The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA
Education:How To
Last week I received this email from Shannon, a teacher with questions I think we can all relate to. Here's what she wrote...
"I am in my 8th year of teaching, and while I love aspects of it, I work 10-11 hours a day and am burning out. And, I feel that I'm on an island sometimes at my school—I have to re-teach skills that they should have been taught in earlier years, etc.
I have one foot out of the door of the teaching profession. I find myself awake at night trying to figure out how to do a good job teaching both reading and writing, and getting in all the skills.
How do you do whole class novel units? And teach all the skills? Say, I want to teach Gatsby, and focus on character contrast and figurative language. Is it ok to focus on just a few skills each unit? How do you make sure they get practiced sufficiently, while also making sure to have time for current events/reading informational text stuff? How long do you spend on a unit to make sure you can test them and build background prior? Do you have them write a lot of literary analysis essays?
How do we then factor in teaching all of the types of writing--expository, argument, narrative, while we have to teach all these reading skills?"
Today and next time on the podcast, I'm going to do my best to answer Shannon's questions, because I think they're ones we have all faced as teachers. How on earth are we supposed to cover all. the. things?! And teach them well?
Today we'll look at the big picture - how to plan the year to cover what you want to cover without getting overwhelmed. Next time we'll zoom in on planning a single whole class text unit, and how to make all the decisions that go with it.
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190: My Top Contemporary Text Ideas for your ELA Classes
189: Highly Recommended: My Shakespeare
188: Feel like it's Impossible to Teach it All (Part II)
187: Highly Recommended: The Dark Matter of Mona Starr
185: Highly Recommended: Faculty Fun
184: How to Celebrate AAPI Heritage Month with this Interactive Display
183: Highly Recommended: Time-Saving Templates
182: Want to Support Student Well Being? I Know! (Here's Help)
181: Highly Recommended: John Spencer's Video Writing Prompts
180: The One about Eastern Europe
179: Highly Recommended: SBB's Baths vs. Showers
178: Struggling to Make it to the End of the Year? Try this.
177: Highly Recommended: Starfish
176: Reasons to Feel Hopeful about AI at School
175: Actionable ABAR Steps in ELA, with Liz Kleinrock
174: A New ELA Go-To? 15 Ways to use La Literatura de Cordel
173: Enjoy Teaching Rhetorical Analysis (with these Strategies)
172: Celebrating Black Authors, Artists, & Activists in ELA
171: 6 Wonderful Ways you can use Graphic Novels
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