Some of the most memorable projects and activities that I remember from my own high school experience involved filming what can only be described as cinematic masterpieces, if only in our own minds. I remember two standout performances in particular – a group project film about a viral pandemic outbreak, which you would think should […]

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 […]

Teaching students to visualize while they read is an essential skill in becoming an active reader because it enables them to make inferences while they read, recall and summarize the text, and make a deeper connection to the text by visually demonstrating their unique interpretation of it. While some students love the opportunity to get […]

While reading and viewing, I find that my students have difficulty maintaining focus, so one of the strategies I use to help them be more active readers and viewers is predicting. Making predictions boosts engagement because students are more invested in what they are reading, to see if their predictions were correct. Placemat Predictions Before […]