Start the year with a personal narrative and your students will understand what makes a great story. Or maybe it will help them get into college.

Start this school year by having more fun and experiencing less stress. I have three main techniques to get you on your way.

All of your students may not be as obsessed with novels as you are. Free Literacy Blocks will rope in the kids who want to talk about modern topics.

End the year with a creative podcast project instead of a traditional essay.

Students want to find meaning in literature, and they can do it with the three P's of relevance: the personal, the political, and the philosophical.

Learn how to close read film like you close read a poem. Your students will love it and it's an important life skill.

Mini conferences gives your students time to research and write and get verbal feedback as they plan their next steps. Hear about my latest writing assignment.

Teachable moments should be part of our daily approach to teaching fiction, but what are they and how can we talk about them?

Novels don't have the same visual pizzaz as social media, so we have to find ways to convince students why they should read.  I'll go over five ways to introduce novels that should make the idea of reading for such a long time a lot less scary.  

Film adaptations are a great way to get students to imagine how a story could unfold in today's world.  I'll describe an assignment I give with Dubliners, by James Joyce.