The Curious Teacher

Finally, A Fun Way to Teach Annotation! Annotating is the act of a reader writing down his/her thoughts on a text during reading. Real-world readers and writers annotate all the time without skipping a beat. While skilled readers do not think much of this skill, for struggling or young readers annotating can seem like a science and unnatural. But I feel that as educators, if we truly want to raise our students' level of reading independency and comprehension, teaching annotation is not only necessary, but a must. There is just no way around it. But let me tell you, once your students understand the art of annotating, there will be no stopping them. After just a few lessons on annotation, I have seen my students from all different reading levels and interests raise their awareness of the text, critical thinking skills, thinking beyond the text, and their comprehension of the text. Teaching students to annotate and think actively about a text can be a challenge, and that is a

Now that the 2015-16 school year has officially begun for the entire country, I thought it would be appropriate to discuss classroom management. The goal of classroom management is not just to create an organized classroom and stress-free days, but most importantly, effective classroom management aims for optimal student learning. Any seasoned teacher can readily agree classroom management goes hand-in-hand with student achievement. Although the content we teach is what we want students to walk away with, effective classroom management is the vehicle to help us reach the goal of student learning. As teachers, we all have an arsenal of classroom management tools that we just can't do without and aide in student learning. Throughout my eight years of teaching, I have experimented with numerous classroom management techniques, tips, and routines; some worked and some did not. Here is a list of the 10 that have survived my experiments and are now a part of my permanent teaching r

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A few days ago I was reading the  Psychology Today  article, "Use Catalytic Questioning to Solve Significant Problems" when I was suddenly hit by a eureka-serendipity-like moment. I was not searching for any teaching strategies, but instead for enjoyment when I realized that the brainstorming strategy the article provided could be applied in the classroom. Although the article was written with the business world in mind, I could clearly see that this could be an innovative and groundbreaking strategy for students to use in the classroom. If you've ever experienced students having difficulty forming questions, brainstorming, being innovative, being original, creating new ideas, then this could be the strategy for you. The article's author, Hal Gregersen, relates how he has used a "systematic approach" to brainstorming for the business world that has consistently proven to be reliable and to help team members create and innovate solutions to problems. As

The first days of school are, hands down, the most important part of the school year; it is in the first days that teachers establish positive expectations, establish their classroom management, train students on classroom procedures, build a positive rapport with students, engage students in group-building exercises, etc. If we don't take  care of this foundation, our classroom structure can and will crumble right before our eyes. Before we can dive into the curriculum and carefully planned lessons, we need to spend some time taking care of the foundation and getting to know our learners; it seems painstaking and unimportant,  but trust me, it will be the best gift you will give yourself and your students all year. You can think of what you do on the first days of school as "the gift that keeps on giving," so to speak. One of the very first pieces of information I want to extract from my students is who they are as learners. Truth is, and perhaps too often, our stu

I think I can safely say that gone are the days when students wrote book reports as a response to reading activity and prove what they have read. Thankfully, the teaching profession has evolved and realized that if we are to  prepare students for real-world writing, they need to be immersed in more qualitative tasks. There are just so many fun, interactive, and meaningful alternatives to the  old-fashioned book report, that to be hard-headed and continue to assign book reports just does not make sense. This is why I have created this post; I want to share some authentic post-reading assessments as alternatives to the book report. Anyone can write a book report without having actually read a book. But to be able to engage in deeper and more authentic learning, students need to prove that they possess the analytical and inferential skills necessary to truly understand a book. Instead of being able to describe  the who, what, and where of a book, it is much more important to be ab

Just recently I discovered a tech tool that I can't wait to use in my Language Arts classroom next school year: this Automatic Newspaper Generator  from the Homemade Gifts Made Easy website. This tool has so many uses in the Language Arts classroom; here's just a few: Summarize a chapter or book  Write a newspaper article (using the 5 W's: Who-What-Where-When-Why) telling about a crucial event in a book Write an article about a special holiday Etc. Students practice numerous skills when  writing a newspaper article, such as: writing effective headlines; summarizing; writing with focus; main idea, etc. This is  definitely a tool I will use in my classroom next year and will write a new post on how it went. Meanwhile, you can check out a sample article I generated here using the tool here . I based it off The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton, which is has always been very popular among my middle school students.

I am a member of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and subscribe to their Voices from the Middle middle school level publication. It gives me tons of innovative ideas for my classroom and helps keep me up-to-date on best practices in the world of  middle school Language Arts. Just recently, one of their articles  gave me the idea of implementing the Six-Word Memoir into my classroom. You can get the ReadWriteThink lesson plan the article referenced here . According to legend, Ernest Hemingway started the six-word memoir after he was challenged to write a six-word novel. He came up with, "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." Inspired by Hemingway,  SMITH magazine launched their six-word memoirs online in 2006 and challenged readers to submit their very own six-word memoirs through contests. (The goal is for students to utilize their words carefully and powerfully because they only have six words to express or describe their life story, current state of m

A few months ago I assisted a Booktopia event in my middle school's auditorium with one of my classes. The author began his introduction by asking, "Do you know an adult that says he  or she will publish a book but never does anything about it?" Incredibly, my entire class "put me on the spot" as they say, and pointed to me. Although everyone in the auditorium laughed at this gesture, this was an "Aha!" moment for me. I had not realized that I had shared my dream of writing with my students and that I had not lived up to one of my goals.  After this moment, I decided not to be that adult that talks  about dreams they will never accomplish; therefore, I decided to start slowly by publishing this blog. Although blog writing is not technically book publishing, at least it is a baby step towards one day becoming a published author. I thank my middle school students' innocence and brutal honesty for unknowingly giving me this much needed wake up call.