACS? I’m considering opinions from anyone that will give me one because I don’t know what to do. I’m afraid to make the wrong decision.

I’m thinking about taking the praxis no matter what, so any tips or resources you have would be greatly appreciated!

Hello, all!

I am looking for poems the celebrate Filipino pride, history, and culture. Does anyone have any recommendations (readers: 10th grade)? Poems like "Root Systems" by Kay Ulanday Barrett.

Would be grateful for any suggestions!