Prompts range from simple questions which ask students to describe a character or setting, to more complex prompts that challenge students to explore a particular theme or idea.
It’s tough to grade and offer feedback on creative compositions. This blog offers practical tips to navigate verbal and written feedback in your high school classroom.
Explore flash fiction writing and analysis with these lesson ideas. The author offers a link to the unit bundle, but the free examples and teaching tips are excellent place to start.
When prepping for the English Diploma, this video may help your students to understand the variety of formatting choices they have in drafting a personal response.
Use this tip sheet to introduce personal response writing to your students. They will learn to structure their 5 paragraph essay to include critical analysis, personal reflection, and universal connections.
Literary lenses allow readers to focus on particular elements of a text when reading. This blog post categorizes the four main types of literary lenses and how they are used to create nuanced textual analysis.
25 pages of exercises, worksheets, evaluations, and suggestions to assist you in teaching playwriting as a part of your curriculum. Help your students put pen to paper in their own creative works!
This link focuses on the reading comprehension strategies, such as the exploration of connotation and denotation of key words when analyzing a quote in a close reading passage.
Have you ever presented an idea to a group, and it’s met with utter confusion? What’s going on here? Katherine Hampsten describes why miscommunication occurs so frequently, and how we can minimize frustration while expressing ourselves better. Related Lesson
This video provides some tips and tricks for adding humor to your writing. Learn about traditional commedia dell'arte, noticing the details and finding the funny in the ordinary.
What makes a good horror story? Hideous monsters and fountains of blood? This video offers a review of the horror and mystery genres and then offers tips about creating suspense in your writing. Related Lesson
This TED video provides some great tips and examples for writing strong introductions and thesis statements for your essays. The Think section tests your understanding; Dig Deeper provides additional resources. Related Lesson
Free writing curriculum for teachers to engage students through modeling, scaffolding, practice, and feedback. Note: A free teacher account is required.
This is a lesson about some key writing skills, using zombies as an interesting comparison to nominalizations (nouns made from other parts of speech). Related Lesson
It isn't easy holding complex sentences together (just ask a conjunction or a subordinate), but the clever little comma can help lighten the load. But how to tell when help is really needed? Related Lesson
This video takes an interesting look at grammar rules. Do we need them? Learn about the argument between linguistic prescriptivists and descriptivists — who have two very different opinions on the matter. Related Lesson
Is the Oxford comma (or serial comma) really optional, or is there a universal rule? This video explores both sides of the Oxford comma debate. Related Lesson
How many different verb tenses are there in English? It isn't as simple as past, present and future. This video explains grammatical aspect and how each of those time periods actually divides further. Related Lesson
How many different verb tenses are there in a language like English? At first, the answer seems obvious — there’s past, present, and future. But it isn't quite that simple. Related Lesson
It may seem like the semicolon is struggling with an identity crisis. It looks like a comma crossed with a period and we’re confused about how to use them properly. Emma Bryce clarifies best practices for the semi-confusing semicolon. Related Lesson
How do metaphors help us better understand the world? Explore these questions with writers who have mastered the art of bringing a scene or emotion to life.
It’s possessive. It’s often followed by S’s. And it’s sometimes tricky when it comes to its usage. Laura McClure gives a refresher on when to use apostrophes in writing. Related Lesson
What do the dialects of English spoken in dozens of countries around the world have in common? This video shows how English has evolved through generations of speakers.
