HC English Department

Melissa MongI: "Improv enthusiasts rave about its educational value. Not only does it hone communication and public speaking skills, it also stimulates fast thinking and engagement with ideas. On a deeper level, improv chips away at mental barriers that block creative thinking - that internal editor who crosses out every word before it appears on a page - and rewards spontaneous, intuitive responses, Criess says. Because improv depends on the group providing categorical support for every answer, participants also grow in confidence and feel more connected to others."

"These publications are the real deal - online and print periodicals that showcase work by student artists and writers, some as young as age five. Many are run by a staff that is partly or completely made up of students. Each one is beautifully designed and features high-quality work. Some even pay. If you know a student who aspires to become a serious writer or artist, encourage them to take the next step and start working toward publication."

"How you close a lesson is just as important as how you open it. Yet all too often, we run out of time. Or, we look at the clock, see our students are still working hard, and think to ourselves, why interrupt their flow? But there are proven benefits to taking even just one minute to wrap up a lesson. In those last moments, you and your students have a chance to check for understanding, reflect on what you've learned, tie up loose ends, or make sure everyone is ready for the next part of the day. You could even just take a moment to breathe! If you're looking for new ideas on how to wrap up your next lesson, here are five things you can try."

"Think of a topic from your own teaching that you wish your students cared more about. It could be social justice, evolution, literature, or anything that you really care about but some students do not. Now, how can you use these 5 pedagogical moves to make your topic relevant for students? To help you think through, I have 5 tips and questions-based in literacies research-that you can ask yourself to keep your teaching relevant to your students."

"The key to getting kids to read deeply in any format is to have them engage with the text in meaningful ways. In the digital space, that means disrupting a pattern of skipping around, writing short chats and getting lost down the rabbit hole of the internet. It means teaching kids ways to break down a complex text, find key ideas, organize them and defend them. Practicing those skills in class can be time-consuming, but it also builds good digital reading habits that hopefully become second nature. "The goal in almost all the strategies is to slow the kids down so they are focusing on this text," Hess said. "Number two is to engage them in an active way with the text, and number three you want to encourage oral discourse. And number four you want them to do some reflection." Those steps should sound familiar to teachers because they are important for any kind of reading for comprehension and analysis. The trick for teachers is to learn how to transfer these processes into the digital space and push them even further."

"At the American Press Institute (API), we put energy into helping news readers of any age understand and evaluate the news they encounter. In our work with youth and media, we generally recommend six basic questions that can be asked about the news you encounter: 1. Type: What kind of content is this - news, opinion, advertising or something else? 2. Source: Who and what are the sources cited, and why should I believe them? 3. Evidence: What's the evidence and how was it vetted? 4. Interpretation: Is the main point of the piece backed up by the evidence? 5. Completeness: What's missing? 6. Knowledge: Is there an issue here that I want to learn more about, and where can I do that? We are excited to partner with Newsela to offer a way for teachers to begin some of these thoughtful media literacy discussions with their students. Newsela has created an election Text Set that focuses squarely on media literacy. Every article in the set uses some of API's six questions as Annotations to encourage critical thinking - and teachers can use some, or all, of the six questions to guide classroom discussion."

If you're a regular Times reader, you've no doubt enjoyed, and maybe even taught with, some of the 1,000-plus personal essays from the Magazine's Lives column, which has run weekly for decades. But did you know that NYTimes.com also regularly features personal writing on everything from love and family to life on campus, how we relate to animals, living with disabilities and navigating anxiety? In this post we suggest several ways to inspire your students' own personal writing, using Times models as "mentor texts," and advice from our writers on everything from avoiding "zombie nouns" to writing "dangerous" college essays."

"A neuroscientist explains how factors such as light and seating arrangements can affect students' cognitive performance."

"Here's a look inside the tools and methods Preston, who currently teaches three Advanced Placement English and Composition courses, finds essential to his open source learning pursuit:"

"These resources provide an overview of journalistic writing with explanations of the most important and most often used elements of journalism and the Associated Press style. This resource, revised according to The Associated Press Stylebook 2012, offers examples for the general format of AP style"

This is the article that Andrea sent a link to: "When I ask teachers what their biggest struggles are, one issue comes up on a regular basis: student motivation. You are able to reach many of your students, but others are unreachable. No matter what you try, they have no interest in learning, no interest in doing quality work, and you are out of ideas. For a long time, I had no solutions; the problem was too complex. I have had my own unmotivated students, and I never had any magic bullets for them. Still, the issue kept coming up from my readers. So I decided to do some research, to try to find what the most current studies say about what motivates students. This is what I found:"

"Classrooms in the U.S. often focus most attention on literacy and math, largely because those skills are considered foundational and are tested. However most people will also need to communicate their thoughts and ideas to other people through oral language, and yet effective communication strategies are often not taught with the same precision and structure as other parts of the curriculum. School 21, a public school in London has made "oracy" a primary focus of everything they do. From the earliest grades on up teachers support students to find their voice, express differing opinions politely, and challenge one another's thinking. These are skills called for in the Common Core, but can be hard to find in many classrooms because students haven't been taught how to make "turn and talks" truly effective. The Edutopia team visited School 21 and captured some amazing videos of students practicing their communication skills with support from teachers."

"Below is a list of the VALUE Rubrics, organized by learning outcome. Click on an outcome to preview, download, and learn more about a particular rubric."

"Whatever you're consuming-even a movie that seems to require no thought-pay attention, and take notes. For Scott, there's no real difference between reading or watching for work and for pleasure. "I can't read without a pencil or pen in hand, whatever I'm reading," he says. "I have to have something to make notes in the margin or underline or scribble with. … I can't just like what I like, or not like what I don't like, without thinking, 'Why?' -Which is kind of where criticism starts.""

"Inspired by the success of our popular syndicated series Poem-a-Day, we're pleased to present Teach This Poem.  Produced for K-12 educators, Teach This Poem features one poem a week from our online poetry collection, accompanied by interdisciplinary resources and activities designed to help teachers quickly and easily bring poetry into the classroom. "

"Facing History's unique video collection includes insights from top scholars, the voices and memories of witnesses to history, and inspiring stories from teachers and students who wrestle with the complex questions of history in today's classrooms. The videos selected below provide historical background and thematic insights that will be useful for teaching To Kill a Mockingbird. Also be sure to check out activities for Mockingbird that use these resources."

Projects created by the Student Councils for the New York Times' Learning Blog. These are groups of high school students who work with content from the newspaper to create learning experiences for students.

"Sometimes when we are frustrated with students' behavior, it can be easy to blame a student's home life, be exasperated that family expectations are different than those in school, or feel that parents "just don't care." It's a fact that challenges at home often translate into challenges at school, but that fact sets our work in motion rather than halting it. To make change, we must partner with families and caregivers. With the parents of the students who challenge us the most, we must in turn challenge ourselves to reach for empathy and curiosity instead of blame. Here are a few ways to spark connection and empathy with the parents of your most challenging student."