Stuff for Middle School Language Arts Teachers
Tuesday September 7th 2010

‘poetry’ Archives

Prose into Poetry

Author : mrC Published: September 5th, 2010

I don't usually try to teach poetry writing. It's just too hard to read the results most of the time. However, now that I'm teaching some 8th grade this year, and poetry plays a larger role in the standards, I busted out an old lesson I hadn't used in years. It starts with the Robert Frost classic, "The Road Not Taken." (Follow the link for [...]

Theme for English B

Author : mrC Published: March 23rd, 2010

(I can't believe I didn't talk about this one last year. This is one of my fave writing assignments. Though the range of quality is all over the map, even the "not so good" ones are usually entertaining to read. Anyway...) "Hi, my name is mrC, and I'm an English teacher who doesn't especially like very much poetry..." There, I admitted [...]

Electronic Rock Guitar Shirt

RSS Teaching the Outsiders

  • BTSN ’10: A New Shtick.
    Thursday was my 18th Back to School Night here. Some parents have seen my BTSN act a couple of times; I had all five kids from one family, so they got to see the bit a few times. I usually ad-lib most of it–I only have to kill 10 minutes each period–and still usually manage […]
  • 8th Grade Material
    Eight days in, and I’m still scrambling a little with having an 8th grade prep. The last time I had 8th grade was 7 years ago, and I was scrambling a bit then (the last round of 8th grade had been 11 years before that), plus I got a student teacher for the last third […]
  • A Rerun, Just to Keep the Streak Alive.
    As you may or may not have noticed, I actually have a streak going. After taking most of July and August off, it’s been six days in a row now! My longest run in 2+ years of doing this. So even though it’s getting late, I think I can squeeze in a rerun (from the […]
  • Bribery? Maybe. But Who Cares?
    At our first faculty meeting of the year, before school started, one of the items that came up was funding for our after-school “math lab” aimed at kids who are having “math issues.” (Don’t most all middle-schoolers have math issues? Just saying.) The math teachers were complaining that the kids who get sent there for […]
  • E-Reader Survey
    I posted earlier this month about reading books on my Palm. I bought several e-books this summer, and I really like being able to carry around a whole buncha books in the palm of my hand (pun intended). So here’s a survey, dear readers. I haven’t used the survey plug-in in quite a while, and […]