HC English Department

"In this lesson, students consider the purpose and history of Op-Eds by exploring the Times feature celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Op-Ed page. They then do one of several multidisciplinary activities designed to make Op-Eds relevant to their experience, perspective and learning."

"Corrigan considers The Great Gatsby to be the greatest American novel - and it's the novel she loves more than any other. She's written a new book about it called So We Read On: How the Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures. Corrigan says she loves The Great Gatsby in part because of its message that it's admirable to try to beat your own fate. "You can't escape the past, but isn't it noble to try?" she says. "That's the message here ... to be the boat against the current, even though failure and death inevitably await you. The doomed beauty of trying - that's what this novel is about.""

"Through independent reading children gain a wealth of background knowledge about many different things, come to understand story and non-fiction structures, absorb the essentials of English grammar, and continuously expand their vocabularies. "

"Working within an answers-based education system, and in a culture where questioning may be seen as a sign of weakness, teachers must go out of their way to create conditions conducive to inquiry. Here are some suggestions (based on input from question-friendly teachers, schools, programs, and organizations) on how to encourage more questioning in the classroom and hopefully, beyond it."

"Project Ed is a platform dedicated to educational video made for and by 21st century learners. The core of Project Ed is an open, community-driven approach to content. We start by identifying K-12 concepts where a video has the potential to create a meaningful impact.Then we design contests to take these lessons out of the classroom and put them in the hands of digital storytellers. Each contest starts with a "creative brief," that includes everything needed to achieve a specific learning goal. Once the brief is launched on Projected.com, creators from all over craft original narratives to teach in unforgettable ways. Each brief generates hundreds of new ideas and a multitude of submissions. This process brings together the rigor of curriculum experts and the passion of creators to build an open library of effective, engaging lessons."

"The Great Gatsby author's surprisingly blunt advice to would-be writers"

"Graham's review of the research doesn't resolve the age-old debate of whether students learn writing best naturally -  just by doing it - or through explicit writing instruction. But there are effective practices where the research is unequivocal. Distressingly, many teachers aren't using them. "We have confirmation of things we know that work, but are not applied in the classroom," said Graham. Here are three: Spend more time writing, Write on a computer, and traditional grammar instruction doesn't work.

"Be visual and conversational. Be concrete, make your reader see and stop trying to impress. Beware "the curse of knowledge." Have someone read your work and tell you if it makes sense. Your own brain cannot be trusted. Don't bury the lead. Clarity beats suspense. If they don't know what it's about they can't follow along. You don't have to play by the rules, but try. If you play it straight 99% of the time, that 1% will really shine. Read Read Read. The English language is too complex to learn from one book. Never stop learning. Good writing means revising. Never hit "send" or "print" without reviewing your work - preferably multiple times."

An interview of Stephen King in which he shares some of his teaching experiences. Jessica Lahey "asked King to expound on the parts of On Writing [she loves] most: the nuts and bolts of teaching, the geekiest details of grammar, and his ideas about how to encourage a love of language in all of our students."

TED's educational arm is launching TED-Ed Clubs, an effort to support students who research, write and present and record their own ideas in a TED talk format. "The goal is to stimulate and celebrate the best ideas of students around the world," said TED-Ed Director Logan Smalley. TED-Ed piloted the project with 100 schools, focusing mostly on middle and high school aged students. Most of the pilot schools started with TED-Ed clubs held during lunch or after school, but some teachers incorporated materials into the classroom. TED-Ed also offers free guiding materials for 13 club meetings, taking students through the step-by-step process of creating a TED talk.

"A while ago, I wrote a post called Doing It Differently: Tips for Teaching Vocabulary which spells out (get it?) the process and rationale for selecting certain vocabulary words and also describes six steps for teaching new words. Here, I'm going to add to that earlier musing on this topic by offering up some must dos that took me a few years down the teaching road to figure out."

"Characteristics of Meaningful Reflection For student reflection to be meaningful, it must be metacognitive, applicable, and shared with others. Let's look at each of these characteristics in turn."

" I'd been teaching writing all wrong! I'd dangled the carrots of prizes and threatened with the sticks of docked points for misplaced modifiers. But sometimes, I also got it right. Before, I'd let students choose prompts and readings as much as possible, providing autonomy. After reading Pink, I learned to unbend myself, make deadlines more flexible, and shape the writing process more to fit the student. Now, my students feel more control over their process. Before, I'd encouraged my students to write for real audiences as summative assessments. Now, I encourage students to write to real people for real purposes throughout the school year -- their own blogs, each other, me, their principal, their Congressional representatives, and the world. Before, I'd embedded grammar instruction in writing process and had students keep their work to casually notice their progress once a year. Now, I conference four times a year with students about portfolios of their work -- an ongoing conversation about writing goals of their choosing. I explicitly teach metacognition, or how to talk and write about their writing."