Stuff for Middle School Language Arts Teachers
Sunday May 20th 2012

‘writing’ Archives

No Boring Verbs

Author : mrC Published: March 10th, 2011

One of my favorite things about teaching junior high is blowing their minds. One of my fave parts of the week is Fridays before the test, when we do Mental Floss. Middle schoolers: they can't hit the curveball. Like this: "When the day after tomorrow is yesterday, this day will be as far from Friday as this day was from Friday when the day [...]

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 [...]

RSS Teaching the Outsiders

  • An Unrelated Dog Story
    Time out. I just have to tell this story. Sorry, it’s about our dog. I’m sure I could find a way to connect it to teaching  and all, but really, I just have to share this one. Backstory: We got our current dog from the Humane Society about two years ago. Since he’s, you know, a dog, I can use his real name: Cosmo. He came named that way, and yes, it’s after […]
  • State Testing…and etc.
    Boy howdy, I’m really milking this one, huh? I think, after a week and a half, we’re up to number three on our list of teacher tips for state testing. (This pace reminds me of the classic Sr. Mary Elephant bit from Cheech and Chong back in the day: “Now class, Sr. Rosetta Stone has told me that your assignment for the past two months has been to write an ess […]
  • State Testing — Tips for Teachers II
    My drain is unclogged, but Survivor AND Modern Family are new tonight, so we gotta work fast. I realized, after I left Monday, that I might have been a little flippant about the  disutility of practicing for these tests. The kids do need SOME practice with these types of things, especially if they haven’t dealt with the multiple-choice (or closer to the midd […]
  • State Testing–Tips for Teachers… Interrupted
    First of all… as if. As if some last minute review, or “covering the material” one last time (or for the first time), right before testing, does anything at all. You really think they go, “Whoa, I’m sure glad we rushed through factoring before the test As if some sort of  epic  ”practice test” will do anything except get kids sick of the whole thing before i […]
  • The Titanic Finally Really Sinks! (Also: Sidekicks.)
    First year ever! No Titanic! O. M. G. The average is about 7 or 8. The record was the 1997-98 school year with, count’em, 27. There was a renaissance in 2010, with about 20. I’m talking about research papers. And finally, for the first time since I started at this school in 1993, I won’t have to plow through another “all about the Titanic” nightmare. O. M. G […]