Tales from Room 801

There are so many fun activities that you can do with your students for Halloween and still teach your required curriculum.  Below you will find several activities to use whether you are teaching fiction, nonfiction, or poetry in your classroom. Teaching Fiction Middle school students love a good scary story.  Halloween is a great time to pull out all your old favorites, The Tell Tale Heart, The Cask of Amontillado, etc. A few lesser known scary stories that I love to read in my classroom are "The Coughing Dog" and "The White Dress."  Both of the stories are very short, easy to read and highly engaging. The White Dress "The White Dress" tells the story of a girl that needs a dress for an upcoming school dance, but she can't afford one.  While at a funeral, she notices a beautiful dress on a girl in a casket.  She decides to steal the dress and wear it to the dance.  Turns out the dress is cursed and one thing leads to another... The sto...

During the past few years, I am embarrassed to say that my students have read very few books.  We have really focused on short stories and story excerpts.  Because of our previous focus, I feel that my love of reading hasn't really been shown to my students.  One of the goals I have for my students this year is to read more actual books.  My partner teacher and I decided that this year, our students were going to read at least 3 books in class.  This may not seem like much to some English teachers, but for us, this will be a huge shift in our teaching.  To accomplish this goal, we are planning to implement reading workshop at least twice a week.   So this week was our first week at school.  We knew that to be able to implement this shift we needed to start right away.  (If not, it's too easy to go back to our usual ways of teaching.)  So we decided to start on Friday of the first week.   Getting Started ...

I can't believe that the last week of summer is actually here.  I had so much fun this summer on the mommy circuit that I'm not sure if I am really ready to go back to school this year.  (This is a big deal for me, because I am always ready to go back.) I have a lot to look forward to this year.  This will be my 6th year teaching 8th grade English in a title 1 school.  This year we get a larger BLOCK for ELA!!!  I actually get each of my students for 1 1/2 hours a day.  I couldn't be more happy about this.  This will allow me the time to actually try out a lot of the things I have been wanting to try in the classroom. It is also one of the reasons that I have decided to start this blog.  I am really looking forward to putting this year on "paper."  We will see how this all goes.  I did go to my classroom today.  My son and I spent several hours in my classroom, hanging curtains, moving filing cabinets and b...

Welcome to Tales from Room 801.   I am really excited to start a blog.  I have lots of ideas of things I would like to include here, but you know how busy everything gets once the school year starts! A little about me... I have been teaching 7th and/or 8th grade English for 6 years.  I love to read.  I think learning to love reading is one of the most important things in life, especially in school. I have been married to the most amazing, hilarious, and brilliant husband for 8 years.  We have a full of life, intelligent, and crazy 3 year-old son.  We also have a dog and two cats.  We have a very full house. I'm not sure how often I will be able to post, but I would like to post some of the awesome things that are going on in my classroom.  Let me know if there is something that interests you and I will try to work it in. Until then... Welcome to tales from Room 801!