Digital DP

Based on the NY Times’ popular “Anatomy of a Scene”, the blog offers a guideline on how to teach students to think like a director. Using this as a foundation, the unit below ties in other resources from ReadWriteThink and original creations (visuals, written descriptions, and a rubric). Objective: Students will identify relationships between the written and visual art forms of our culture, to understand an author’s/director’s purpose, and to increase their analytic thinking skills.

The new and improved version of my 8th grade vocab builder. This meets the Vocabulary and Acquisition portion of the Common Core Standards. Your school may not be adopting the Common Core - that is ok! This still pushes students to think critically and examine the languuage they use and read.

Looking for a way to implement the Common Core Standards for Language? This is it! After a year of tweaking, this is a way for students to organize and manipulate new words and phrases they find in their reading. I give my students a month to complete one sheet; they pull it out each day during reading time. I also do check ins with them halfway through to work on issues and clarify any confusion. So far, I see vast improvements on their understanding of concepts such as "distinguishing connotat

Step by step directions and visual organizer as well as examples. Adapted from an original source by The Poetry Center and John Timpane to better fit the 8th grade classroom. Can be used 7th grade through 12th.

With this weekly worksheet, I give students five words that pertain to our other lessons or reading. For the remaining five spaces, they find words in their independent reading or vocab from other classes. The goal is that students will not only become familiar with the definition, but also be able to accurately use it in a sentence in it's various forms (as an adverb versus an adjective, in past tense, plural, etc.). ***This is my original vocab builder. For a more rigorous option, see my addit

The new and improved version of my vocabulary builder! Each item listed corresponds directly to the seventh grade Vocabulary Acquisition and Use standards as well as the convention to "Spell Correctly" CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.7.2b. In my class, "Spelling Demons" are words students consistently struggle with. They keep a list in their notebooks of their words and can remove them when they are confident in their spelling. I give students two weeks to complete the activities with the ability to rework