Valentine’s Day Blog Hop 2015

‘Tis the season of Valentine’s love, and I’m excited to be joining some amazing secondary bloggers in this blog hop hosted by The Language Arts Classroom, Faulkner’s Fast Five, and The Literary Maven.

I have a lot to feel grateful for on Valentine’s day; my husband, children, parents, siblings and friends let me know that I am loved pretty regularly.  But my personal life isn’t why you’re reading this blog, so this post is about what I LOVE about teaching.

1. The one thing I love the most about teaching is the interaction I have with the students.  There is no better high as a teacher than when your charges are engaged in a lesson, interacting with you and with each other in a way that shows they are learning–and they are having fun too!  Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not living on a cloud of teaching joy where this happens all the time.  But when it does, it makes everything else worthwhile.

2. The resource I love using the most, is one of the first ones I created for TpT, because I loved using it with my students.  When I teach writing, I use a workshop approach and, as I do with everything, I stress the process.  I want my students to know that they will always create better pieces of writing when they take their time and think about the best way to get their ideas across to their readers.  This resource takes students through the process of writing an essay, one that can’t happen the night before it’s due.  And, I usually get some believers, for many will comment on how much better their essays are because they took the time to revise.  You can find the product with the lessons I use HERE.

3.  This year, I’m giving a special Valentine’s message to my students.

February is change-of-semester time in high school, so we don’t always know our students very well at this point. However, my IB class has been with me since this time last year, and I’ve come to admire and appreciate things about each of them.  So, when they get an assignment back next week, I’m going to staple a Valentine’s message to the top of it.  If you’d like to do the same for your students, you can download my
FREEBIE here.

4. I would love for all of my students to understand that working hard will pay great dividends for them.  It’s a song I sing all of the time, but recently I discovered a youtube video where a teacher spreads the word in a much more effective way than I do.  I plan to play this for all of my new classes this week in the hopes that some of them get inspired to do their best this semester:

5.  I love Penny Kittle’s books, Book Love and Write Beside Them.  She has a no-nonsense approach to reading and writing workshops that put the focus on student engagement and real learning.  I am planning to incorporate many of her great ideas into my teaching this semester.  Look forward to some blog posts as I try some new things!