Shaking Up Shakespeare: Bringing the Play Back into Shakespeare’s Plays

Groans erupt from your class as you announce the start of your next unit, Shakespeare. How do you combat the negative feelings students already have about Shakespeare? How do you make Shakespeare fresh for this generation of students? This presentation is full of ideas about how to combat some of the most common problems when teaching Shakespeare: language barriers, negative stereotypes, drama terms and vocabulary, disengagement, and boredom.

Interviews and Cross-curricular Writing

How can you get students to connect deeply with a text and the historical context in which it is written? How is a person impacted by the historical events that happen during their lifetime? How do authors draw on historical and cultural events in developing their characters? Using interviews, students see a connection between their family’s history and the historical events that occurred during various generations. We can then use these interviews as primary sources for authentic responses to literature. We will brainstorm ways in which interviews can be incorporated in your existing curricula.

Teaching Consent Through YA Literature

This presentation will take a look at teaching consent through various books. We will define consent, look at songs that both ask for and ignore consent, and dive into books that allow readers to see the four aspects of consent for this unit. Teachers will leave with a unit of work that is valuable and engaging.

Adventures in Empathy: Inviting Videogames into First Year Writing

Building on the work of Bonnie Ruberg and Stephen Greer, we unpack affordances of otherness in mainstream video gaming. Voraciously consumed by our students, games-as-texts do ludic and narrative work akin to literary fiction: they encourage confronting, understanding, and bonding with the unfamiliar. In the writing classroom, these mass-texts are an emerging vector of empathic response, academic engagement, and digital literacies.

When you put this all together, just make sure you don’t have things separated from their names, etc. It requires some fenagaling in the end, but it looks clean.

Authentic Classroom Management Strategies for the High School ELA Classroom

Looking for ways to manage your classroom that create positive spaces for students to be themselves? Wanting to avoid yelling and power struggles between yourself and your students? Looking for something more sustainable and fulfilling than relying on admin to “discipline” on your behalf? My name is Angie Heiser, and I have some tips and tricks for you! I have been in the high school ELA classroom for 10 years and have implemented a variety of tactics that have helped me build a sustainable classroom management plan that has changed my teaching career. Join me as I give you ideas to change your perception of “classroom management” and help you create something sustainable and enjoyable for yourself and your students.

Ditching Multiple Choice Tests: Using Problem Based Learning as measurements of student learning through the use of Real World Experiences

Time and time again, students are asked to [recite information at the end of each unit, often in the form of multiple choice tests. But through this practice, the line between information learned vs. information memorized becomes increasingly blurred. Creating a Real World Experience provides students with the opportunity to learn through the use of inquiry: questioning, researching, presenting, and applying their learning to real life. Each Real World Experience is a culmination of literature, writing, history, and of course, civics. Through the accompaniment of both whole class and small group novels, students create genuine displays that reflect what they have learned and how their newfound knowledge can be applied to current events. In this session, you will be introduced to an example of a Real World Experience, which serves as each unit’s summative assessment. We will discuss planning, how to create assignments that align with Standards-Based Grading, and even take a look at a few student examples.

When you put this all together, just make sure you don’t have things separated from their names, etc. It requires some fenagaling in the end, but it looks clean.