As a middle school teacher, I didn’t usually have to explicitly teach spelling. However, I did have to explicitly teach spelling in my first year of teaching, when I taught 6th grade English language arts. I was a little thrown off by this, because I didn’t think that spelling was taught beyond elementary school, but it was required of me, so I did it, obviously. 🙂 But then, that begged the question of how to make spelling fun for kids? I think we all know that kids, no matter what age, are not jumping for joy to be assigned spelling homework.
How I Taught the Diary of Anne Frank
I think that, as teachers, we can all agree that The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank is a classic and icon text to teach, not in the least because of Anne’s incredible and heart-wrenching story. I was able to choose the texts I taught in my first year of teaching, and The Diary of Anne Frank was one of the books I chose. Although I was teaching in a low-income charter school with students who were primarily non-native English speakers from other countries (mostly Somalia, but other countries, as well), most of my students found Anne’s story intriguing and got into the book.
How to Grade Student Writing Quickly
When I was still teaching, I had to teach writing every single year. Every. Single. Year. And while I wanted to teach English Language Arts, it was not my favorite thing to teach students writing, and it was even less of a favorite thing to grade student writing. However, each year that I was in the classroom, that’s what I found myself doing many times throughout the school year.