Well-Written Beach Read? The Memory Keeper’s Daughter
Answers.com defines a good beach book as “engaging and a quick enough read that you can finish most of it on the beach before your sunscreen wears off. A beach book isn’t necessarily literature, but a...
View ArticleSummer Reading-Slowing the Summer Slide
The pressure is on. School starts in another two weeks. Summer reading still needs to be done! Right about this time, there are some parents who are reminding (nagging?) students about their summer...
View ArticleThe Grapes of Wrath-Researching the Context
This summer, 11th and 12th grade Advanced Placement students at Wamogo High School are reading The Grapes of Wrath. John Steinbeck developed the novel from a series of articles commissioned in October...
View ArticleStep Two: Create the “Book Flood”
Classrooms are several feet deep in a “book flood” at the Wamogo Middle and High School. While there has been a torrent of late summer rains that have closed roads and delayed schools in the Northwest...
View ArticleUpdate-Using Used Books in Class
The original purpose of this blog was to explain how used books were purchased in order to increase the classroom libraries at Wamogo Middle and High School, grades 7-12. The name of the blog, “Used...
View ArticleKen and Barbie Do Not Write Unhappy Literature: Case in Point-Toni Morrison
Student: “Is this another unhappy book?” Me:*sigh* “Yes.” Toni Morrison is on my mind. The Advanced Placement English Literature Class (12th grade) has just finished reading her novel Beloved; the...
View ArticleJustice Scalia, Set a Good Example and Do Your Homework
Deputy Solicitor General Edwin Kneedler was before the Supreme Court arguing on behalf of the Health Care Bill when he stated that the Supreme Court Justices would need to look at “the structure and...
View ArticleA Tale of Two Marches-Civil War Historical Fiction Complements Informational...
A series of miscommunications left the eight members of the local Burnham Library Book Club wondering which book they should prepare to read for the next meeting. The month before, a decision was made...
View Article“Stop the Action!” Blogging about Hamlet is a 21st Century Skill
“Hamlet, you yourself had said that to dwell on an act too long leaves one part good, and ‘three parts cowardice;’ please, Hamlet, PLEASE learn to follow your own advice,” pleads TJ in his advice to...
View ArticleGuest Posting on Insanity: A Student’s Letter to College Board
This past semester, each of my Advanced Placement English Literature students adopted one word as the subject of blog posts for ten weeks. After careful consideration, TJ chose the word “insanity”. For...
View ArticleI Wish I Had Thought of Id, Ego, and the Superego in Dr. Seuss’s “The Cat in...
One of my favorite units from the National Council of Teachers of English website (NCTE-http://www.readwritethink.org/) is the unit,“Id, Ego, and the Superego in Dr. Seuss’s The Cat in the Hat” by...
View ArticleFrankenstein-Frightening Choice for Halloween (or any other day!)
It’s Halloween…what is the most frightening story you have ever read? “I busied myself to think of a story, — a story to rival those which had excited us to this task. One which would speak to the...
View ArticleFor Us, Every Day is Digital Learning Day!
Today is Digital Learning Day! To mark the occasion, let me take you through a quick walkthrough of the halls of Wamogo Regional Middle/High School and give you a snapshot on how digital learning looks...
View ArticlePicking Up The (Discarded) Scarlet Letter
In keeping my classroom libraries filled with books, the trends I notice are not necessarily trends in book buying, but trends in book discarding. After exams, midterms or finals, assigned titles are...
View ArticleSpilling Over the Four Corners of a Six Word Text
According to literary legend, Ernest Hemingway wrote a six word short story in response to a bet: So when my Advanced Placement English Literature class was suddenly shortened one day last week due to...
View ArticleMargaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” and Other Delights on International...
What better way to celebrate International Women’s Day 2013 but to pay tribute to Canadian author Margaret Atwood? Poet, novelist, lecturer, inventor, tweeter, and celebrity ice hockey goalie, Atwood’s...
View ArticleGasp! Gatsby is almost 90?
Charles Scribner’s and Son issued the first hardback edition in April 1925, adorning its cover with a painting of a pair of eyes and lips floating on a blue field above a cityscape. “The Great Gatsby...
View ArticleYou Never Forget Your First…Hamlet! Paul Giamatti at Yale Rep
60 of my students met their first Hamlet on stage at Yale Repertory Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut, this past week. Their Hamlet was the actor Paul Giamatti, who after speaking 40% of the play’s...
View ArticleLooking for the Manifesto in the Muck of AP Literature Essays
Right about now, the last week of April, my Advanced Placement English Literature students are noticing a frantic tone creeping into my voice. “No, finish this multiple choice practice FIRST, then...
View ArticleWhy Not Teach to the Advanced Placement Test?
The recent invitation to respond to the statement “Don’t Teach the Test” was under discussion in the New York Times: Invitation to a Dialogue series. The question was posed by Peter Schmidt, the...
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