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

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

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

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

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

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

Interactive Notebooks for High School

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 slowly found ways to transform those lessons to ISN spreads. Over the course of the unit, I discovered that Interactive Notebooks gave me a great structure for planning lessons, a lot of scaffolding for my students, and very rigorous, focused practice of a new skill before they left me each day. Check out this 2 minute video to see how I set up Interactive Notebooks for high school English: Interactive Notebooks in ELA To make

Danielle Hall October 14, 2015

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