Are you even an English teacher if you don’t have a huge bin of old magazines in your classroom? Even though print media is declining, magazines are alive and well in English classrooms around the world thanks to tried and true activities like collages and found poetry, and in honour of this medium, I’ve compiled […]

Music has always been a reflection of the times and a chronicle of important issues and viewpoints. Analyzing the themes and perspectives in music can be a powerful tool to help our students look critically at current events, historical perspectives, and engage with social justice issues. Janet Jackson once said, “With music by our side, […]

Grab your popcorn and your overpriced beverage, because we’re going to the movies! Okay, we’re not actually going to the movies, but imagine that kind of hype in your classroom? Using movie trailers in your lessons generates instant, edge of your seat enthusiasm and provides students with what they perceive to be a “fun text” […]

Teaching students to identify narrative point of view in literature and write in a consistent perspective can be pretty dry material, but with these five activity ideas, your lesson will go from blah to ah-hah! Using Excerpts Use short story and novel excerpts to teach each of the narrative points of view. Using mentor texts […]

Making inferences or “reading between the lines” can be one of the trickier skills for students to adapt into their literacy toolkit. I teach my students that when they infer, they are taking the explicit information that the text gives them and combining it with their own thoughts and interpretations based on textual clues to […]