As a basketball coach, March is one of my favorite months. Anytime I turn on the tv, there is a great college basketball game. Duke-North Carolina, Kentucky-Tennessee, Michigan-Michigan State. Conference tournaments. And, of course, the big dance of them all, the NCAA Tournament. March is also one of my favorite months in the classroom. Each … Continue Reading
Denise Trach teaches a variety of English classes at Carmel High School in Carmel, NY. Her work on mindfulness – with both students and teachers – is an inspiration to all. You can connect with her on Twitter, IG, or find out more about her on her personal blog. 1. Walk us through a great … Continue Reading
Susan’s note: This post is written by Adrian Nester who put some thoughts on paper after the pilot reading. I have added a few ideas which are in italics and a teaching point for each path. Before launching into this, I want this sophisticated point (haha) to guide your approach to Row C in the classroom: Do not … Continue Reading
When Brian posted Three Acronyms for Literary Analysis, I knew immediately that I would follow with Quick and Easy Ways into a Poem. This was by far one of the most popular posts on APLitHelp (#RIP) and with good reason. They’re quick, and they’re easy. Many students approach poetry reluctantly feeling inadequate to make sense … Continue Reading
My students summarize, I want them to analyze. This is the battle I face every year. This comes out most often when they get their essays back. They are hoping that I recognized and rewarded their brilliance. But when I conference with students about their work, and we put their essay under a microscope, they … Continue Reading
Last week a few people gathered for a pilot reading for AP Literature in order to gather projections for how many readers would be needed as well as reviewing the new rubric and questions that may bring up during calibration. Eric Rovie and Adrian Nester on Q1 has shared several takeaways listed here which are … Continue Reading
This post is written by Eric Rovie from Brookwood High School in the Atlanta area. While Eric framed these materials for an AP class, they will work for English classes in general. For more on Eric, check out his bio at the end of the post. In the AP Lit CED, Unit 4 is a … Continue Reading
My AP students enter my class having read Romeo and Juliet in ninth grade… and that’s it. No Othello in 10th. No Julius Caesar. No Hamlet. It’s the hand I’m dealt and rather than lament this, I have to get to work building skill as quickly as I can. This isn’t an easy task because Shakespeare’s language … Continue Reading
There are a bunch of lines in Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem “Shoulders” that have stayed with me ever since I discovered it a few years ago. Like many good poems, it takes something small and simple — a man is trying to cross the street in the rain while carrying his son — and turns … Continue Reading
If you could somehow transcribe the first poetry unit that I taught this year, the word that would appear most often would be “complex.” In each of my classes we define complexity as something that has things connected in complicated ways. We apply that definition to poetry, looking for the parts that connect to the … Continue Reading
