How To Run A Novel Study When you read a book with students, avoid getting bogged down with the nitty-gritty. Just pick one big idea and have fun reading! No quizzes, no memorizing, no essays. Just develop your students' love of reading.
Coats of Arms, Seals, and Other Heraldry Symbolic seals, crests, and coats of arms are a common concept across cultures. From the simplicity of Japanese mon to the regality of English coats of arms all the way to America’s Great Seal, humans around the world create graphical representations of themselves.
What Makes An Antagonist Effective? It's really fun to take an already good sequence, tweak it, and get something even better!
Matilda – Book Study Ideas Roald Dahl's Matilda, a childhood favorite of mine, opens up some fantastic discussions about adults, being brave, and how power can be used and abused.
Multiple Perspectives: Right And Wrong At The Same Time? It's essential to teach our students to think flexibly and consider multiple points of view. Flexible thinking leads to product innovation, diplomacy between nations, and advances in science. School, however, often encourages students to settle into a "one right answer" mindset.
Symbolism and Pixel Art Symbolism, a mainstay of literature discussion, seems too abstract and ephemeral to teach to younger students. However, with a well-constructed lesson, students will quickly get the hang of symbolic representation. We'll finish this unit up with some great pixel-art and computer painting.
Content Imperatives And Conflict Conflict is an essential tool for analyzing literature, understanding history, and improving as a writer. Each year, my 6th graders discuss the types of conflict commonly found in stories and analyze writing using the content imperatives.
The Tragedy of the Commons Imagine that we all share a common resource, but no one is really in charge. How do we maintain order without an authority? This is a fantastically fuzzy situation for students to dig into.
Multiple Perspectives Gone Mad!! Yes, I actually gave my students this question: "How could two experts’ 👓 perspectives regarding information from this reading selection differ from one another?" yikes.
Finding the Fun in “It’s” vs “Its” How do we differentiate a dull lesson like "its" vs "it's"? I decided to push it to an extreme (and include some unexpected novelty).
