0 Common Core Lesson: Providing Evidence

There is a lot of emphasis on students providing textual evidence for answers in the new common core curriculum. This has been the meat of my curriculum and lessons for the last month. It's surprising to see the shift from prior knowledge and inference skill level questions now back to the basic find it in the text questions. Personally, I think the latter are easier for the students so I'll welcome the shift.  Along with the shift to text based question and answers is the shift in complexity of text. Students are being expected to read more complex and higher level texts. Included in the exemplars, and which I did end up teaching last...

0 Sticky Note Fever!

Wow...haven't put up one post since school started. Things are going great, but pretty busy and overwhelming. I've talked on my blog before about sticky notes and using them to assist with reading comprehension. I did it with my middle school students a couple of years ago, but did not continue with my high school students last year. It worked out really well for the middle school students and allowed for authentic and engaging conversation about the books we were reading, so I decided to start it up again. First off, I asked every student to bring in one pack of stickies. I think I'll have enough.....     During the first lesson...

0 Inspirational Quotes for the Classroom

Hope everyone is having a great first few days back. Just wanted to blog a little about how I have been decorating my classroom. I keep finding so many cool things on Pinterest and there's not enough room on my walls for everything I want to put up! Like I said this is the first year I've actually gotten to decorate for real. I like to use quotes from literature since I'm an English teacher. I've put up a few and I keep finding other ones I want to use! I also like to put up humorous things to show my students my fun side. Here are some that are in my classroom now: Harry Potter! Hanging on the door...haha Hunger Games! Some students...