Big brother really is watching you. Today we accept a certain amount of oversight by government and business as a part of daily life. Students know about all the surveillance cameras that follow them as they move about in the…
Category: classroom activities
Community Building Classroom Activities: A Round-Up
How do you take a group of individual, unrelated people and connect them in a supportive community quickly? It’s a question teacher face at the beginning of every term. Here are some answers. Begin by establishing reasons for students to…
List of Ten: Fun with Crayons
I’m a sucker for office supplies. Snoop around my desk, and you’ll find colored pencils, a rainbow of Sharpies, and a full range of notebooks and pads of paper. It’s no surprise then that I was excited when I found…
March of Time Newsreels in the Classroom
Back in the days before 24-hour news networks, people went to their local movie theaters to see what was going on in the world. The March of Time, perhaps the most well-known producer of these videos, distributed documentaries that covered…
What Are Kidwatching, Microblogging, and Podcasts?
Soon NCTE will be launching an online site for members that will include many cool features, including an online glossary for English teachers. My assignment this afternoon was to come up with 3 definitions to add to the collection as…
Activities That Ask Students to Explore Cultural Mindsets
This week’s release of the Beloit List got me wondering about how the resource might be used in class. Officially known as the Mindset List of the Class of 2014, the Beloit List has been published each August for the…
BP’s Unintended Lesson on Visual Rhetoric
It’s politically correct to be disappointed with BP and their little oil well problem in the Gulf. But how can I be angry when they provide me with such wonderful gifts? First, BP America digitally enhanced some of their oil…
Easy Supplemental Reading: 100 Best Magazine Articles
No matter what textbook I choose for class, there’s always a class or two where I wish I had a few more readings available. Nothing in the text seems quite right, so I end up searching for something online that…
My Literary Genes
I’ve written before about my literary claim to fame: I’m slightly related to Ralph Waldo Emerson, through my great-great-grandmother Anne Emerson. While I know that Anne was Ralph’s third cousin once removed, I’m not exactly sure what that makes me.…
Classroom Activities Using Twitter
Since Twitter is a communications tool, there are infinite ways to use the site in the English classroom. These two excellent videos provide introductions to using Twitter with students that are polished enough to share at staff meetings and professional…