I immediately liked the name of the new WordPress plug-in, Blackbird Pie. The nursery rhyme popped right into my head: Four and Twenty Black Birds, Baked in a Pie. The plug-in makes this, essentially a jazzy block quotation: [blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/tengrrl/status/1348769496965120″]…
Category: Teaching
Do You Remember Your High School Lit Class?
On NCTE’s Connected Community, James Wilson responded to the discussion about multicultural literature, lamenting that “the focus on multicultural literature over the last 3 decades has resulted in an inability to teach the classics of the Western tradition. Few of…
38 Ways to Write about Writing
The second National Day on Writing is nearly upon us. Wednesday, October 20, is the day established by the National Council of Teachers of English to celebrate the many kinds of writing that people everywhere do. Chances are that the…
Photo Writing Prompt: A Voice From the Past
This prompt is inspired by the piece that I wrote about my high school yearbook photo back in August 2009 for Laurie Halse Anderson’s for Write Fifteen Minutes a Day (WFMAD) and that I submitted to Bedford/St. Martin’s Gallery of…
50 Teaching Links You May Have Missed
I gathered a collection of over 50 links for the ProfHacker Teaching Carnival 4.2. You can find links to teaching in a variety of disciplines at the college and university level, plus links to some humorous articles I found. There…
Photo Writing Prompt: A Reflection on Censorship
September 25–October 2 is Banned Books Week (BBW), so I’ve chosen a photo related to censorship and book banning. This post is the first of what, I hope, will become a regular feature, assuming feedback is positive. Reflection. What do…
More Banned Books Week Resources
One of my cherished possessions is a Muggles for Harry Potter pin from 1999. Eric Crump gave it to me, having picked it up from the NCTE librarian. I hadn’t read a word of J. K. Rowling’s first book, but…
Top 10 Things to Do with a Banned Text
How will you discuss Banned Books Week (BBW) this year? It’s easy to find ideas for displays and activities for libraries. The problem is that most of them are too general or would be difficult to use in the writing…
6 News Stories to Connect to Orwell’s 1984
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…
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…