English Education Articles for Teachers

This is part six of a six-part series that focuses on various grammar topics. Check the Lesson Planet Community for the previous five installments, or click on the topics in the paragraph below.  How do we put it all together? You can talk subject-verb agreement, verb tenses, modifiers, conjunct...

This is part five of a six-part series that focuses on various grammar topics. Check the Lesson Planet Community each Wednesday for the next installment. Maybe it's just the fine state of Tennessee, but it seems as if test makers love parallelism. It doesn't just make a cursory appearance, but s...

What is the difference between realistic fiction and historical fiction? Autobiography and biography? Fairy tale and fantasy? Understanding the genre of a story or passage can lead to increased comprehension of the text. Teaching genre can be difficult; here are some strategies that have worked f...

This is part four of a six-part series that focuses on various grammar topics. Check the Lesson Planet Community each Wednesday for the next installment. Modifiers are the key to nuance in language. They add degrees, shades, and qualifications to meaning. They elevate language from a utilitarian...

This is part three of a six-part series that focuses on various grammar topics. Check the Lesson Planet Community each Wednesday for the next installment. Most people think they have a handle on verb tenses. Past, present, future, right? Actually, there are technically 13 tenses in the English l...

This is part two of a six-part series that focuses on various grammar topics. Check the Lesson Planet Community each Wednesday for the next installment. Like many of you, I teach in a public school where my students can easily be three or four reading levels behind where they should be. At my sc...

This is part one of a six-part series that focuses on various grammar topics. Check the Lesson Planet Community each Wednesday for the next installment. Every time I say the word, “conjunction,” my class spontaneously bursts into a rendition of “Conjunction Junction” from Schoolhouse Rock. Beyon...

Serial. It's the podcast your friends won't shut up about. Or maybe it's the podcast you're personally obsessed with. Or, if you're like me, it's the thing that made you stop and say, "Hmm... people actually listen to podcasts?" Serial defies easy explanations, but here it goes: It is a spinoff...

As a relatively young person, I'm a bit closer to my high school days than the average teacher. So, perhaps I've just repressed my memories, because I forgot the suffocating amount of angsty drama that comes with the high school territory.  It's easy to overlook it when you're teaching sentence ...

It’s the best reading encounter of all—the moment when you’ve forgotten where you are because you are completely immersed in a story. What makes this experience even better? When you realize that the story that transported you to another time and place is a true story. This is just one gift of na...

The right question at the right time can have a monumental effect on student understanding and comprehension. This is why we have been hearing so much about both text-dependent questions and depth of knowledge (DOK) through the rollout of Common Core. However, not everyone is able to see the brid...

Mood is one of those things that readers pick up intuitively. Excellent writers work hard to set a mood and tone that is natural and does not draw attention to the mechanics of how they created the mood.    Often I'll stop and ask my class about the mood of the story, and they will be correct. ...

For better or for worse, all of our favorite books as children are being given the movie treatment. This can be a positive experience for many, but a harrowing and childhood-destroying experience for others. As for myself, I often undergo a Gollum/Sméagol-style conversation whenever one of the b...

How do you decide which books or resources to utilize in your classroom? As the concept of text complexity spreads, the decision process for choosing appropriate texts for the classroom may become more difficult. This is due to the fact that the newly rediscovered dedication to text complexity ha...

What was your SAT score? Do you even remember? Regardless of school district, GPA, or current academic standing, teenagers across the nation fear taking the SAT. There are SAT prep courses, cram sessions, and student study groups. Kids study SAT vocabulary, buy study books, or begin taking the ex...