Literature Circles in Senior English

So, I’ve been thinking about literature circles. I have never really done the full on everyone-has-a-job-and-the-leader-is-a-student thing. However, my YA Literature elective for seniors has students reading a variety of books for more than half the time. So, not only are the students in groups, they are reading different books. The books have some connection, […]

Creative Project in YA Literature

So, I’ve been thinking about my senior English elective, YA Literature, and what is interesting and engaging for the students. I don’t mind working, but I do mind doing all the work and harassing students to do their part of the work. In this unit we read The Phantom Tollbooth all together (and I did […]

Literature Circle Progress

So, I’ve been thinking about literature circles in my senior English elective. This is a YA literature elective and we are reading a lot of books in not a lot of time. About half the time we are reading a book as a class and the other half students have some choice and read in […]

I forgot about the importance of room design

So, I’ve been thinking about room design again. I thought about it a lot those last few years I taught 5th grade. I did some massive overhauling of my classroom set up and got in the habit of rearranging desks and tables regularly depending on the teaching and learning format of the lesson. It was […]

Teaching Students about being a Teacher

  So, I’ve been thinking about how to adjust my teaching so that my students get better at having independent discussions in their literature circles. It turns out that my students need more guidance in order to increase the level of discussion in their literature circles. Reasonable enough. So, I adjusted my instruction. We started […]

Why I ask students to reflect on class, work, whatever

So, I’ve been thinking a lot about teaching seniors, the pedagogy behind literature circles, and how I can know if my instruction is effective. (Yes, I do know about tests.) I have been begging, harassing, talking about reflection and digital portfolios to anyone who will listen, or stand still, for years at this point. I will […]

Student ownership and engagement

So, Ive been thinking about student ownership of and engagement in class discussion. I teach a section of senior English (the course is called Good Reads), and I do not want to lecture or have a forced march through each page of the books we read. When I taught 5th grade, I did a lot of […]

Which assessments are valuable?

So, I’ve been thinking about the assessments I give my students. My students have been thinking about the assessments too, mostly in a could-we-not-do-that kind of way. Earlier in the month I announced it was time to write a book review of the novel we had just finished reading. Wild applause. Groans all around. These are second […]