That carrot is huge

So, that carrot I was talking about…it’s this: If you finish that essay by the end of the day, or if you bring it in, complete, at the beginning of class on Monday, I will let you erase one grade from my gradebook.
For many of my students, this is a great opportunity — they [...]

Dumbing it Down?

We’ve been worried about dumbing down our curriculum for a few years now. At the same time we’ve also ramped up the amount and quality of writing we expect from our students. It’s a conundrum.
Here’s the prompt we’re giving our kids for the fall assessment — and we’re only giving them three in-class [...]

Creating a thesis statement (verbatim)

I’ve always had some trouble with teaching the five-paragraph essay as the be-all end-all of essays, but it’s what the state requires we teach — it shows up in state tests, it shows up on the district-wide final, and it shows up in the expectations for the following grades. I think I have the [...]

a little explanation

About that last haiku… there are a couple of meanings for me; I wonder if it means anything to you.
Today was a collaboration day for us, and whereas we usually use those days to attend an outlandish number of meetings, or to sit in our classrooms grading papers with other teachers, today’s collaboration day was [...]

This is Bullshit!

Or, Beating a Text to Death
A conversation with the science teacher led to this: we think our kids would profit from our classes if we could be more up front. And not just in the cussing realm, but in the personal honesty realm. If the two could coexist, we might just be able [...]

Reflection Questions

1. What was the best assignment of the year? Why?
2. What was the worst assignment of the year? Explain why.
3. What was the best reading assignment of the year? Why did you enjoy this one?
4. What was the worst reading assignment, and why should I get rid of [...]

What do you do at the end of the year?

Add to that: What do you do for the coming year?
Now that we’re at the end of the year, I’ve been giving my students a lot of computer lab time — time to finish writing and printing their short stories, as well as time to help me build the final. I’m looking to the [...]

The Imaginary Classroom: Part Three

Click the following links to find the original posts: Part 2 and Part 1.
My idea is to create and build an online classroom that can be accessed from the school as well as at home — this classroom would ideally function as a language arts class, but I also envision that students could use this [...]

The Imaginary Classroom

How do you ask your administration to give you an extra class next year?
I’d like to ask my admins to allow me to teach an extra class next year, and get rid of my prep period. Currently I use my prep period for nothing other than to skip around the net reading the news [...]

The Machinery of MLA

I’d like to go into the process of exactly how I taught MLA citation — the stuff in (parentheses) as well as the Works Cited page — because the kids took to it very weel. As a matter of fact, I’ve been trying to do this all year long, but subtly. Each time [...]