Jody Oliver's List: Workshop: Student/Teacher Connections

"This year's end-of-year paper purge in my middle school office revealed a startling pattern in my teaching practices: I discipline boys far more often than I discipline girls. Flipping through the pink and yellow slips--my school's system for communicating errant behavior to students, advisors, and parents--I found that I gave out nearly twice as many of these warnings to boys than I did to girls, and of the slips I handed out to boys, all but one was for disruptive classroom behavior."

"A while back, I was asked, "What engages students?" Sure, I could respond, sharing anecdotes about what I believed to be engaging, but I thought it would be so much better to lob that question to my own eighth graders. The responses I received from all 220 of them seemed to fall under 10 categories, representing reoccurring themes that appeared again and again. So, from the mouths of babes, here are my students' answers to the question: "What engages students?""

"In the aftermath of the testing regimen, or just the headlong rush to the end of school, educators are loosening their collars, breathing heavy sighs of relief (or resignation), and contemplating whether there is a little time in the remaining weeks to return to their first love: being an educator of young people."

"Whole class discussions are, after lecture, the second most frequently used teaching strategy, one mandated by the Common Core State Standards because of its many rewards: increased perspective-taking, understanding, empathy, and higher-order thinking, among others. These benefits, however, do not manifest without a skillful and knowledgeable facilitator."

Two types of questions are close-ended questions and open-ended questions. Close-ended questions, such as "Did your day go well?" call for a simple yes or no. Most teenagers seem to enjoy closed-ended questions because they don't have to commit themselves to converse or give any other information.

Teenagers are notoriously hard to please and teachers are always looking for original activities that will both capture and hold students' interest. All of the ideas, materials and lesson plans in this section aim to inspire and engage teenage learners of English and to activate learning across all four skills.

The best listing of career planning resources

And here are my resources just for high school students!

Freshman Seminar ideas

Costa and Bloom

A great free poster on Blooms

Lesson plan and video series to share with students