I have been reflecting on my favorite lessons from the school year, and one of the most fun and effective was teaching symbolism with Tootsie Roll Pops! Not only were the students enthusiastic about eating the candy (because aren’t they always?), they really grasped the concept of analyzing a symbol. We were nearing Halloween and deep in our Short Stories…
Calming the Chaos at the End of the School Year Hello, all! We just had our final exam today, but I know that many of you are still guiding students through the end of the year. It can be a crazy time, and here’s an idea of how I calm the year end chaos. Keep reading to the end to find…
When You Get Irritated in Rehearsal We are in the last few days of rehearsal for our Spring Musical, and I’ve been thinking about irritation a lot. I’ve been getting and trying to reflect on what makes me so (INFJs for the win!). I got home today from our big Saturday practice (9-3, phew!), and saw that Lisa and Jonathan…
Drama Skills for the Class Play In the last post, I talked about casting the class play. Now, I want to talk about developing basic drama skills. This will encourage engagement from all students, all the time. This is something that I struggled with in the beginning, but I developed some tools to help my students. If you’re like me,…
Drama in ELA: The Class Play In this series, I’m going to share my experiences integrating Drama in ELA and producing a class play with my 9th grade English class. Drama is so engaging for students, but is often put aside because it seems like a lot of work or doesn’t obviously correlate to higher test scores. In this series,…
In addition to studying poetry during National Poetry Month in April, I love integrating poetry throughout the school year. A favorite resource I use to engage my students in literature is Found Poetry! You can do this with any class novel or independent reading, and it’s a way for students to seek many “correct” answers. This is a fun, no-pressure approach…
3 Games to Introduce Drama in the ELA Classroom I have loved drama since my 3rd grade class got to be Arabian dancers in the school’s performance of “The Nutcracker”. When I was in middle and high school, I always wanted to do “acting” options for projects, sometimes asking my teachers ridiculous things like “can I show you the parts…
How to Keep Kids Reading in High School One of my biggest goals as a high school teacher is to help my students love reading. I am an avid reader, and hit my book challenge for the year (75 books – woo-hoo!), and I want my kids to find books that they can connect with. I see the primary…
Welcome to Day 9 of the Literary League’s 12 Days of Christmas Blog Hop! We know that the holiday season is busy for both teachers and students, and it never seems to slow down after that. To help you make it through the rest of the year, you need a stock pile of lessons that can be easily implemented at…
Literary Leaguers are in the holiday spirit and we’re hosting 12 Days of Giving! We’re super excited to share some of our favorite freebies (both seasonal and all-year-round resources) with you and give you the chance to win a Teachers Pay Teachers gift certificate! The 12 Days of Giving runs Tuesday, December 1st – Saturday, December 12th. Here’s…
Are you looking for ways to use Interactive Notebooks for high school English? When I was first faced with this possibility, I was super excited!, but had no idea where to start. I wasn’t sure if these would be the right tool for my 9th graders. I decided to start off the year with my normal Short Stories Unit, and…
Hello, all! It’s been a season of change here at TeachNouvelle, and I wanted to take this opportunity to welcome new readers. Whether you are a teacher, author, avid reader, or any combination of the three, I strive to develop wonderful resources for you to use. My name is Danielle, and I am a Coast Guard spouse living and working…
By the time I grab my books and I give myself a look I’m at the corner just in time to see the bus fly by. It’s alright’ cause I’m saved by The Literary League! That’s right, we are at it again! It’s one of the biggest back-to-school give-aways courtesy of some of your favorite ELA sellers. We’re teachers too, so we know…
Back to School Savings! Want to rack up some major savings on materials and lesson plans during this back-to-school season? The Literary League is coming to your rescue! Check out these amazing secondary ELA sellers to save up to 28% on your TeachersPayTeachers purchases. Danielle Knight (Study All Knight) — Darlene Anne- ELA Buffet — Mrs. Spangler in the Middle…
Back to School Thoughts & Activities Hello, all! I’m Danielle and I am a teacher, military spouse, writer, runner, and reader. I graduated from the University of Idaho with a teaching degree, and then followed that up with a Masters from la Université de Poitiers in France. I’ve been teaching for five years now, working in Oregon, France, Germany, North…
I’m back for Week 3 of the TeachersPayTeachers Seller Challenge! This week? A new product! Woo-hoo! Well, the big news here, folks, is that I got a job teaching 9th grade English here in San Juan, Puerto Rico. I’m planning for next year, of course, and starting to consider how I’ll get to know my students quickly! It’s a small…
For this week’s TpT Seller Challenge, we’ve been asked to dream big. Well, I have three major goals that my store on TeachersPayTeachers can enable, and they are to travel, to learn, and to share. 1. Travel I have always been very privileged to be able to travel a lot, and I want to continue this in my adult life…
I am so excited to participate in the TpT Seller Challenge hosted by Third in Hollywood, Teach Create Motivate, Sparkling in Second, and Poppy Zesty Teacherista! Do you want to participate? Check out this blog post for more information! This week’s challenge is to makeover an old product. I decided to revamp a best-selling product of mine, Integrating Sources with…
Planning by the Pool: Poetry and Common Core Summer has arrived, but I’ve had poetry on the brain since April. Poetry was always one of my favorite units as a student (and poet!), and I still get so excited when April rolls around. I’ve been thinking about poetry and Common Core, though, and how to make student-friendly poetry exercises that…
Why I Started Blogging Oh, blogging! It’s true that I’ve had this blog for a very short time, but I’ve been journaling and blogging for years now. I’ve kept a *paper journal* for seventeen years and had a *LiveJournal* in high school and college, and then kept a public travel blog while I lived in Europe. It was a…
My Goals for the Summer This summer, I am focusing on three major goals: 1. Learn Spanish We recently (5 weeks ago!) moved from Philadelphia to San Juan, Puerto Rico (thank you, Coast Guard!) and have been “coasting” as far as Spanish goes. We currently live in the very touristy area of San Juan, and everyone can identify us as…
12 More Summer Resources for Middle School We’ve all heard of the dreaded Summer Slide, or the loss of learning that happens over the summer for students. This can account for almost 2/3 of the achievement gap by 9th grade[1]. Whether you’re a teacher with a Summer Packet program in place, or a parent who needs some ideas to conquer this…
Conquer Summer Slide with “Beach Bags” I’ve been thinking a lot about “summer slide” lately, and the learning loss that happens for students over a summer of not being in the classroom. I know that a lot of schools have Summer Reading in place, but I wanted to consider what would be included in a strong, student-centered Summer Writing program.…
April is National Poetry Month! Spring has sprung and April has arrived! If you’re like me, April is a favorite month because we can put our best Spring energies into teaching poetry. Here are some new ideas that you can put into play in your classroom this April. Poem of the Day Give students short poems to respond to as…
What I have learned from being a terrible student I am a military spouse and we are about to be stationed in Puerto Rico. I’ve been “learning Spanish” for over a year now, and I just haven’t made much progress. I use every stall tactic in the book and I’m just not where I think I should be. This is…
Have you heard of Newsy? It’s a platform for in-depth video coverage of a variety of topics, and it’s free for your use. They’ve taken stories from CNN, BBC, HuffPo, and many more sources, and condensed them. Videos range in length, but generally run around two minutes. The reporters speak slowly, and each video includes a transcript. This makes Newsy…
This is my very first blog post, and so I want to start by looking outward. I’ve been selling (seriously) on TeachersPayTeachers for over a year now and I’m ready to push myself even further. I’ve been spending some time in reflection on who I am as a teacher, as a student, as a seller, as a buyer, and as…