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Essential Questions

Essential Questions
Examples of Essential Questions In schools, essential questions may offer the organizing focus for a single discussion, a month’s unit of study or a whole year’s exploration. Outside of school, of course, essential questions might challenge us for years. We may struggle with questions of a lifetime as well as questions of the day. In this section we will look at school examples that work well at four age levels: Primary Grades - Students from the age of 4 to 8. Primary Grades Questions about traits are especially powerful for this age group as young ones try to understand the world around them. What are the traits of a good fast food restaurant? Traits are at the heart of evaluation on Bloom’s Taxonomy - the skill of making wise choices based on criteria and evidence. Another major strategy to introduce young students to essential questions is to focus on questions requiring analysis. Why do you suppose the rain falls down? What do suppose would happen if we took away all television? Related:  TEaching ideas

ICT The Best English Teacher Resources One of the things I love about working in education is the collaboration among teachers. We work together to better serve our students. Below are many of the best English teacher resources (and any other kind of teacher!) I use to develop my teaching skills. Classroom Management ClassDojo — Help students evaluate and reflect on their own behavior with this online behavior management application. Community A to Z Teacher Stuff — This is a forum with teachers from across the continent sharing their expertise and resources. Lessons Teachers Pay Teachers — Tons of lessons plans and units on every subject imaginable from teachers across the the U.S. Standards Common Core App for iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch — Download the app for your iP hone and you’ll have the standards at your fingertips. Common Core App for Android — Download the app for your Android-powered smartphone and you’ll have the standards at your fingertips. CorePlanner — Integrate and track standards in your lesson plans online. Technology

Envision Schools Project Exchange Goals Details Duration: 90 minutes Assessments: Student discussions Description The purpose of this activity is to help students start to figure out which questions can guide deeper thinking and research about the history of South Africa. In World History: 1. (e.g. rubrics, examplars, websites, etc.) Author Reflections

Interrupted Reading Interrupted reading is a close reading technique that consists of dividing a pas ... Sorry! This resource is only accessible to certain users at this time. We eventually show all the resources to all our users but most likely this one is being used on a research study that requires limiting access to particular users. Please contact our help desk if you believe that there is a mistake. From The Things They Carried by Tim O.docxFrom Cold Mountain.docxFrom An American Childhood by Annie Dillard.docx Accommodations: The teacher may vary the chosen passage to accommodate students with special needs. Contributed by: Cathy Edwins Name of Author/Source: Cathy Edwins District/Organization of Contributor(s): Is this Resource freely Available? * Please note that examples of resources are not intended as complete curriculum.

Case studies home Perhaps in the nature of its subject matter, the English Subject Centre worked across the boundaries between the broadly thematic and the intensely local and detailed. The collection of Case Studies archived here might be seen as a sort of pedagogic close reading. Colleagues who wrote up for the Subject Centre some aspect of their developing practice were doing more than clearing their own minds about teaching and how teaching might change in the future. They were also contributing in form and substance to a national (indeed international) conversation on how the academic community inducts and works with its students in the presence of the demanding subject matters of language, narrative, symbolism. We commend this archive to you. We hope you will browse it and find it interesting, not just for what it tells you about past experiments in learning, but for the ideas it might stimulate for your own adventures in teaching. Back to top

March Madness Meets AP Lit The Madness of March is coming through! You can feel the frenzy of Cinderella stories and brackets busting. The Big Dance. As teachers, we should create the same excitement, hope and drama in our classes. I do AP Lit March Madness, a journey to determine the best work of literature that we've read all year. Toe to Toe: Wordsworth and Orwell Here is how I set it up. Selection Sunday turns into Maker Monday in my class. I tell the students that we will spend portions of the next three weeks in our own March Madness, determining our own literary national champion. Students are then divided into roles: Bracket Makers: I give them four huge pieces of poster board to tape together and make a mega-bracket. That Thursday, as the NCAA tournament begins, student voting begins as well. Open Season This approach isn't limited to literature. Be creative.

AP English Lit & Composition Ms Hogue School Supplies Needed: 1 artists sketchbook. I recommend a wire-bound version (8 1/2 x 11 is a good size). I found one at WalMart for under $4.a box of tissues for the room would be appreciated Summer Assignment Notes: Novel dicussion goes in Moodle. Emily Dickinson--Poems about Words | Voices Education Project Painting of Emily Dickinson by William Rock and Calligraphy by Huang Xiang Emily Dickinson grew up in a prominent and prosperous household in Amherst, Massachusetts. Along with her younger sister Lavinia and older brother Austin, she experienced a quiet and reserved family life headed by her father Edward Dickinson. In a letter to Austin at law school, she once described the atmosphere in her father's house as "pretty much all sobriety." Her mother, Emily Norcross Dickinson, was not as powerful a presence in her life; she seems not to have been as emotionally accessible as Dickinson would have liked. Her daughter is said to have characterized her as not the sort of mother "to whom you hurry when you are troubled." The Dickinsons were well known in Massachusetts. Dickinson, however, withdrew not only from her father's public world but also from almost all social life in Amherst. Writers contemporary to her had little or no effect upon the style of her writing. . . . . There is a Word

5 Works of Art to Teach Critical Thinking With the emphasis on high rigor in today’s class, the English class sometimes becomes repetitive. Reading, writing, and discussion are the staple of a successful class, and these must be done. Art, however, is one of the most underutilized resources in today’s AP class. The Roman poet Horace claimed, “A picture is a poem without words” meaning art and written word are different mediums of expression. Art offers students a break from written words while continuing to develop the same skill set needed to be successful readers through challenging students to think both critically and analytically. Here are a few examples of how I use art in class: 1. Nighthawks by Edward Hopper is analyzed to introduce the modern period. 2. Marriage a la Mode: The Contract by Hogarth is shown after a satire unit composed of short pieces and videos. 3. Students often have a difficult time grasping the ambiguity in Heart of Darkness and why Conrad would use this style when writing. 4. 5. View All Posts

5 Non Fiction Articles to Pair with Classic High School Novels - Talks with Teachers Are you searching for new ways to inject some life into the teaching of your novels? Have the staples of your curriculum grown stale? I use the pocket app to save great pieces of non fiction that I come across. Typically, I go back each month and revisit some old classics that get pushed further down the line with each article that I add. Here are five favorites from the last few years and some suggestions about the novels with which they can be paired. It is not an exclusive list. 1. by C. Pair it with: The Catcher in the Rye Topic: Phoniness “A picture of me typewriting had made it to the front page of Reddit. 2. by Martin Douglas/ MTV Hive Pair it with: Frankenstein Topic: Cultural Assimilation/ Identity “When I listened to rock music as a kid, it often felt like I was sneaking past the guards of racial barriers and into a cool party I wasn’t invited to. 3. by Nicholas Carr/ The AtlanticPair it with: Fahrenheit 451Topic: The future of reading “I can feel it, too. 4. Pair it with: 1984 5.

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