A few years ago, I started to rethink my classroom space. I wondered, What does this room say about me as a teacher, or my students as learners? Is the space working in the best ways in can? Although I don’t think I realized it… Read More
All posts tagged “high school english”
How I made time for reading . . . and had one of the best years ever (Part 3: A Weekly Framework)
With the first week of school behind us, the groundwork for our independent reading endeavors has been set. This week, my 9th grade students walked around my room, browsed the classroom library, and marked titles that they’re interested in reading. Through our scavenger hunt, students learned the ins and… Read More
How I made time for reading . . . and had one of the best years ever (Part 2: The Power of Booktalks)
Although I’d been doing some form of independent reading for several years, with each year better than the one before, I came into last school year determined to commit in a way I hadn’t before. I wanted to find a way to make students’ independent… Read More
How I made time for reading . . . and had one of my best years ever (Part 1)
I‘m ashamed to admit that for many years, I rarely built in any time for independent reading. The extent of independent reading in my classroom was taking students to the library to check out a book, telling them it was due by X date, and… Read More
Making space for learning: a classroom tour
August always brings mixed feelings. On the one hand, I’m always surprised and sad that summer is coming to an end. Lazy days at the pool, s’mores over a campfire, water ice after dinner—I know I’ll be missing these days all too soon. On the… Read More
On Venn diagrams: What does reading look like in the real-world?
Kylene Beers posted this on her Facebook page this afternoon: When I finish reading a book, I want to think about it and talk about it, and then I want to start reading my next book. Never have I closed the covers, sighed, and said to… Read More
Three things for the first 48 hours
Glance at almost any education focused website, blog, or Twitter feed in mid-August and you’ll find no shortage of first-day-of-school activities. In one of my education-related Facebook groups, someone recently asked for suggestions on how to spend the first day in class. Others asked about… Read More
Getting Out of the Way
Today I finished reading yet another pedagogy book, this time Whole Novels for the Whole Class by Ariel Sacks, an educator and English teacher in New York. Over the last ten years, Sacks and her colleagues have developed an approach to teaching novels with their students… Read More
Worth the time.
I ‘ve decided that since I seem completely incapable of turning my teacher brain off this summer, I’m going to embrace it. As such, I’ve been doing a lot of professional reading—reading new-to-me titles like Reading Ladders, In the Middle (3rd ed.), Thrive, Worth Writing About, and Whole… Read More
From the Classroom: What Does Real-World Writing Look Like?
Speaking on a panel at the NCTE Annual Convention last fall, author Cris Crutcher commented, “Reading Shakespeare is an academic exercise. It’s not one that’s going to get me to love reading.” Though I disagree with him about Shakespeare―I think studying Shakespeare can give us tremendous insight into… Read More
Tricia Ebarvia 
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