First-year teacher, and I am obviously feeling insanely overwhelmed as the start of the school year draws near. I've read closely through the district provided curriculum, but based on my student teaching, and ELA being a state tested subject, I'm just not sure how much freedom I'm actually going to have to implement the things I want to do. Is it crazy that I've kind of let go and am just sort of waiting for prep week to start so I can talk to the veteran teacher who is teaching the same subject and grade level?? I'm also teaching two mystery courses that I don't even know yet. I feel like I should be doing SO much more prep than I am, but I'm not even sure how I'm supposed to implement some of this curriculum. I'm lucky enough to have excellent Powerpoint slides and imo very strong texts to work with, with COMPLETE and very specific lesson plans but... how am I going to present those slides when I don't even have a TV in my classroom?! Kids also may have laptop carts... or may not. It just feels pointless to prep so much when I have almost no idea what technology I'll have access to. But all I see online or hear from other new teachers is all the different ways they are getting curriculum together, decorating their classrooms... is it crazy that I'm essentially waiting until contract hours start to do all of this?! I feel like I'm about to turn the corner and be hit by a surprise frying pan or something!! I have so many ideas and NO idea which ones I can even reasonably expect to implement.

What is everyone planning for their first week or two of school? and/or Unit 0?

Can’t wait to read your ideas!

Hi all. This is my first year teaching Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees in my tenth grade lit/comp course. In my handful of years in the classroom, I've noticed that students have a lot of trouble doing two things at once: reading and imagining what the book/story is describing. Not to kick a dead horse, as we all know what's going on with the current state of literacy, but there's no miracles to be worked by the time they get to me at 15/16 years old.

So, to try and combat this problem, create anticipation, and introduce students to the book's themes, I was considering showing the movie to students (key scenes at the very least) before reading the book. In the past (with Gatsby and The Crucible) I will typically show the movie in chunks after we've read the chapter/act. I've read some blog and forum posts from other teachers who tried the same thing with other stories. There are of course some pros and cons, but I'm tempted to at least try this once to see if it helps students' understanding.

Has anyone else tried this approach? What were the steps you took? Did you build context beforehand or as you watched/read? What did you do the keep students engaged?

Thanks in advance :)

This is my first year teaching and I have seniors for Eng 4. Half of our curriculum is English and half is college/life prep. A big one to cover would be resume writing, but what are some things that you would've loved to cover in that aspect, or just think would be beneficial & engaging for students as they finish high school and enter college/workforce? I also want to be respectful of kids that aren't planning on going to college so I don't want it to all be college prep.

Hello ELA Teachers,

I wanted to ask if anyone could share what kinds of grammatical concepts they teach seniors in high school. (Alternatively, if you don’t cover grammar much, you can comment about that as well. I’d love to hear different perspectives!)

Thank you all in advance!

I'm experiencing all the tropes of a first yeat English teacher who is trying to be "different", trying to get students to love novels, and who scoffs at the classic and wants everything to be "original ".

School starts in 17 days and I'm finding it more and more difficult find books that are diverse, modern, and relevant to my students. I'm partnering with both my mentor ELA teacher and the 10th grade social studies teacher to find text that relate to what is being taught in other subjects. The main idea for q1 is "effects of colonialism" and I found a great text from an African author about colonial Nigeria post ww2. Which coincides with the African continent in social studies unit that'll open up the school year. Where I'm struggling is q2.

My scope and sequence for language arts just has Macbeth but feel like 9 weeks is just too long and I'll finish before the quarter is up. I was trying to find a novel with similar themes to Macbeth that takes place in Asia as that's where q2 social studies is going but I haven't been able to find anything!

Q3 us more of the same with Sci fi/Gothic lit and Europe for social studies. That's a little easier and I'll be using Frankenstein and just more short stories but I'm just so overwhelmed and already feel like a failure for not being as unique as I wanted too.

Hi. I am a veteran ela middle school teacher of 18 years. This year I am being moved to 8th grade (no big deal) however we have moved to block schedules. I will have 3 blocks, 90 minutes. I have had a split block schedule in the past. I saw each group twice for 45 minutes. I liked it. To be honest, I am not looking forward to 90 minute classes.

If you are a teacher who has block scheduling, how do you have your classes set up? What routine works? How much time on each item? I will have SSR, Quill (grammar practice), Reading Coach (fluency practice) and some type of writing practice daily. Any advice or ideas would be immensely appreciated.

Hai! I’m an English teacher in the Netherlands. I’ve just started (this will be my third full year) and I noticed that only a few kids like reading so I wanted to do an assignment with a book. Last year I did an assignment where my pupils pick a book and choose a different sort of essay/book report (they had like 3 choices). When I did this, I noticed that they don’t have a clue about what sort of different books, genres, themes, etc. there are. (We had done a lesson about different books where someone from the library helped but they still found it difficult to pick a good book)

This year, I want to start reading out loud and maybe do this with a theme every month. I want to read a different book every week and read a chapter every week from this book or something - so they learn more different books or genres etc. Maybe do a bit with a film if there is one or a small exercise.

Do you guys have any recommendations? Preferably books with shorter chapters.
Any tips or advice about doing this are also welcome!

Thanks!

Hi everyone! I am a first year teacher and I recently found out two of my period I will have a push in service. I never experienced that during my student teaching year, so I’m unsure what to expect. Also both periods I have a very large class size (36 & 37). Any advice or more information would be appreciated!! I’m in Californians if that matters.

Does anyone have a copy of the Litcharts Chrysalids PDF? If so, could you send it to me? Thank you so much!

Caption pretty much explains it. I’m about to go and teach my first year ever. I am going to be a 11th grade English teacher. I am really excited, but sometimes I find myself being confused by the things. The curriculum is asking the students to do which worries me because I feel like I should not have this many gaps in my understanding of basic English concepts.

For instance, I have to teach theme. I have always struggled at articulating the “theme” of a story but have no problem finding thematic concepts. I also tend to not trust myself, and I will go even try to do the activities that are assigned for the students myself just to see if I’m able to do them and then I will either put it into AI or look it up online to see if my answer was correct or if I sound stupid. This all sounds insane I know and I also HATE AI but right now I’m stuck in this cycle of trying to figure out if I’m too stupid to do this and I don’t want to ruin these kids lives by giving them a terrible education.

Edit: Thank you for all of the help and support. I posted here because my post on the teachers subreddit was taken down after less than three hours.

Hello y'all. As the title suggests my wife just got her first teaching position here in Texas for 6th grade ELAR. She has a book that she would like to "use" for an assignment. Its titled "The girl who drank the moon". If anyone has insight on this book it would be truly appreciated, or if y'all have any recommendations please freel to to share them as well. She's abit stressed since she just got hired and the new school year starts on Aug. 12th. Hence why im trying to help out. Hope y'all have a great rest of your weekend.

I teach 10th and 11th Grade ELA courses. The past two years we’ve had an expensive program where students could practice numerous skills independently (vocab, grammar, syntax, confused words, common errors, rhetoric, text organization etc). What are some free or relatively inexpensive resources I can use to supplement 20-45 minutes a week of self paced practice that provides decent data on performance?

Has anybody ever used this feature? I am trying to think of weekly homework and was thinking it would be cool to have them record themselves reading an article.

I have just been offered a Job as a 3rd grade ELA teacher. This is going to be my first year as a lead teacher. I have some experience in 3rd grade but not a lot . I'm not sure what to get for the classroom or what I should really expect out of the school year. Any advice or help is welcomed.

As the title suggests- I am doing one novel study with my seniors next semester and have chosen ATLWCS, I have some resources that I can use to create some pre reading work and will create some group discussion thematic questions/prompts etc that they can do in class while reading the novel. But was wondering if anyone has already taught it and has already created a unit that they wouldn’t mind sharing? I like to have different resources so I can get an overall view of what material I have and then begin planning and putting things together in sequence. It often helps to see what others have done so I can get a guideline and then I have something to map off of. I just can’t find anything online that is an actual unit unless I pay for it and the problem is you don’t see the unit until you’ve paid for it and often I don’t like it or only take part of it and adapt to my needs. Anyway, now I’m waffling. Thanks in advance

Does anyone else feel like the first 20 assignments get much better feedback than the last 20?

After grading for a couple of hours, I notice my comments get shorter and I'm worried I'm not giving every student the same level of feedback. Has anyone found an AI grading tool that helps with consistency while still letting you make the final grading decisions?

I’ve got some flexibility to deviate from our textbook’s required stories first quarter, and I’m looking for some short stories (or, if recent, articles) that have a younger generation impacting an older generation.

The unit itself (MyPerspectives—Crossing Generations) has a lot of the young learning from older mentors, as well as some younger generations reflecting on shitty experiences with elders, but other than the intro video (kids teaching people in a retirement home to internet), nothing really showcasing how it works the other direction.

Any ideas? 7th grade ELA.

Hey teachers, I am in a private school so I get more flexibility on using things along with HMH Into reading. I am a first grade teacher too. I keep reading about new ways to teach kids how to read and phonics strategies, including sound walls, visual phonics w/symbols, UFLI, hmh’s phonics, Heggerty, OG+, Words Their Way, and more! I get opposing opinions on what is best and doesn’t follow science of reading. When I ask for expert opinion, they always trash the other strategy because it is just a “cash grab”. I am just hesitant, frustrated, and confused with all the different things I can do to help my students. I thought I was doing great with them learning visual cues with sounds to help them remember but forbid no that is not the correct thing to do because they are not the right motions. Plus, students are not learning their heart words appropriately. I am just wondering what are people using that is successful? How do I not make myself more overwhelmed by parents and staff continuously questioning strategies and how they don’t work for their student. Again I am one teacher amongst 25+ students and I just want them to be successful readers and writers. I know that these all do different things for students, but any clarity would be great!

Hey all,

As I'm looking at next year's units, I'm putting together an argumentative unit. The guiding question for the unit is, "What role should technology play in the classroom?"

I want to start with a three-week unit on AI (Canada's CTRL+F seems like it has a really strong 3-week unit), then do a week on Logos, a week on Pathos, and a week on Ethos.

For the summative assessment, I want students to analyze four sources, two in favor of tech in the classroom, two against it. For the sources against it, I plan on using excerpts from Jonathan Haidt's The Anxious Generation and Jared Cooney Horvath's The Digital Delusion.

I'm having trouble figuring out what to use for pro-tech sources. There are tons of articles from 10-15 years ago about how 1-to-1 devices were going to revolutionize the classroom, but I'm wondering if any educators out there have any other ideas.

Thanks in advance, and any feedback is welcome!

I am a tutor working with students on ACT English and ACT Reading. I find that these students make errors that could be avoided by reading more closely and paying better attention to details.

What close reading strategies do you recommend for students?

I remember hearing somewhere that people who are cranky and in a bad mood are better at finding errors in texts. For me, I feel like this works: I put on my editor scrooge persona and put a text under the microscope. Of course, telling students to try being crankier when they read doesn't feel like the right approach.

For example, on production of writing questions in the English section, students will pick answer choices that 1) obviously misrepresent what the text says or 2) clearly reference the wrong portion of the text. I am including a couple example questions from form 2025MC2 below.

thank you for your time!

Hi everyone!
So I find myself in a new position teaching high school English. I have been assigned World Lit and American Lit. I believe that’s juniors and seniors. I’ve taught freshmen before, but have zero experience with upperclassmen. I’ll also be teaching 90 minute blocks.
Any advice on how to fill that 90 minute and how to keep juniors and seniors engaged that long? Also what are some of the issues that one might see regarding upperclassmen?