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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170: How to Host a Graphic Novel Book Tasting
169: Turning Classics into Graphic Novels, with Gareth Hinds
168: Why I'm not Worried about the New AI Tools
167: Fight Erasure. Feature Contemporary Indigenous Voices in Class.
166: How to Add an Audiobook Listening Station to your ELA Classroom
165: Classroom Management Strategies you can Actually Enjoy
164: 5 Public Speaking Projects for Secondary ELA
163: Case Study: A Meaningful 21st Century Research Project
162: Active Teaching: 10 Out-of-their-Seats Activities
161: The Ultimate Guide to First Chapter Friday
160: The College Essay: What Students (and Teachers) Need to Know
159: 3 Creative Ways to Teach Varied Sentence Structure
158: How to Create a Successful International Classroom Partnership
157: Designing Back-to-School for Belonging, with Dr. Susie Wise
156: How to Teach Living Poets, with Mel Smith
155: 21 Creative ELA Lessons you can use Immediately
154: Colorful Vocabulary Activities: Story Tiles, Wordy Decor & More
153: 6 Powerful Mentor Texts for Secondary ELA
152: 5 Class Podcast Projects for ELA
151: Here's the Teacher Tech that Actually Helps, with Jennifer Gonzalez
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