15 YA Thrillers for the Classroom Library

YATeens love YA thrillers, and I’m constantly getting asked for recommendations of good young adult books with suspense, mystery, and light horror. Here are some diverse YA thrillers that you might consider adding to your high school classroom library. As always, please preview these titles for yourself because what flies in my school may not fly in yours. I’ve made an effort to include titles highlighting diverse characters, authors, and stories. Please let me know your additional recommendations in comments. 🙂 Happy reading! This post uses Amazon Affiliate Links for your convenience. If you decide to purchase this book, please consider doing so through our affiliate links. Your support makes this blog possible. *As I Descended – Robin Talley This is a Macbeth retelling y’all, and I LOVE it. We have power

Danielle Hall July 28, 2018

11 If You Don't Have Anything Nice to Say Leila Sales cover

If You Don’t Have Anything Nice to Say by Leila Sales

We take a look at online shaming and Leila Sales’ new novel, If You Don’t Have Anything Nice to Say. Join us this week on the YA Cafe. (transcript) In today’s episode… In Leila Sales’ newest novel, If You Don’t Have Anything Nice to Say, Winter Halperin gets caught up in a storm of online shaming after she posts a racist comment about the winner of the National Spelling Bee. She tries to defend herself, tries to apologize, claims she can’t be racist because she “has black friends”… it’s a whole thing. But when her college acceptance is rescinded and her future put on hold, she is forced to reckon with her actions. These Show Notes use Amazon Affiliate Links for your convenience. If you decide to purchase this book, please consider

Danielle Hall May 3, 2018

Creative Reading

Spark Imagination with Creative Reading We spend a LOT of time reading books and watching TV and movies in our household, and one game we love to play is “what if”. What if the ending had been different? The characters had had a stronger motivation? The main conflict had been more believable? This is what I call creative reading. Strong readers do this all the time. Passionate readers and viewers claim any story as their own and imagine the possibilities of twisting and molding characters to be more intriguing or more exciting or more heart-wrenching. It’s the joy after the ending. You may not have been the teen who wrote fan fiction, but you do this when you wonder what it would have been like if the girl hadn’t opened the basement door and gone down the stairs. Our

Danielle Hall March 13, 2018

Create a Winning Teaching Portfolio

Teachers, it’s that time of year again. You’ve been handed a piece of paper called an Intent Form and you must decide whether you want to return to your job next year or seek greener pastures. Or, if you’re a student teacher, you’re thinking about where you’ll teach in the fall. Either way, it’s time to dust off your Teaching Portfolio. Last year, I wrote about teaching portfolios on the Secondary English Coffee Shop blog. The post is still as relevant as ever, so go give it a read. Here are my biggest tips. A Teaching Portfolio should: 1. Showcase your philosophy. Every inch of your portfolio should show what you’re about. In addition to writing your actual philosophy, we sure that it shines through the lesson plans you choose to

Danielle Hall March 6, 2018

Tips for Teaching Shakespeare

Teaching Shakespeare: Tips & Tricks Teaching Shakespeare can be a tricky prospect, but here are some tips to help you and your students get the most out of your unit. Students have very different reactions to Shakespeare based on their experiences and expectations. I want to advocate for teaching Shakespeare through performance, and I’ll be talking more about that in the next few weeks. Today, I want to talk about how to approach an unmarked script. If you give students any script outside of their literature anthology (like a play from my Shakespeare in 30 collection, for example), it’s likely going to be unmarked. This means that there likely won’t be any direction for staging or voice. This is one of the joys and challenges of teaching Shakespeare: it’s so versatile! Here

Danielle Hall February 23, 2018

The Team Behind Shakespeare in 30

Introducing Danielle & Michelle, Shakespeare in 30 Creators So, I recently worked with my friend Michelle to release a collection of plays to use in the ELA Classroom called Shakespeare in 30. Since we collaborated on this project, I thought I’d take the time to talk a bit about us and how we met. It’s weird for an introvert blogger to really talk about herself, versus talking about the thing she usually talks about, you know? But I figured I owed it to you to give you some background and let you know why we’re the experts we profess to be. About Me I developed a love of drama in middle school and cultivated my skills in high school in Oregon. I was lucky enough to attend a high school with a

Danielle Hall February 20, 2018

Teaching the Harlem Renaissance

Teaching the Harlem Renaissance (and Black History) with Intention Are you teaching the Harlem Renaissance? It can be tempting to gloss over the struggle and conflict and just stick with the jazz. This would be doing your students a huge disservice, however. This week on the Secondary English Coffee Shop Blog, I wrote about keeping your unit sensitive and intentional. Here are my biggest tips. When teaching Black History, teachers should: 1. Acknowledge the hard road to the Harlem Renaissance As English teachers, it’s easy to focus on the teaching the Harlem Renaissance as just a series of awesome products [poems, art, literature]. Leave it to the Social Studies teachers to talk about the justice issues leading up to the art, right? Wrong. When teaching the Harlem Renaissance, it’s important to recognize

Danielle Hall February 16, 2018

Staged Readings in ELA – A Play in 5 Days!

Using Staged Readings in ELA It’s no secret that I love using drama in the ELA classroom, and I’m here today to advocate for using more rehearsed, scripted drama as you teach English. Maybe you’ve avoided this because it has seemed overwhelming. Maybe you think you don’t have enough time. Well, friends, you do! This post will help you produce a play in five days. The answer is producing staged readings in ELA. I’ve written before about my experiences producing a class play. I talked about casting, rehearsing, and evaluating the experience. The whole thing took about six weeks, and it was AWESOME. I’ve also talked about using Improv and how that benefit almost any teaching unit. But what happens in between? What if you want to spend a week putting together a class

Danielle Hall February 6, 2018

What can you do with five extra minutes in secondary ELA? Here are a few five-minute fillers for keeping your students focused until the bell. (blog post)

5-Minute Filler Activities for ELA

5-Minute Filler Activities for Secondary ELA Although I’m getting pretty good at gauging time in my classes, sometimes, I end up with five extra minutes. When this happens, it’s really important for me to already have filler activities for ELA ready to go, so that I don’t waste the time. Here are some examples of things that have led to needing filler activities: *A fire drill disrupts class, and we return with only five minutes until the bell *Joey didn’t show up for his presentation slot, but no one else is ready to present today *We lost power, and can’t watch the video I’d planned on. What can you do with five minutes? Here’s a short list. Filler Activities for ELA that Build Skills Play an Improv Game Early in the year, I teach my

Danielle Hall November 21, 2017

15 TV Episodes to Use in ELA

Plot, structure, characterization, allusions, foreshadowing… all of the things we work to teach our students are found in many different mediums. We’re in a Golden Age of quality television, and the English classroom is a great place to introduce students to television with real depth and literary value. Here are 15 TV episodes to use in ELA. Psst, hey you! I have a new blog post that features 15 MORE TV Episodes to Use in ELA, check it out 🙂 I also have a new resource (2023) that has 15 lesson plans analyzing pop culture short texts, like TV episodes, songs, short films, and more! Check out the 15 Pop Culture Analysis Activities resource here. Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links to episodes available on Amazon. Where applicable, I have pointed out the availability of

Danielle Hall September 12, 2017

Here are some of my favorite resources and ideas for teaching short stories in middle school and high school. Teaching short stories can be a great way to build student confidence and endurance with a number of skills. These texts span all genres and are hugely versatile – teach them as a unit or woven in with other texts throughout the year. (blog post)

Teaching Short Stories: Innovate & Engage

You gingerly lift a new arrival off the shelf and flip it open, trailing your finger across the printed page. You imagine yourself sipping an espresso as you thumb through the pages, savoring every plot point and befriending new characters. …and then someone hands you a worksheet. Did the bookstore fantasy crash down around you? Yeah, I thought so. If we really want to help students love reading, we need to stop crushing them with comprehension worksheets. There’s a time and a place for those, sure, but we can think of more innovative ways to ignite a love of reading. (Note: This post does not contain affiliate links. I trust these bloggers and collaborate with them regularly. This post does contain a few links to my products on TeachersPayTeachers.) Teaching Short Stories Teaching short stories

Danielle Hall August 29, 2017

Grading Interactive Notebooks

I love using Interactive Notebooks in high school and sharing this love with others. Still, the number one question that I get from teachers is how to manage grading Interactive Notebooks without letting it take over your life. I’m here today to tell you that it is possible, as long as you set yourself up for success. Here are some tips for making grading Interactive Notebooks easier and faster. Watch the video: Read about Planning Novel Units for Interactive Notebooks Decide when you’ll grade. I like to collect my notebooks at least once per unit, and twice if it’s a particularly intensive or long unit. I decided never to take Interactive Notebooks home, so that means I need to grade in class or at school sometime. The easiest time to grade is during a unit

Danielle Hall August 15, 2017

Using music in the secondary classroom is a great way to engage students, so here are some songs to use in ELA, and some ways to use them. (Blog post)

15 Songs to Use in ELA

Want to expose students to new songs, or make them think about old songs in a completely new way? Using music in the classroom is a great way to engage students, so here are some songs to use in ELA, and some ways to use them. I’m going to link to the YouTube videos of these songs for your convenience, but please know that I do not always show music videos in my class. Most of the time, students just listen to the music. Music videos can be distracting, and sometimes inappropriate. Does it go without saying to always preview songs & their videos for content before sharing them? (Just covering myself here, folks!) Also, if you are looking for ways to lessons to help students analyze short texts, like songs, short films, and more,

Danielle Hall August 8, 2017

Using Escape Rooms in ELA

The clock is ticking down and you can’t find the blacklight clue that will lead you to the last key… your friends and family are tossing the drawers and papers again, desperately trying to find the six-digit code for a lock, and the seconds are disappearing fast. Finally, it all comes together, and you open the door with thirty seconds to spare! I’ve been obsessed with Escape Rooms ever since my family first tried one at Christmas, and I’ve been looking for ways to bring this experience to the ELA classroom ever since. Read on to find out how I make and use Escape Rooms in ELA, and how you can design your own. Game Speak An Escape Room or Breakout Box are two versions of a collaborative puzzle game. Players work through a series

Danielle Hall July 10, 2017

Free End of the Year Gifts for Secondary Students. (resource round-up at teachnouvelle.com)

Seasonal Teacher Tips & 13 Free End of Year Gifts for Students

I’ve teamed up with some amazing teachers to bring you 13 free end of year gifts for secondary students. Bonus! I’ve also dished out some seasonal teaching tips and gift ideas for teachers in this post. Check out all of the printables below and follow the links to get these resources free on TeachersPayTeachers. You can also check out these resources under the hashtag #EOYGiftsforBigKids! Free Student Gifts Teacher Gift Ideas Tips for Teaching Before Winter Break Summer Bucket List Ideas for Teachers Free Student Gifts Flip-Flop Cards for Middle and High School by The Reading and Writing Haven Want Five? Cards by B’s Book Love Playdough Printable by Language Arts Classroom Reward Bookmarks by The Daring English Teacher Bookworm Gift Tags by Musings from the Middle School Words of Wisdom Cards by The Creative Classroom Write On! EOY Cards by Doc Cop EOY Infographic by Lit with Lyns Cute Pencil Holders:

Danielle Hall May 15, 2017

Differentiating the Research Process for all learners is important, especially in ELA. Here are some ideas for creating engaging and accessible research opportunities. More at teachnouvelle.com. Blog post.

Differentiated Research Projects in ELA

If you love the idea of assigning differentiated research projects, but find the actual research process daunting, then this post is for you. Research projects can be a time of joy and exploration for your students, so here are my tips for making this something you can enjoy, too. These projects should be something open and accessible to all learners, so differentiation is really important. Depending on the school, much of the onus of research can fall on the English teacher. Students may be required to write a certain number of pages of a research paper each year, and you may have little to no support from other departments. I certainly hope that you teach in a paradise where you do amazing cross-curricular projects. If you don’t, though, you can still incorporate meaningful research projects

Danielle Hall May 2, 2017

Effective rubrics are clear and well-designed, and can help increase feedback to students and decrease grading time. Check out this blog post to figure out which rubric style works for you.

Rubrics 101: Improve Communication and Efficiency

I’ve talked before about why I stopped writing on student papers, but today I want to talk about an important tool I used to be able to do that: rubrics. A rubric is a grid that expresses your expectations for an assignment using concrete, achievable descriptors. The biggest time-saving device you can have in your classroom is a good rubric. Here’s why a rubric is important: *Clear expectations for students *Fair grading for teachers *Streamlined feedback Make a clear and concrete rubric for everything you do in your classroom, and give it to your students up front. Let them know how the points are going to shake down, and they will have more ownership over the grade they receive. Overview of Rubrics There are three main types of rubrics, so let’s quickly make sure we’re

Danielle Hall April 18, 2017

Poetry Speed-Dating

I love poetry, and I always want to share that love of poetry with students. Last year, I decided to add a new element to my poetry unit, Poetry Speed-dating. This simple activity allows students to explore some poetry in a low-stakes way. Set Up Poetry Speed-Dating The set-up is simple. Find a variety of poetry books and anthologies for students to browse. You can collect anthologies from the library, set up stations with access to various poetry websites you like, or have students bring in books of poetry from home. If students have a favorite poem from childhood (perhaps something from Where the Sidewalk Ends), this can be a wonderful place to start. Allow students to browse. It really is that simple. I remind students to write down the names of any poems or

Danielle Hall March 21, 2017

Teach Public Speaking with small group presentations. Smaller audiences boost speaker confidence, keep audience members engaged and accountable, and improve usage of class time. Blog post.

Teach Public Speaking with Small Group Presentations in 3 Easy Steps

Teach Public Speaking with small group presentations to boost speaker confidence, keep the audience engaged, and improve usage of class time. Public Speaking is an important skill for middle schoolers and high schoolers to develop, and some of them embrace the opportunity. For others, though, public speaking can be so daunting as to actually cause fear and nausea. How can we help our students develop public speaking and listening skills while still being respectful of their feelings? Small group presentations. Rethinking my presentation model helped alleviate my students’ fears, increase audience engagement, and save valuable classroom time. How it Works Instead of having students present in front of the whole class, put them into presentation groups of 5-6. Make sure someone is still timing each speaker (1-2 minute presentations are a great starting point!), and

Danielle Hall March 7, 2017

Make Grading Easier

I used to live in constant dread of my grading load, struggling under the weight of it all. I thought that to be a good teacher, I had to write copious amounts of feedback and notes on my students’ papers. In an effort to make grading easier, I stopped writing on student papers. In this post, I’ll talk about why I made this change, and what I do instead. Take a trip with me down memory lane, back to my first year of teaching. Also, let’s do a bit of math as we ponder this. Let’s say Younger Me reads every page of a three-page essay, stopping to make two comments per page. It would take me five minutes per essay. 5 minutes x 120 students = 10 hours of grading Many teachers will relate

Danielle Hall February 21, 2017

Persuasive Techniques and Media Literacy

Persuasive Techniques & Critical Thinking I’ve taught persuasive techniques every year, but it feels more necessary than ever for our students to develop media literacy. Can they judge the worth (and truth) of the information presented to them? Can they identify how a speaker could be manipulating their emotions and instincts? I’ve teamed up with a group of teacher-authors from TeachersPayTeachers to share free resources for teaching in this tough climate. We know that our students are hearing messages of hate and division after the election, so we need to come together to counter that with messages of peace and unity. Also, more than ever, we need to equip our students with the skills to identify and analyze persuasive techniques used in the media. Here are some activities for helping students develop an awareness of

Danielle Hall January 19, 2017

Using puzzles and games in high school ELA is a great way to develop a growth mindset, challenge both sides of the brain, and encourage collaboration and critical thinking. Discover three ways to challenge your students at teachnouvelle.com.

Using Puzzles in High School ELA

Using puzzles and games in the high school classroom is a great way to build collaboration, critical thinking, and a growth mindset. Puzzles can be particularly powerful in the ELA classroom because they allow students to approach words logically, mathematically, and visually, creating cross-brain connections. Okay, so it’s true: I love puzzles! I’m excellent at some types (jigsaw puzzles) and terrible at others (tanglement puzzles), but I love them all. And last week, I picked up a tanglement puzzle at Barnes & Noble. This is branded as Roman Arches by True Genius, but it’s traditionally known as the Double W Puzzle. I’ve worked on this thing for hours, y’all, and I only accidentally solved it once. And yet, I keep trying. And it just reinforced my belief that puzzles are amazing for developing grit and

Danielle Hall December 13, 2016

It can be challenging to keep students focused and engaged before the Winter Break, but these five tips will help you succeed! Save yourself stress and fatigue and check out these tricks today. Blog post includes a holiday gift freebie!

5 Tips for Teaching before Winter Break

Tips to Save Your Sanity Before Winter Break Teaching in the weeks leading up to Winter Break can be a challenge, you can save your sanity by following a few key tips. It can be hard to keep students’ attention before the holidays: they’re tired, we’re tired, and we all just want to push through. Plus, with various “treats” throughout the day, students have a constant sugar high and can’t seem to focus. Here are some tips to help focus your classroom during the last couple of weeks before Winter Break. Do Short, Creative Projects I’ve found that students find it a lot easier to focus on creative, collaboration-based tasks in the last couple of weeks before break. During this time, I give students small partner or group projects that take a day or two

Danielle Hall December 9, 2016

Using Interactive Notebooks to teach class novels can be rigorous and engaging, even for middle and high school. Here are some tips and tricks for setting up your novel units. Read more at teachnouvelle.com

Teach a Class Novel with Interactive Notebooks

Do you love the idea of Interactive Notebooks but are unsure of how to use them to teach class novels? Stay tuned for my best tips and tricks for designing rigorous and engaging class novel units. I am a huge proponent of using Interactive Student Notebooks (ISNs, INBs, INs) in high school. I love them for the ease of structuring a lesson, keeping everyone organized, and helping students create a yearlong learning tool. Once your students get onboard, it can even be a relaxing addition to your classroom since there can be some coloring or crafty elements. And whereas people find it easy to set up a spread for a single lesson, I often get asked how to set up an notebook for an entire class novel. Well, I’m here today to share my planning

Danielle Hall November 22, 2016

Expose your secondary students to a wide range of classic poetry using these engaging bellringers! Students create and analyze, finding fun and meaning in each of these thirty class poems.

Use Bellringers to Help Students Love Poetry

It can be tough to get students engaged with poetry, but I have found a solution! Poetry Bellringers. I created this resource as a way to share several classic poems with students in a short amount of time. There’s no over-analysis here – each activity is short and targeted. Also, since each activity is a Bellringer, or happens within the first few minutes of class, they can be used in conjunction with other poetry activities. What Poetry Bellringers Look Like: Each of these thirty bellringers has a snippet of a classic poem, or the whole thing if the poem is short. Then, each bellringer has a different creative or analytical prompt. Students could identify poetic devices in one poem, illustrate another, create a new poem in the same style, etc. Major Benefits: Exposure – If you

Danielle Hall November 1, 2016

A photo of a woman's hands with yellow fingernail polish, she is holding a pen over an empty notebook. There is a a white border at the top of the image with pink and blue text that says "Writer's Workshop for Short Stories"

Host a Classroom Writer’s Workshop with Short Stories in 5 Easy Steps

Last fall, I did a Writer’s Workshop with my 9th graders to help them write their own short stories. We did this as part of our Dystopian unit, but the process works with any genre. In this post, I’ll cover the Writer’s Workshop process in my classroom, how I manage the reading load, and things I am still trying to improve. First of all, I combined my Writer’s Workshop with Dystopian Lit Circles last year and basically designed the unit to be a reading/discussion day and then a writing day. I thought I was breaking it up for the students and that they’d appreciate the break, but they told me that they felt like they couldn’t completely focus on one or the other. I think the solution would be to have students mostly finished with

Danielle Hall September 27, 2016

Evaluating drama can be tricky, but in the ELA classroom, it's important to still hold students accountable. Here's how I assess a variety of skills. This is a mix of objective and subjective assessments every step of the way in the process of putting together a class play. This is applicable for every drama activity in the ELA classroom.

From Casting to Confidently Evaluating Drama in the ELA Classroom: An Actionable 5-step Guide on the Class Play

So, you’re considering doing a Class Play or you’ve started practices. Now, you’re wondering how evaluating drama will unfold. Or you’re wondering how to cast students or deal with irritation during rehearsals. This post breaks down the class play into 5 actionable categories to give you confidence in your drama unit! 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, I’ll show you that Drama in ELA is not only possible, but beneficial to all students. How to Set up and Cast the Play When I first

Danielle Hall August 16, 2016

I finally nailed teaching symbolism to my students! Using candy was both efficient and engaging, and they kept referencing this lesson for the rest of the year. This strong foundation really helped their literary analysis skills. TeachNouvelle.com

Teaching Symbolism with Candy

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 unit, and I planned for my 9th graders to read “Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Allan Poe. They had already told me in their journals that they didn’t “get” symbolism. I wanted to help them learn to take apart symbols and analyze them based on concrete details before adding in the abstract traits and drawing a conclusion. Basically, I wanted to help them break down symbols and realize that there was a lot

Danielle Hall July 5, 2016

A photo of rows of empty, red velvet covered theatre seats looking towards the stage with a golden curtain down across the state. There is a blue box in the center of the image with white text that says "Drama in the ELA Classroom - Improv Games"

Drama Games for High School: 3 Easy Improv Games

Are you looking for ways to integrate drama games for high school? Get started with these three zero-prep improv games! Why drama games? 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 of the cell as an interpretive dance?” As a teacher, I seek to give my students the same opportunities. Drama in the ELA classroom is a great way to build public speaking skills, memory, and community. I have used drama with grades K-12 in France, Germany, the US, and Puerto Rico, and students beg for more. Literally. After finals one year, I

Danielle Hall February 21, 2016

Independent Reading in High School

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 blogs talk about guided reading, group reading, and Drop Everything And Read!, and I want that for my classroom, too. Getting kids to love reading in high school should be more of a priority, I decided. This year, after doing some research and reading a great post by Laura Randazzo, I decided to implement Student-Selected Reading (SSR) in my classroom. I’ve done it for a semester now, and here’s how it’s going. 1. Implementation – Reading

Danielle Hall January 5, 2016

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