As our summers come to a close, whether you are brand new to teaching or you have been teaching for many years, we are all faced with the same question every year: what do we do on the first day of school? As you may know, we at Keeping the Wonder are passionate about harnessing the same sense of wonder we all felt when were young and bringing that into our classrooms, no matter the grade, content area, or school. Whether you have a lot or a little autonomy in your first few days, know that ... VIEW POST
Keeping the Wonder in the Back-to-School Season
5 Tools That Have Helped Me With Virtual Learning
A few weeks ago, I shared this post on Instagram. That day, I had everything set up to go well. We were going to be reading "The Bus Ride" by Sahar Sabati, so I went all out and tried to decorate for the virtual lesson, I had creepy music playing, and I was even planning to read the short story with the kids using flashlights.Then, my mic wouldn't work for about 20 minutes. I couldn't figure it out, I was getting extremely flustered, but thankfully, my kids were understanding. Unfortunately, by ... VIEW POST
12 Free Back-to-School ELA Ideas
Many of us are returning to school under unprecedented circumstances. Some of us are returning virtually, some hybrid, and some in-person with many new limitations. Regardless of how we return, I'm sure we can all relate on the apprehension, confusion, and stress that is involved in every part of our daily decision-making. Twelve English educators got together to compile this blog post featuring 12 free back-to-school ELA ideas in hopes that you might found some value in them and be able to ... VIEW POST
Lessons Learned from Curriculum Writing and Virtual Collaboration
Over the last few months, I have completed a few grad classes online for my Educational Leadership program, and I've also had the chance to work on the curriculum writing team for the English 9 course at my school. In addition, I taught a summer course and had to collaborate weekly with students and other colleagues.In the spring, we were all thrown into crisis mode. For many of us who are continuing with virtual learning in the fall, we have more of an advantage in that we can be more prepared ... VIEW POST
5 Short Stories to Start Your Year
During the summer, I teach for a program where I have complete autonomy in choosing the texts we read. On Instagram, I asked people for their recommendations of short stories that work for 9th grade that feature a variety of lived experiences and identities, and I received tons of great examples.During our summer program, I decided to pick five short stories to read with the students.These stories are the following:"The 'F Word'" by Firoozeh Dumas"Girl" by Jamaica Kincaid"Thank You, Ma'am" by ... VIEW POST
How to Publish Student Writing
In 2015, my students wrote personal narratives. They kept their stories anonymous and then edited each other's work. In the months that followed, I looked for ways to publish their writing. We used lulu.com. You can see Behind the Door of G115 here. We held book signings, they were interviewed by the local newspaper, and all of the money was used for a huge cookout at the end of the school year and bean bag chairs that they wanted for the classroom. Lulu was a great option, but this ... VIEW POST
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