A photo of headphones on top of musical notes in blue and white with the title "Song Pairings for The Odyssey" to use while teaching the Odyssey

3 Focused Song Pairings for Teaching the Odyssey

Are you teaching The Odyssey and looking to diversify your unit? Engage your students with contemporary song pairings! How do I start teaching The Odyssey? If you are about to start teaching The Odyssey, you might worry about its lack of diversity. You might also worry that your struggling readers will check out. You are most definitely not alone in your concerns! Below are three contemporary songs you can use as a part of your introduction to The Odyssey. You can also choose to use these song pairings as an Odyssey activity to reinforce popular themes. Pair these Odyssey activities with the “Introduction to The Odyssey” Escape Room, which includes all the pre-work students need before they read! The Odyssey Activities Introduction to The Odyssey Idea Song: “How Far I’ll Go” by Auli’i Cravalho (2:36)

Carina Assayed January 3, 2023

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Memorable Nonfiction Writing Activities for Secondary ELA

Nothing says nonfiction writing has to be boring, and yet, that’s what many middle school and high school students think. If you’re looking for nonfiction writing activities to engage this crowd, here are some great ideas. Nonfiction Writing Examples Nonfiction writing examples are EVERYWHERE and part of showing students that this isn’t an umbrella term for “boring writing” is showing them engaging examples. In addition to AMAZING nonfiction texts like Radium Girls by Kate Moore and Stamped by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi (both available as young reader editions), you can show students exemplar blog posts, self help articles, and tourism brochures. The sky is truly the limit. I’ve blogged before about my favorite nonfiction books for the ELA classroom. Here are 8 Nonfiction Excerpts Worth Teaching from a post over at the Secondary

Danielle Hall November 15, 2022

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6 Tips for Teaching How to Write a Haiku

Fun and easy-to-implement tips and activities to help your your students understand, appreciate, and learn how to write a haiku. I’ve blogged a lot about teaching poetry in Secondary ELA, and today I’m focusing on a specific kind of poem – teaching haiku. Your students probably learned how to write a haiku in lower grades, but I think it’s worth revisiting in middle or high school ELA to help students gain a deeper appreciation. Activities and Ideas for Teaching Haiku Start with a brief history of haiku Evolving from earlier forms of Japanese poetry that featured the alternating 5-7 syllable pattern, the haiku format as we know it has been around for over 400 years! In traditional Japanese haiku, there is more to the art form than just the syllable structure, like the inclusion of

Leila Hobbs November 7, 2022

A photo of a typwriter with a pair of hands typing on it, and a lamp on top of a stack of books beside the typewriter. There is a white border at the top with pink text that reads "10 Quotes About Writing"

10 Inspirational Writing Quotes for High School Students

These inspirational writing quotes will help energize the young writers in your classroom, and get them excited to write! Writing Quotes for High School Students There are many ways to inspire young writers, from providing them with a diverse classroom library to letting them collaborate with their peers in a writer’s workshop. It’s also vital to let them learn from the best by introducing them to quotes about writing from the experts. So without further ado, I hope you enjoy my favorite inspirational writing quotes 🙂 “Imagination is like a muscle. I found out that the more I wrote, the bigger it got.” —Philip José Farmer So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say.” -Virginia

Danielle Hall May 31, 2022

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Using Procedural Writing to Build a Healthy Classroom Community

It might seem like an unusual combo, but I love using procedural writing to build classroom community. Intrigued? Let me show you how! Teaching procedural writing is a great way to build student writing skills AND develop a strong classroom community. The “how-to” format allows students to become the experts, and you can sit back and enjoy. Note: If you’re looking for nonfiction writing activities in a different format, check out this post on teaching personal narrative writing 🙂 What is a procedural format? You can basically break procedural writing into an introduction, steps in a process, and a conclusion. It is easy to engage students in the procedural format because there are TONS of engaging examples out there: makeup tutorials, crafting TikToks, and video game walkthroughs. If your students are on the internet at

Danielle Hall May 17, 2022

A photo of a dark haired girl wearing a plaid shirt and sitting at a table writing in a notebook. There's a white border at the top with pink text that reads "Personal Narrative Examples for Secondary ELA"

4 Personal Narrative Examples by Latinx Authors

Are you looking for personal narrative examples by Latinx authors? Here are some ideas from the new anthology edited by Saraciea J. Fennell, Wild Tongues Can’t Be Tamed. This anthology features 15 stories from the Latinx diaspora. If you’re looking for personal narrative examples, Wild Tongues Can’t Be Tamed is a rich source of teaching materials. Here are four stories I loved and ideas for integrating them into your Secondary ELA curriculum. Personal Narrative Examples for High School “A Mi Orden: a Meditation on Dichos” by Elizabeth Acevedo “They were a constellation heavily riddled with teaching me my place.” Author and poet Elizabeth Acevedo strikes again! If you’ve read With the Fire on High or The Poet X, you know Acevedo connects with her teenage readers. Here, Acevedo reflects on one dicho from her grandfather.

Danielle Hall September 15, 2021

A girls hand writing in a journal with the overlaid text "TED Talks to inspire Young Writers"

TED Talks for Young Writers

Have you ever used videos to inspire your students to write? Here are some TED talks for young writers you’ll be able to use at different moments in your curriculum. As I‘ve mentioned before on this blog, I love the Writer‘s Workshop model! Each day includes a focusing mini-lesson, time to write and ponder, and time to share or conference. Videos can be an excellent opportunity for students to choose a concept they’ll focus on in their writing that day. If you enjoy using short texts, like TED Talks, 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. TED Talks for Young Writers Nnedi Okorafor – Sci-fi stories that

Danielle Hall June 6, 2019

Teaching Argumentative Writing with Adam Ruins Everything

So, you’re teaching argumentative writing again, and you’re looking for something to spice up your unit. I have been there! And I have an idea to share! Even though they LOVE to argue, teens aren’t always excited to write it down. Their eyes glaze over when you say the word “rhetoric”. I’ve talked before about teaching media literacy and even linked to my free Rhetoric Sketch & Learn activity, but what happens after that? Students learn in all sorts of different ways, and one of those ways is visually. A visual lesson can help students see how to craft their argument and moreover, how they can integrate research into a meaningful product. What about integrating some pop culture? I’ve talked before about using TV in the ELA classroom, and this is

Danielle Hall February 26, 2019

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

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