This year, I'll do something I call "The Hope Project".  It gives my students the opportunity to make sense of the year and look forward.  

If we walk into our class excited and ready to go, our students will too.  I'll go over some things I've learned about how to be positive.  

Teaching topic by topic instead of chapter by chapter makes life easier on you and your students.  Whole-novel activities allow students to track the development of a topic through the entire story.  

When students learn about race and culture, they learn about everything.  I'll talk about teaching an elective called Racial Literacy and go over four easy ways to talk about race in your ELA classroom.  

My students worked in groups to create a short film in just one week.  I'll take you through ten tips to help your students avoid common mistakes.  

We should reflect on what works best in our classrooms more than once a year.  This week, I'll talk about how both students and teachers should reflect on how to grow and change habits on a regular basis.

Short stories are a great way to introduce the various narrators students might encounter in novels.  I'll talk about free indirect discourse, first person narration, internal monologue and all that good stuff.  

It's fiction, it's not real, but it is relevant.  I'll describe a writing assignment that forces students to think about how fiction connects to the world we live in.  

There are so many great teachers that share their creative ideas online, and this is one of the best ways teachers can improve and find new ways to inspire students. Visit my blog to find links to all the blogs and websites.  

The conclusion can be a game changer for our students who need a good reason to write.  The conclusion is what an education is all about, so let's rethink how we talk about the conclusion.