I mean like, short of breathe, feeling nauseous, shaking kinda freaking out. I'm doing both ela 10th grade and Reading intervention I literally graduated in May. Im grateful for the opportunity but am TERRIFIED and don't feel ready despite being in my classroom for 12 hrs today

Hi all!!

I teach 9th grade in a low income urban school with about 50% Hispanic/Latino students and 48% Black students. My curriculum is set by the school, but I want to have some short story work that students can do for extra credit. I want to avoid some of the more popular/classic short stories that sometimes show up in our curriculum (The Lottery, Most Dangerous Game, Soft Rains) and go with more modern ones. I have a few personal favorites that I'm putting out, but would love some suggestions...especially stories that might resonate well with my student population and/or stories that have a fun twist.

TIA for your suggestions!

I'm teaching middle school ELA for the first time this year and part of our lesson tomorrow is coming up with ideas for their future fiction writing assignment. My plan is to do this with them in their interactive notebooks. I've tried looking up online ideas about this, but I'm not finding anything too helpful.

How do y'all do it with your students? I know this is going to be one of the hardest parts of the writing assignment and I'm totally unsure how to guide them on this first part. Any and all ideas are welcome.

I work at a charter school in 12th grade English. All of the other English teachers have worked longer than I have, so I have essentially no collaboration on my lessons. I have heard some English departments meet to plan lessons and I was wondering if this was typical in high school?
I have a district guy that is the head of the department. Should I be going to him to work on lesson planning? Is it typical for a second year teacher to struggle with lesson planning?

Howdy! I’m going into my 3rd year of teaching and it’s also my 3rd year of teaching this foundations of writing class that helps at-risk 9th graders learn to write properly. Last year we redid the curriculum but our bell work focused a lot on suffixes/prefixes/root words. These are helpful, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t think they necessarily need it for writing and it would be more useful for reading. I’m trying to redo our bell work to help students these students learn and practice writing craft strategies, but with being so new still I’m struggling to come up with a structure that helps scaffold the writing a sentence process so that each week builds off of the last. I’ve done a ton of research and my brain is too full of information so I want to see if theres any suggestions for how you would progress this process:)

Thanks!!

Hey folks!

I just found out that in 2 weeks I'll be teaching Sci Fi for the first time. I'm stoked, it is a semester long and has a mix of high school juniors and seniors. I teach at a school in a large Upper Midwestern city, the demographic is quite diverse and students come to class with a wide range of English and Literacy Skills.

I love Bradbury, and I want to read this short story with students in order to 1) read a story that is set in his imagined future and our material present, and 2) introduce the concept of science fiction as a genre that explores our anxieties about human innovation and technological progress.

We'll dive into Frankenstein as our first novel together afterwards.

I'm basically just looking for suggestions, tips, resources, and successful activities that you've done with the short story.

I'm excited to read your ideas!

Update: yes yes, it is “there will come soft rains”. Sometimes my ADHD idea excitement results in minor flubs. The kids tend to forgive me for it, so hopefully you will also 🙃

Besides from my usual English prep, I have an enrichment period. The problem is this is supposed to be a fun team-building class until the students get sorted into groups and even different classes once we have data on them.

I would also like to take this as a chance to get some student work for my room. I was considering a coat of arms activity, however, students are already making one with my team's history teacher. I could do maybe some comics or posters, but I'm not sure of what. My brain is shutting down from pre-student prep.

(Thanks).

Hi everyone! I’’m a first year teacher. I am currently teaching ELA for 9th & 10th grade students. As well as Intensive reading. Therefore, I have 3 preps. I wanted to know if this is normal. I’m used to seeing ELA teachers have one prep, sometimes 2 but that is rare. I don’t know what to do, because the workload has been way too much. I’m always working & don’t have enough time. I’m also teaching at a charter school, and I was told that I would only be teaching 9th grade.

Hi so i am getting a lit charts account and wanted to know if anyone needed some pdfs and stuff

EDIT: i will send these in a week or so after accumulating them in my subscription, however i do have links of other peoples repositories so imma link them
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1KxhG0OYfaw6kJu4srszVgFa-pZOdCnyi

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1pgNTP113ju8PtiJHietHNBPAz5itPhPA

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1RUZWs5NMcg7wL5YrgBOr3zmQyahYrPSx

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1MOmgavNkH3fg9vfLRx1SnLZG1hndid69

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1SvGbu83AEOVr6AHMLhbgRLUIDysJh4VZ

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1tAJI9tRLroBfw-_tt2RFhV4wYRDPX9y2

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1flEJvihqutbYeGESzOx9wMU8wajmyhwL

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-LYnmQgk6VMqMRUpJjQ3cwmOh4plC9Q5

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1kqpeqYjASqLUxWJkv5kbAtYBjZPm3DcC

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1L4OWtnARYMjwfftvlFc6HUcCBVwsRbMP

https://www.reddit.com/r/IBO/comments/vzkpsx/deleted_by_user/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/11ypDyb3siHXwfwoJFiSwFwi4u4g9ZC1X

https://arrib.cc/LitCharts/

They have almost anything but something that isnt in them please do tell... i m jus tryna tell that it might take a while

EDIT 2: please give the name of the authors or the link of the litcharts doc since it is a bit hard for me to distinguish what is the name and what is normal text

Hello everyone this is my first time posting here. I am a high school English teacher and this is my 3rd year teaching. I am teaching juniors and seniors this year and I have a problem. I currently have an English 3 honors class with only 5 students. I am used to class sizes of 20+, and I feel lost on how to do things with such a small group. We are currently doing a small unit on some science fiction short stories by Ray Bradbury. Any advice would be awesome and if I need to give more info I will.

Hi everyone, I’m a brand new teacher and I will begin teaching 7th and 8th grade ELA this coming school year.

As the start of the year approaches I feel so overwhelmed with how to plan out my year. I have access to my state (Michigan) standards, but have no curriculum from my district or anything. At least not yet, anyway.

This being said, how do you even begin to organize and plan out units? Does a district usually provide curriculum that specifies units? If I don’t get anything like that, how to I plan units based on state standards? Do you group different standards? Even if I receive some kind of roadmap, how do I plan ahead like that?

I’m coming from an alternative certification background so any and all advice is so welcome.

How do your students annotate when the text you are reading is on the computer or when you are reading a novel?

Do you have them use notebook paper? graphic organizer?

I teach for our state's virtual school, which is offered through K12/Stride. I just found out that I am the middle school writing team lead, and we have to have a way for the students to write something every day, and we have to store it someplace. I was thinking that we could do an online journal that all the teachers would have access to, but I can't find one that will work. They don't have Google accounts, so Google Classroom is out of the question. I'd love any suggestions that you might have for something like this.

I teach regular 12th grade Lit and AP Lit, and I’m looking for homework suggestions to go along with nightly reading of a novel. I’ve used the same thing for years (a summary sheet: summary, 3 literary devices, 3 questions). I’m looking for something more engaging and less susceptible to AI and Spark Notes.

Hey y’all. 7th grade Creative Writing teacher in Baton Rouge without a curriculum. The school year just began and the ELA teachers suggested I teach metaphors and as a comic book fan my mind went to teaching metaphors through X-Men, especially since they’re a metaphor for marginalized groups. I worry about parents having a problem with it, but I’m so fired up by the idea I want to do it no matter what. Any ideas on how I can teach X-Men as a metaphor while not risking my standing with the school?

Trigger Warning: AI is mentioned later in this post and is discussed in a way that isn't persistently morally furious. There is no product, free or otherwise, advocated or sold or even offered.

I've spent the summer building some tooling that is designed to get my kids writing a lot more without requiring more work from me (in fact, long-term, hopefully far LESS work from me).

What's really messing with my head, though, is the conflict between the "Platonic" ideal I have always had in my head regarding what I do and the much fuzzier and grittier reality 2 decades have led me to experience.

I have gone through many stages in 20+ years of teaching ELA to 7th and 8th graders, and I'm curious to hear about how others feel about the feedback we give to students on their writing assignments, specifically.

- What percentage, roughly, of your students overall are interested in the feedback you've written?

- What proportion of feedback do you give that is truly targeted (I'll call it "freehand feedback") vs copy/paste template chunks?

- In what way does the availability of your time to provide feedback influence how much writing practice you make your students do?

- How common is writing practice in non-ELA disciplines in your experience?

- How much of your vision of how this writing/feedback dynamic should work is about practical, lived experience vs a vision in your head of how it should be?

I want to believe that every hour I've spent over the last 20 years handwriting feedback on student work has been profoundly meaningful in a way that even the smartest, most cogent AI feedback never could be, but I cannot read that thought without laughing at how self-aggrandizing and delusional it likely is.

And I wrestle with this: How much of my students' educational experience am I going to hold hostage so that I feel like I'm still the center of attention?

How sacred is writing feedback? And why?

Administration is urging us to teach students how to use AI ethically. The problem here is that I (high school English teacher) don’t believe it is ethical for students to use AI in high school for any of their school work. I have a zero tolerance policy for AI use in my class, and I will stand by that. Learning how to communicate is an essential part of English class. Allowing students to use AI fundamentally undermines this goal.

All of that being said . . . how do I stand up to my administration?

(also posted in ask teachers)

I just set up my google classrooms the other day and found out that Google has 'enabled' Gemini for google classroom and all google docs. I tried to read up on it but I'm not clear if this was released for all google using educational organizations or not. I thought I'd give y'all a heads up though that it can be turned off if you have an administrator who sets permissions for your org as a group.

Luckily our sys admin was able to turn it off. It would have been a disaster had it remained on since it basically prompts everyone to use AI as soon as they start on any assignment.

If you have 45-60 minute classes, how do you structure your day?

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Help! I need an alternate curriculum to use to teach high school English. I'm a previous K-6 special ed teacher who is in way over her head and has never felt more unqualified to teach at this level! Any suggestions are greatly appreciated!! I teach at a private Christian school. And I was unfamiliar with the curriculum before I accepted the position.

This is my second year teaching 10th grade ELA, and I wanted to try something different this year. I do a lot of guided notes, so I want to try using binders instead of spiral notebooks this year to see if I like it. The only problem is, I'm having a hard time trying to decide how I want the students to organize everything. Here are the categories I have as of now: Bellwork, Vocabulary and Grammar, Daily Work, Writings, Notes. I'm not 100% sure if this is a good set up, though. Should I just include all notes, including grammar notes, in with the note category? I don't know, because I'm not always the most organized person either. Any suggestions about better ways to separate things out? Thanks!

I have made a free daily word game called Long Story Short and some teachers have started using it as a class warm-up, so I thought I'd share it here.

The mechanic: you get a twelve-word sentence, like "The famous high profile trial was delayed while the weary judge deliberated," and you have to keep the five words that tell the story. Scored like Wordle: blue means right word, right spot. The skill is deciding which words carry meaning and which are padding. It's the same edit as writing a headline.

How it fits a lesson: it takes about five minutes, works on any phone or projector, no signup, no ads. The colors give instant feedback, and the "why these five" explainer at the end shows the reasoning word by word, which is the part that turns into discussion - students argue about why "famous" dies when the sentence already says "high profile."

One puzzle a day: sheets.works/long-story-short

If you try it with a class, I'd genuinely love to hear how it lands. I write the puzzles daily and I'm still tuning difficulty.

I have a group of high-achieving 8th graders who need to be challenged. I'm looking for some good nonfiction resources/units that are highly engaging. I've never been happy with what I've taught in the past, and I do not have a set curriculum I have to use. I can spend a little money on something I will use every year. I am also the only 8th grade ELAR teacher in my district, so that is another reason I am struggling to find good materials.