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teaching about cultural appropriation using Elvis

A Dynamic Exploration of Cultural Appropriation Through Literature and Pop Culture

Having conversations in your classroom about cultural appropriation can feel challenging. It doesn’t always have to be, though! With the right resources that are standards-aligned, your students can engage in evidence-based discourse.  For this post, I share a teaching idea you can implement to help students explore and understand the unjust practices of cultural appropriation. This relevant teaching idea centers on Elvis Presley’s appropriation of Black music and culture. Since the Elvis film recently came out, your students will immediately buy into this heavy, but necessary conversation. Essential Question: How does cultural appropriation negatively impact the marginalized communities involved? Please note: it is VITAL that you have established a respectful classroom culture. Without positive norms and relationships, any difficult conversation may not turn out as efficiently. Suggested Starting Points ✨ As students enter class, have

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15 MORE TV Episodes to Use in ELA

After the popularity of my 2017 post, 15 TV Episodes to Use In ELA, I thought it was time for an update. That was 3 years ago, after all! Tons of exceptional new shows have come out, I’ve discovered shows that are “new to me,” and gotten reacquainted with some old favorites.     Using TV episodes in ELA  can be more than just a reward (although that’s okay too!). Television can be a great way to introduce new concepts or review old topics, in an engaging, bite-sized format. Using TV to practice critical writing can be a distance learning asset or as part of a sub-plan. I have a TV Episode Review activity up in my TPT store if you’re looking for something like that 🙂   Once you’ve perused my older post, look

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15 More Songs for Teaching ELA

Song lyrics can be so versatile in the classroom: Creative writing inspiration, making non-fiction more engaging, etc. Here are 15 more songs for teaching ELA, and suggestions on how to use them. Ask and you shall receive! My other post, 15 Songs to Use in ELA has gotten so much positive feedback that I decided to make a sequel 🙂 Like before I am linking to these songs on YouTube, but it’s not necessary for students to watch the videos. And as always, not all songs for teaching ELA will be appropriate for all classrooms; you know your students best 🙂 More Songs for Teaching ELA 1. “Poor, Unfortunate Souls” (The Little Mermaid) “Poor, unfortunate soulsIn pain, in needThis one longing to be thinnerThat one wants to get the girlAnd do I help them?Yes, indeed!”

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Using television in the classroom can be a great way to engage students, while still teaching the standards. Here are 15 TV episodes to use in ELA to teach genre, narrative techniques, characterization, and much more. Blog post from teachnouvelle.com.

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 🙂 Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links to episodes available on Amazon. Where applicable, I have pointed out the availability of these episodes on other streaming platforms. If you decide to purchase an episode through one of these links, the affiliate benefits will go to maintenance of this site AND towards providing you with more great

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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!) Update: Thanks everyone for all the comments and shares! Since this subject resonated so much with y’all I made a sequel

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Pop Culture in ELA Every year, I surprise my students by pulling pop culture into the ELA classroom. They act surprised at first and seem to think that I’m pulling their leg or making fun of them, but that it far from the case. It’s important to use pop culture in ELA because it helps students understand why they’re studying English in the first place. Let’s back up. Why is English class important? There are many possible answers here – teaching students to communicate, helping students explore classics, exposing students to a wide range of stories, etc. I firmly believe that understanding archetypes, language, and form will help students connect to a cultural heritage (or several!) and make them better humans through empathy. If we can walk around in a character’s skin, we are one step closer to understanding another human and thus one step closer to world peace. Yeah, that’s a lot of pressure to put on an ELA teacher. I think that storytelling in any form is a great joy and that words have amazing power. I am obsessed with Shakespeare and T.S. Eliot, but I’m also obsessed with Ke$ha and Avatar: The Last Airbender and anything Kiera Cass has written. We are shaped by the intersections of these stories, and that’s why it’s so important to include pop culture in ELA. Consider this Ke$ha lyric: “Dirt and glitter cover the floor. We pretty and sick. We’re young and we’re bored.” This lyric is so beautiful and evocative to me, and I’ve had this line go through my head while reading E. Lockhart’s We Were Liars as well as Poe’s “Masque of the Red Death”. I think students deserve to know that, instead of me pretending that Ke$ha is not a brilliant storyteller just because she’s not in the cultural canon (yet). We need to validate the stories and we need to validate the knowledge. It may take a long time for your 10th graders to connect to Hester Prynne, but they may connect more quickly to Alex Parrish from Quantico or any of the handful of ostracized characters in Gossip Girl. Another great tool for using pop culture in ELA and really honing students’ awareness of any genre is by using tropes. A trope is any overused theme or device, and once you see one, you can’t unsee one. A great source for starting to explore these with (older) students is TV Tropes. For example, consider the trope “Helmets Are Hardly Heroic”: “In any work where a hero wears armor, whether powered or otherwise, the helmet is almost never worn even in combat. In Real Life the helmet is the most important piece of personal armor ever invented besides the shield, since the skull and the brain inside are highly vulnerable to all kinds of weapon blows and projectiles. So why does a character who has access to a helmet rarely use it?” -from TV Tropes First, start by simply proposing the idea to your students and see if they can name some examples from movies and television. Then, use this to segue into a bigger conversation of the role of stories: *Why would directors make this no-helmets choice? *Why does the audience suspend their disbelief (or not)? *What would change if heroes did wear helmets? Lastly, you can use pop culture in ELA very deliberately by using games. I LOVE trivia, so I have an ongoing trivia game to use with my students. You can find this game in my TeachersPayTeachers store. What are your favorite ways to use pop culture in ELA? Leave your ideas in comments and be sure to sign up for our monthly newsletter!

Pop Culture in ELA: Infuse Your Lessons

Every year, I surprise my students by using pop culture in ELA. They act surprised at first and seem to think that I’m pulling their leg or making fun of them, but that it far from the case. It’s important to use pop culture in ELA because it helps students understand why they’re studying English in the first place. Let’s back up. Why is English class important? There are many possible answers here – teaching students to communicate, helping students explore classics, exposing students to a wide range of stories, etc. I firmly believe that understanding archetypes, language, and form will help students connect to a cultural heritage (or several!) and make them better humans through empathy. If we can walk around in a character’s skin, we are one step closer to understanding another human

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