May 15
Here are all my visuals I put together in PowerPoints and worksheets when teaching students about tragic heroes. Students need a familiar model to reference before taking on whatever complex text we are currently reading. My go-tos are The Lion King and Romeo and Juliet. The Lion King Of Noble Birth/Highly Respected I love these visuals to emphasize …
May 11
I admit that occasionally a well-written multiple choice test is all I need to gauge understanding of a lesson. But really, those occasions are few and far between. There’s a reason students groan more when you give open-response tests: they’re challenging instead of the preferred multiple guess. Here are a few specific reasons why we …
May 07
Isolating images to create your own clip art is a great way to professionally add interest and aid in comprehension when creating your worksheets. Here, I’ll show to do it in PowerPoint on my MacBook Air. I have no idea if this works the same with Windows, though I would assume it does. Drag an …
May 02
I love when students can work hands-on and interact with the text and visuals. I use this lesson as part of my introduction to poetry. Students often give responses of “the speaker is sad” or “happy” when referring to tone and mood. This lesson helps to give students the vocabulary they need to more thoroughly analyze …
Apr 28
“Night” is a staple in most high school English classes because of Mr. Wiesel’s amazing ability to so eloquently describe the horrific circumstances he endured and witnessed as a Holocaust survivor. The content itself is critical, but his writing is what sets it apart from other historical accounts. This is why I always include a …
Apr 25
Feeling like an overpaid teacher’s assistant in your new role as a special education teacher in a co-taught class? It’s not just you; co-teaching is taking the difficult task of teaching to a whole new level. It took me years to come out from the teacher’s assistant shadow even though I’ve always been proficient when …
Apr 13
Student-led IEP meetings are the latest craze in special education. Unfortunately, it’s leaving a lot of special educators overwhelmed. We’re already overworked. How are we going to coach struggling students on how to run an IEP meeting on top of all our other responsibilities? Don’t get me wrong, in theory and in practice this sounds …
Apr 11
Begin talking to a general educator about a student’s IEP, and you will usually get one of four different responses: 1. complete enthusiasm, 2. some enthusiasm and some confusion, 3. complete confusion, and 4. annoyance and denial. I’m hoping to help with responses 2-4 with this post. The Legal Aspect It’s federal law all students …
Apr 10
I love breaking up the monotony of a lesson with a quick video, visual, or audio example of whatever it is we’re doing in class. One of my go-tos is Disney since I have a three-year-old son. But do not let these too-cool-for-school high school students fool you; they love the these classic movie clips. …
Apr 08
I was part of an iPad 1:1 initiative in Maryland back in 2012. I remember in our first training session they kept emphasizing one specific point with the iPads: it’s not about just replacing pen and paper, it’s about creating and learning in ways that aren’t possible with just pens and text books. With that in …
