To be ready for high school English, including advanced and college prep courses, students must have extensive experience with complex texts. These texts should come from nineteenth century to contemporary time periods and should include both informational and imaginative writings. Diverse complex texts are at the center of a challenging ELA curriculum committed to a […]
Literary and rhetorical analysis involves determining not only what an author is saying but how an author is saying it. This session focuses on strategies (including templates, frames, and sentence stems) for teaching students how to analyze an author’s choices and connect methods (diction, details, and figurative language, such as allusion) to meaning. Participants will […]
In this session, participants will first understand how to help students build background knowledge by providing students informational and visual texts. Participants will also explore how the concrete elements of a text function together to create abstract meaning. Finally, participants will learn how to teach students to express their understanding of texts through creating text-dependent […]
SOLD OUT- Contact info@appliedpractice.com to be added to the Wait List. Over the last decades -- and certainly more recently -- the concept of ethnic identity in times of protest has become an increasingly important issue our students are faced with and one which will need to be addressed in the classroom. Questions of ethnicity […]
From the AP Literature CED: "The highest performing essays on the exam typically recognize and account for contradictions and complexities in the text being analyzed. Students who reduce a complex setting or character to only a single detail or moment where a shift or change occurs may ignore or fail to consider other details that […]
Many works, like Tennessee Williams' Pulitzer prize winning play, "A Streetcar Named Desire" have been banned, censored, or otherwise restricted at times from high school classrooms. Join us for a discussion of Williams' play and best practices on how to handle controversial texts in the classroom. We will also focus on authorial intent and adaptations including the […]
Students are smart. Students make great observations. Students say things that cause us to see ideas or texts differently. Too often, they try to put these things in writing and miss the mark. Too often, we know what they are trying to say, and we want to give them the benefit of the doubt, but we […]
If literature as a field of study is going to survive, then it falls on us as teachers of it to make it matter. Not for us, but for the students sitting in our courses. We know the field, but we also know that - like any artform - it is constantly evolving. How can […]
Many, if not most, students struggle with reading and writing at grade-level. As teachers, it's our responsibility not only to teach grade-level content, but also provide scaffolds to make up for skills that may not have been learned in earlier years. And, though it's important to allow students to search for their unique voices--especially when […]
Description: There is no reason why everything, especially in the English classroom, needs to be new for students. In fact, most students already have a strong understanding of rhetoric, argumentation, research, and literary analysis, they just don’t realize it yet. This session will look at how fictional realities, creative opportunities, high school drama, and common social […]
“You’re much stronger than you think you are. Trust me.” – Superman Recent events have taken a toll on our students and have revealed not only academic but emotional and psychological conflicts as well. As educators we now find ourselves more than ever on the front line teaching not only reading and writing but also helping […]
This session will examine some released student samples from the 2021 AP exam. We will workshop how to help our students revise drafts to add in commentary and evidence to improve scores in Row B of the rubric. Facilitator: Celine Gomez Celine Gomez teaches at Plano West Senior High School in Plano, TX. For the […]
