mom sectionmom sectionThere are many fabulous materials out there that can be used for teaching. You need to follow a set of guidelines that your school district will give you. But also you can use your own experiences. Use the following guidelines to give you extra help in choosing your materials.
If that beautiful sentence that your student wrote in his term paper seems too good to be true, it may well be. Plagiarism, the use of others' writing or ideas as your own without attributing them to the original source, has produced a crop of online detection services. Some plagiariam is unintentional, such as using a phrase or idea that you remember from somewhere without noting the source. Other plagiarism is blatant copying from someone else and passing the work off as your own. You can boost your online plagiarism detection resources with a few "low-tech" techniques.
Teaching poetry can be a daunting task, especially compared with something as straightforward as the prose of a novel or short story. Although your approach will differ if you're teaching Robert Frost to junior high kids or John Ashbery to college students, there are some basics to get your started.
Children's Literature is a fascinating field of written and pictorial text. You can find information on almost any topic imaginable written in a way that children can learn and grow from it. There are many things that need to be covered in an introduction to Children's Literature course to teach others about the complexities in children's literature.
Picture books are not just usable tools in elementary schools. There are a number of complex reading and writing strategies that come from picture books that are useful in the secondary classroom. Teaching your high school students how to use this form of literature will enhance their understanding of larger, more complicated texts and reading and writing components.
Business skills are essential for life after school and for being productive in adulthood. Teaching kids business skills is important and can end up being a fun and rewarding experience. There are many different programs and organizations that support this idea. Here are the steps you need to start teaching kids business skills.
Challenging a gifted child whose mind is constantly engaged in thinking and learning can be overwhelming for parents and teachers, especially while juggling the needs of other children. Consider the following suggestions for keeping your gifted child's mind active and growing, while keeping your own sanity.
Discipline is a difficult task for many people in the educational field. So having a whole toolbox full of options to rely on is one of the best resources for educators to discipline their students. Having well-disciplined students ensures everyone attending the optimal environment for learning. Read on to learn how to discipline students.
The story behind Black History Month begins with Dr. Carter G. Woodson, a historian who is frequently called the "Father of Black History." He created the Association for African-American Life and History (ASALH). Later, in 1926, Dr. Woodson and the ASALH created Negro History Week, which evolved into Black History Month.
Black History Month is celebrated in Canada and the U.S. throughout February. The celebration of Black History Month grew out of a shorter celebration known as Negro History Week, which began in 1926. By 1976, the celebration had lengthened to an entire month and became known as the "National Afro-American History Month." Today, the celebration offers an opportunity for students to learn more about African-American history.
Children are more susceptible than adults to air pollution for numerous reasons: Children breath in more air than adults for their body weight, they have smaller and narrower air passages which react harshly to toxins, and they stand closer to the ground, exposing them to higher concentrations of pollution. Teach children about pollution to protect them and help them become environmentally aware.
February is black history month. It is a time to celebrate and learn about the societal accomplishments and contributions made by African Americans. A good way to introduce students to the history of African Americans is to provide visual displays throughout your room.
Most people in America think communism is evil. People are free to be communist in the U.S., but there are downfalls to communism. Teaching communism seems simple in a capitalistically successful nation, but it is far more difficult than just teaching right from wrong. Here are some steps to get you started teaching a child about communism.
Student teaching is like straddling a bridge for a semester. You have one foot at the end of your student years and barely a toe grip on being a full-fledged teacher. It's challenging to navigate a room full of new students, their parents' concern and your cooperating teacher's routines. Keep some key things in mind while learning the ropes to make your time as a student-teacher a positive experience.
Essays can be difficult to grade. Using a rubric is one of the only ways that you will be able to grade your students fairly across the board. Since each student will write differently, the rubric helps to ensure that you are grading objectively. There are a number of things you can do to grade any essay from Accounting to Zoology and everything in between.
Holding a class debate is a fantastic exercise for many different classes, from Art History and English to Music and Social Studies. Giving students the opportunity to stand up for an opinion or idea can make the class material actually come to life. Although there are many different ways of organizing a class debate, there are certain qualities that should be present in such events.
Student presentations are useful in all subject areas. Through the presentation the teacher can quickly determine how the student has processed the information. Additionally presentations give students practice with oral communication skills, as well as listening skills. The grading of student presentations is fast and painless if you plan ahead.
Documentation seems to go hand in hand with teaching, especially when it comes to communication with your student's parents or guardians. Preparing for a parent-teacher conference can be tedious, especially at the beginning of the year or if you do not know the student or parents well.
Having your students write an I-Search paper is a great way to teach about the writing process, research methods and using the many different tools and resources in the library. Broken into four simple writing steps, this form of essay will teach students about researching and writing an essay: informational, persuasive or expository. This is a valuable tool for all students, especially those who are writing for research purposes.
Communicating with parents is very important for teachers. There may be a number of reasons that teachers need to contact the parents by phone: good and bad behavior, medical reasons or even return phone calls from parents. It is a good idea to document all phone interactions between teacher and parents into a phone log. There are many things you need to include in the documentation form.
High school guidance counselors mentor thousands of students each year, helping them make important decisions about career choices and educational paths. They also are responsible for taking students through standardized testing and getting them signed up for college entrance exams.
Greeting students on the first day of school sets the tone for how class will run the rest of the school year. Be friendly but firm from the start, and clearly communicate your expectations for classroom behavior. The best first-day activities give students an enjoyable and interesting way to learn about their teacher, their peers and the kind of learning they'll do during the academic year. Activities also give the teacher an opportunity to gauge each student's skill level and to make adjustments along the way.
Teachers must face the challenge of instructing students of varying ability levels, often simultaneously. If a student is a particularly slow learner, this can present a problem for the teacher as she must allow him time to grasp the material without slowing the progress of the rest of the class. If your current student load contains a child who needs a little extra help -- or perhaps just extra time -- the way in which you deal with the student and his needs could play an important part in determining how academically successful the child ultimately ends up becoming.
Graphic novels are a fairly untapped genre when it comes to instructional materials for a high school classroom. They can be used across the curriculum and are gaining popularity with educators. Many teachers would like to use them but just don't know where to start. There are several ways that you can incorporate graphic novels into your classroom instruction.
Having a student teacher in your classroom can be both difficult and rewarding. As a teacher, it's a tough thing to give control of your classroom to another. However, with the right approach, supervising a student teacher shows both you and your students a fresh approach to teaching. Read on to learn how to supervise a student teacher.
Since there is so much information for students to take in when they are mastering the parts of speech, grammar lessons can lead to bored or disengaged students. If you involve the students in your explanation of prepositions from the beginning, they will be engaged and learn more quickly. Read on to learn how to explain prepositions.
Typically, worm dissection in a biology class involves earthworms, one of a group of animals called annelids or segmented worms. Well-defined segments divide annelids' bodies both externally and internally. Each segment is similar, except for the anterior (head) and posterior (tail.) To dissect a worm, you must first distinguish between the anterior and the thinner posterior. Now you're ready to dissect.
Tornadoes are one of nature's most intriguing phenomena. They are powerful, mysterious and create feelings of awe in people young and old. They're also great material for the classroom. Their formation, duration, severity, color and all sorts of other characteristics are fascinating topics. You should have an easy time creating an interesting lesson plan that will suck your kids right up and hold their attention.
Teaching your students about volcanoes should be a breeze. They're explosive, massive and colorful, and most kids are bound to find something about them interesting. The variety and availability of resources on volcanoes also makes putting together an informative and captivating lesson pretty easy too.
Geography is the study of the earth's surfaces and formations. However, it is also the study of how humans react to changes in the formations. Here's how to plan a geography study unit and create geography lesson plans.
If you have a principal who puts you down, lies about your work ethic or your ability to teach, ignores your requests for assistance in the classroom or is unprofessional, you are dealing with a problem principal. A problem principal can leave a teacher feeling overwhelmed, unsupported and questioning her decision to teach. But luckily, there are steps a teacher can take to properly handle the problem.
Sensory activities for young children in the classroom will increase learning while kids are having fun. A three-year-old's brain is twice as active as an adult's; therefore, this age is an important time in brain development. Stimulation is vital in the early years and sensory activities are an important part of this. The following will show you a number of ways to introduce sensory activities in the classroom.
By the time children are old enough to read a newspaper or see the local news, they understand that Americans regard their government as unique. Government by the people is at the heart of the Constitution. Teaching its tenets and history can be invaluable in a child's education. Read on to learn more.
Classroom activities often include spelling bees. Spelling is a very important part of a child's education, and it's often part of class work and homework as a subject. Organizing a spelling bee in the classroom is a fun way to get the children to brush up on their spelling skills and get everyone involved in the learning fun.
February 14th is a day of love. Teach kids the meaning of love by having a Valentine's Day party. You can show them how to be kind and thoughtful while enjoying the festivities of a party. Follow these tips to throw a Valentine's party for a grade school class.
By taking students to an environmental center to study habitats, they can become more actively involved in their learning. Teaching children about habitats by allowing them to have a hands-on experience engages them in the content. Children can also meet people within the profession to gain more knowledge about habitats.
Today pollution is a front-page issue. Teaching children about the effects of water pollution is important. Educators and parents can teach children about water pollution using hands-on experiments and by taking the children to environmental centers to discuss this ongoing problem.
In the United States, the president is an important figure to celebrate. President's Day was established to remember the presidents, particularly George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. The holiday is annually observed on the third Monday in February. Here's how to write lesson plans for Presidents' Day.
Grants can meant thedifference between success and failure for businesses and schools. Many schools are dependent upon educational grants as a part of their funding. Use these steps to learn how to apply for educational grants for your school.
Maybe you have a knack for teaching German. If you love speaking the language and find it easy to teach other people, tutoring German may be just for you. Follow these tips to tutor German for grades K-12 and start a job that is both fun and rewarding.
When presenting a unit on Australia to students, a fun activity is to teach the children about dot art. Dot art is an ancient way of creating artistic designs, first utilized by the Aboriginals. The Aboriginals used dot art to paint their bodies for ceremonies and then began to paint canvases to make profit. Children can learn about dot art through exploration and by making their own dot art.
Noisy classrooms aren't just irritating, they're also downright detrimental to learning. Reducing classroom noise isn't just vital to enhancing the learning of hearing-impaired students, it also protects teacher vocal cords and improves learning for all students. The Acoustical Society of America estimates that a student with typical hearing often misses one out of every four words. So reducing the noise is worth the effort.
Use cooking classes in the kindergarten and high school curriculum to teach the relationship between foods, health and fitness. Test your students' understanding of the subject matter by utilizing a wide range of testing methods. Keep the lessons and tests age-appropriate yet challenging. Make cooking a life skill where the real test is how the students use the information in real life.
Having Individualized Education Plan (IEP) meetings comes with the territory when you're a special education teacher. An IEP meeting requires the special education teacher to share data on a student and then set goals for the entire year with a group of people who work with the student, including the parents. The special education teacher can do many things to lead this type of meeting in a positive direction.
TEACCH stands for Treatment and Education of Autistic and related Communication-handicapped Children and is a highly effective way to work with autistic children. To learn TEACCH, you must participate in an in depth training course with certified trainers and then take what you learn and put it to use in your classroom. To be effective, TEACCH must be used correctly.
Accelerated Reader is a fantastic resource for teachers and students. Accelerated Reader is a computer program that allows students to test their comprehension of books they have read by answering a short set of questions. Accelerated Reader gives the teacher immediate feedback and enables her to help students select appropriate books for their reading level. Accelerated Reader can be used in many creative ways in the classroom.
Cabin fever has taken hold in the classroom. The kids are restless, having a tough time concentrating on their regular studies. Introduce a lesson plan for your kindergarten class that will grab their attention and let everyone join in the fun while learning about spring.
This brief lesson will familiarize students with the terrifyingly oblique Dewey Decimal System.
Research indicates that the primary reason for students not participating in classroom discussion is fear that other students and the teacher will deem their contributions as trivial or incorrect. Other reasons for poor participation included low self-esteem, fear of being chastised, cultural differences that encourage deference to the teacher's ideas, avoidance of potential conflict, and social anxiety. When your best efforts to actively involve your students in classroom discussions meet with frustration, change the classroom environment and implement novel strategies to realize your goals.
There are many practical ways to organize a classroom environment. While looking to find ways to organize a classroom environment, remember that time, space and resources are all elements of the classroom needing organization. Thus, you'll want to find ways to organize the classroom environment in all these areas. Here is what you need and some tips on how to find ways to organize a classroom environment:
Did you know that anything you see on your computer can be captured as a screen shot for many uses? Many times you may see a logo or photo that you may want to save but it may be split up into 2 different files or you may want to include the picture and caption. Read on to learn an incredibly easy way to capture any image you want and then do just about whatever you want with it.
Unlike the International System of Units (SI), or metric system, the U.S. customary system of measurements is not standardized based on powers of 10. In the United States, the standard volume measurements for liquids -- gallons, quarts, pints and cups -- need to be memorized using simple formulas. You can teach volume concepts in a fun yet effective way.
A quality education gained during childhood is essential for setting the groundwork that leads to college and beyond. While many parents choose public or private schools to achieve this goal, more parents are considering home-schooling their children. However, home schooling requires covering items that a school often provides, such as textbooks. To keep from breaking the bank, consider the many ways that allow you to home-school for free.
Art is a wonderful way for elementary school students to learn to express themselves. In addition to creating art of their own, students often learn about artists and the history of art through stories and classroom projects. To effectively teach art history at the elementary level, teachers can incorporate it into the curriculum in a fun and exciting way.
Involving students in the decision-making process leads to more involvement and better behavior. It gives them a sense of ownership if they have a legitimate part in what's happening. Allowing them to have a say in establishing classroom rules is one of the first and easiest ways to start that involvement.
Discussion cubes can promote discourse and participation in a classroom environment. Using discussion cubes for a K-12 class is a democratic way to get children involved in learning. Encourage their participation and let them roll the cube to start discussions.
You're looking for fun ways to teach your students science. When you just can't get their attention by diagramming molecules on the blackboard anymore, turn to cartoons. Besides having a great time, the kids will be learning and retaining their lessons.
Future Farmers of America is dedicated to promoting the agricultural education of young people. Its name was officially changed in 1988 to the National FFA Organization. If you're interested in agriculture, follow these steps to join the Future Farmers of America.
Parent-teacher conferences are an opportunity for you to build a collaborative relationship that can help your students. These conferences are a specific time for parents and teachers to meet. Use this time to address any concerns you have about the student. It is also a meeting where parents can learn more about your teaching practices. Conducting the meeting in an informative and professional manner will benefit all parties involved. A successful parent-teacher conference results in an understanding of the expectations of the classroom, a more thorough picture of the student's educational history and a clearer picture of the student as…
Even the most experienced teacher sometimes struggles with student behavior or compliance. While the use of behavior charts is typically more common in the elementary classroom, you can use variations of such charts even in the older grades to manage a classroom community or modify the behavior of a single student. It takes some work, a lot of patience and perseverance, but your investment should pay off in terms of increased learning.
Students tend to take advantage of any situation to demonstrate their power. Not all students do this individually, but as a group the mob mentality seems to take over. Even college classes have been known to harass the occasional proctor if the students know their grade does not depend on what he thinks of them. Teachers need to take back control of the class before any learning can take place.
If you only have five minutes to write a poem, there are a few very simple poetic forms that are easy to write. Among the easiest poetry forms to write are couplets, acrostics and cinquains. A couplet has only two lines and rhymes, so it is fairly easy to write. An acrostic has lines that begin with the letters of the subject of the poem. It is easy to write if you choose a short word. A cinquain, though longer than the others, is easy to accomplish in just five minutes.
A student-based group or organization needs to have a significant number of members. Student groups geared towards special interests or skills often take special measures to attract new members and increase their membership numbers. This can earn the group itself more recognition or funding and help generate interest in the group's cause. Here are some ways to help increase a student group membership.
IDEA, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, was signed into law in 1997. This program strengthens the academic expectations and accountability of PL94142, The Education of All Handicapped Children Act of 1975. Special Education laws ensure every student the opportunity of a general education in the least restrictive environment. With learning disabilities on the rise, school administrators and teachers must understand how to follow special education laws within their buildings.
Since Spanish is rapidly becoming the second language of this country, if a student is required to take a foreign language, Spanish is the recommended language to take. Writing a Spanish test is not the same as writing other tests. Since Spanish is a foreign language, you need to test the student on verbal as well as written work. Read on to understand how to write a Spanish test.
Bookkeeping is a subject that will be useful for the rest of your life. People use bookkeeping everyday--to balance their checkbooks, to make budgets and to check their credit card statements. Therefore, it is important that educators make sure that their students learn bookkeeping. The only way to do that is to be sure they can pass a bookkeeping test. The following will help you write a K-12 bookkeeping test.
Close to 50 percent of all new teachers quit within the first five years of teaching. Unprepared for mountains of paperwork, high expectations of teachers for student performance, disruptive students and under-funded school budgets, they simply decide that the work is not worth the rewards.
Having a classroom website can be an essential part of the educational experience in a technological world. Create a K-12 classroom website so that your students will have 24-hour access to a virtual classroom and always be informed of their educational requirements.
An open house gathering for a school is a great way to kick off a school year. Whether you do it prior to the start of the school year or within the first few weeks, an open house can set the tone for the whole school year for some families. Take some time to plan the open house, and the night of the big event should go without a hitch.
Thematic units are a great way to cover a variety of skills and topics in the elementary classroom in unique and interesting ways. Thematic units combine reading, writing, social studies and sometimes math and science around a particular theme. Use these units as supplements to regular grade-level outcomes, during certain times of the year or as a focused study at the end of a particular skill unit.
Managing a large group of students during a fire is a challenge that must be addressed in advance through preparation and planning. Regular fire drills at schools are one way to assure that things will run smoothly in the event a real fire strikes your building. Read on to learn more.
Kindergarteners strive on repetition. Homework sent home with kindergarteners should reflect lessons learned in the classroom. The easiest way of assigning homework is by making up homework packets. These packets should cover a variety of subjects and include different ways of learning. With parental involvement, homework packets should take no more than an hour when done a little each day.
Sensory processing disorders can cause children difficulties as they interact with their environments throughout the day. School is no exception. Many children with sensory processing disorders have difficulties in school because their disorders are not completely understood by educators. Fortunately, there are things educators can do to help support students with sensory processing disorder. Read on to learn how to support children with sensory processing disorder.
Testing a student's comprehension of a subject has been around as long as formal teaching has been used for education. There are many methods of assessing a student's learning. Although essay questions will be the most telling of what they have learned, there are other ways to determine how much a student has learned. Fill-in-the-blank questions do a fair job of getting this information.
The new million dollar question in education has become: "Is my child ready for kindergarten?" As a kindergarten teacher since 1996, I would like to share some thoughts on when a child is ready. Remember, all children are different and you never really know how a child will perform until he/she actually gets to kindergarten, but I have noticed some definite attributes in children who do well, as well as in those who struggle.
Keeping a journal can be therapeutic and useful for anyone. Teachers may find that writing in a journal makes them more effective in the classroom. Use a journal to record successful -- or unsuccessful -- activities, ideas for lesson plans and individual notes about students. Make it a part of your daily routine, perhaps even encouraging your students to keep one, too.
As the old saying goes, "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail." Teachers and homeschool parents alike need a learning plan to provide the structure necessary for their students to get the most out of the lessons. New teachers or parents just starting to homeschool may wonder how to create a lesson plan that will work. While lesson content can vary by topic, student ability and individual learning styles, the basic structure of a lesson plan remains the same.
According to the National Literacy Trust's first annual survey, students prefer reading text messages and e-mails to fiction and non-fiction, but, the survey shows, those who read technology-based material don't meet literacy expectations as often as those who read traditional texts. The 2011 ACT report also acknowledged the problem, stating that only 52 percent of high school graduates met the reading college readiness benchmark. To change this, teachers can monitor students' abilities by giving reading comprehension tests. The results expose students' strengths and weaknesses, allowing teachers to better meet their needs.
Step into any elementary school classroom and you're bound to find them on shelves and in closets -- pattern blocks, counting bears, tens sticks and Unifix cubes. But if your math manipulatives are stuck on a shelf or buried in the closet, your students probably aren't getting the most they could out of your math lessons. Most children learn better when they can visualize a concept. To help them visualize mathematical ideas, teachers need to incorporate manipulatives into their math lessons.
High school students may groan out loud when their English teacher announces that the class is beginning a unit on poetry. Few young people appreciate this form of the written word. Poetry seems to many of them to be remote and incomprehensible. Communicate your own enthusiasm for poetry to the class and help them connect the poem’s words to emotions.
Learning center activities allow kindergarten students to practice their skills while learning to work independently and in groups. For a teacher, the most difficult part of learning centers can be figuring out how to coordinate them. If done well, most of the center activities should run smoothly with little adult direction; plus, they should allow a teacher the opportunity use center time for small group instruction.
Narrative writing finds a natural home in high school classrooms. High school students are dealing with issues of identity and self-expression -- issues that naturally lend themselves to narrative writing. Through the use of creative writing lesson plans, you can teach students how to understand the writing process while helping them to understand themselves.
Classroom management skills are essential for all teachers. Supervising a group of children with different personalities and backgrounds is a challenging task. You are responsible for their academic growth while ensuring that the learning environment stays welcoming and secure. Establish a discipline plan the first week of school and implement it fairly and consistently. Clearly explain your definition of appropriate classroom behavior as well as your system of rewards and consequences. Be sure your behavior management plan reinforces the school's code of conduct regarding disruptive behavior.
Students are usually raised on the 5-paragraph essay and its emphasis on formality and rigid structure, conventions that don't lend themselves to narrative essays. Teaching narrative writing requires equal parts examples and assignments. Students must see what a narrative essay looks like and what conventions it uses before they can learn to write one of their own.
Teaching narrative writing is the best way to get elementary school students to begin to develop their writing skills. Through stories, journal entries and other narrative assignments, elementary school students learn how to organize their thoughts and ideas.
Coming up with creative writing lesson plans for middle school students can be a little tricky at times. High school students are often mature enough to strive for artistic, polished writing, and elementary students have an unvarnished imagination that is easy to direct towards learning, but getting middle school students to open up requires careful planning and good classroom control.
Teaching your high school students to be great writers is not just a matter of drilling them in formal essay writing techniques. Techniques can be learned, but if your students do not develop a passion for the written word, they will never become truly great writers. A creative writing class is the best way to show high school students why learning to write matters.
Requiring your students to keep a journal is a practical way to get them to think about a book, a period of history or even their own lives. But students frequently feel overwhelmed by the look of an empty page, and may experience writer's block before ever putting their pens to the paper. However, with directions and suggestions from teachers, frequent journal writing makes writing a more comfortable process for students and improves their writing, organization and thought processes.
Using details to describe a scene or event is one of the most useful life skills a student can learn. Expository writing teaches students to help other people see where they are coming from and to understand the perspectives of others as well.
Coming up with good creative writing lesson plans for elementary school students can be an absolute joy. Elementary school creative writing classes allow you as the teacher to harness the creativity of young minds and use it to inspire a lifelong passion for learning.
A journal can be used to record dreams, personal thoughts and ideas to keep track of a project. Or students can react to a book, movie or something in the news. Teachers often get their students acclimated to journal writing to improve the children's abilities to think critically, express problems or zero in on solutions. Students in nursing, physical therapy and teaching programs have all used journal writing to their benefit. Because of this flexibility, journal writing is a key skill to teach -- both as a personal release and as a tool for other projects.
Students learn scientific concepts more fully from classroom examples over memorized formulas, according to findings from Illinois State University. For example, many learn Boyle's Law in the same manner that it is presented on NASA's website: "For a given mass, at constant temperature, the pressure times the volume is a constant." Or worse, students are given the mathematical formula "p * V = C." One way to bring this definition and formula to life to present Boyle's law in action. Afterward, students can examine the technical aspects of the law.
Teaching elementary students to write poetry is easier than you might think. Children have wonderful imaginations and love to create new things. Your role as an educator is to expose them to poetry. Encourage them to experiment and try out new kinds of writing.
There's no more powerful a learning tool than being able to see a concept in action. Since it's unlikely that you, your students or your child will travel into the middle of a tornado, the next best way to recreate the phenomenon is to create a tornado in a bottle.
More than any other genre, science fiction is a literature of ideas, and those ideas need to be discussed for the stories to be understood. Teaching science fiction requires a different approach than most literature. Characterization, realism and even plot often are less important than the questions the novel leads the reader to ask.
The popularity of show and tell in elementary school classrooms indicates that kids love to explain and describe the things in their lives. This is, in general terms, the definition of expository writing: informing, explaining and describing. While expository writing is frequently considered a high school or college level skill, elementary students can learn the elements of good writing in engaging ways. Lessons can require students to write in a focused manner for 15 to 30 minutes, then revise and edit their work, or students can practice these techniques verbally in small groups or in front of the entire class.
In middle school English, students begin to learn how to put complex thoughts and ideas together. By teaching your students to write rich, detailed expository pieces on a variety of subjects, you can show them how to develop their thoughts into complete ideas and capture the attention of readers.
With cell phones, e-readers, computers and tablets seemingly everywhere in modern society, children come to school already steeped in technology. Teachers who play on this already ingrained habit in their students have much to gain, as do the kids, but they have to know how to do it correctly.
Teaching Greek mythology will require you to tap into a broad array of student abilities, including creative writing, vocabulary and even their understanding of art, history and geography. The stories are well organized and straightforward, and the principal characters -- gods and heroes -- are easy to identify. The trick is in picking from the wonderful wealth of literature available..
Descriptive writing is one of the core language skills you can teach elementary school students. By thinking about what details make a description come alive, your students will improve their writing and observational skills. Focus on the five senses, word choice, adjectives and adverbs.
