If you’ve been following along on my teaching journey for some time, you’ll know that as an Adventurous Teacher, my goal is to always keep trying new things, no matter how daunting or intimidating a strategy or technology might be. Last year, I posted 10 Adventurous Teaching Ideas that I planned to try, and I’m happy to announce that I accomplished 9/10 of them! As must as I tried, I really didn’t step up my game as far as grammar instruction is concerned, but I’m okay with being just okay in that area! This year, I have a few new things up my sleeve that I wanted to actually write down as I prepare for the new calendar year. Here is my list of teaching strategies, ideas, and other things that I want to accomplish in 2020.

Make more EdPuzzles

I have one EdPuzzle that I love. Like, when the week came to do my EdPuzzle, I was giddy up until the day I finally got to put it in front of kids. If you don’t know what an EdPuzzle is, it’s summed up pretty simply: its a YouTube video with all of your stop and think questions already preloaded into the video for kids to answer. It’s seriously amazing. I do my EdPuzzle during my Great Gatsby Unit right at the start of discussing Chapter 6. This is the point in the novel when students realize that Jay Gatsby actually has a childhood name and identity that he has been hiding all along - James Gatz. It turns out, to me anyway, that James Gatz and PT Barnum (as portrayed in the incredible film The Greatest Showman) have quite a bit in common! For my EdPuzzle, I have students watch an opening segment of the film (from a clip I found on YouTube) and answer compare and contrast questions about both the characters and the lyrics in the clip. I watch kids stare intently into their computers and then slowly look up at me like OMG MRS. CARDENAS...THEY’RE LIKE...THE SAME!! It’s an awesome day and I want more of these -- EdPuzzle needs to be on my calendar more than once a year!

Redesign my Lit Circle Unit

A very rough sketch (with misspellings and all!) of my initial brainstorming for lit circles 2020…

I’ve done lit circles in the past that I’ve really enjoyed, but last year I was out on maternity leave during my first year teaching in my current school. So, this year, the lit circle unit is fresh! From what I heard about last year, the unit as it stands is in need of a little TLC, and I’m soooo ready to tackle it and give it a face lift. I’ve started by choosing the books from the list of what our school has to choose from and then drafting an Essential Question that links them all together so that we can have ongoing, critical conversations about the issues pertaining to the question. To follow along, make sure you’re checking Instagram and watching my story highlights!

Combine Memoir Writing & The College Essay

As a teacher that mostly helps juniors, I have a lot of kids in front of me that are in the midst of making college and other post high school plans. Whether it’s a college app or a job application cover letter, my students struggle so much with writing about themselves, so I’m going to very intentionally make time for my mini-memoir unit and pair it with some college essay writing prompts. Using mentor texts will be a game changer, I think!

Create a Digital Library of Mentor Sentences

I don’t have it fully fleshed out yet, but stay tuned. Using a combination of Google Sites, Google Forms, and Google Sheets, I think I have a way to let kids contribute to a growing library of killer mentor sentences that they can refer back to again and again (this post is not sponsored by Google -- it just happens to be then answer to all of my classroom conundrums!)

Make Tweaks to my Classroom Library

I did a massive overhaul on my classroom library this year with an effort to be more of a minimalist and be more intentional about helping students have access to books. You can read about how I purged my library from shelves and shelves of unused and unread books to just a cart, and that’s where I’ll also post my reflections after using it for a full school year.

Make More Room for Poetry

Guys, changing schools and learning a new curriculum after ten years of teaching meant bing a good listener and trying everything they way it was presented to me. But now, after a year of witnessing the curriculum in action, I have to say, poetry needs some focused attention. I have so many ideas, and I think my biggest change will be blending poetry instruction into inquiry units rather than having a stand alone unit. If you’re having the same debate in your head, here’s what I’m thinking: I think poetry units that stand alone tend to be units that focus on “skill building” AKA memorizing poetic device terminology. Rarely do full poetry units ever really answer their own essential question or make a meaningful, conceptual impact. That’s certainly possible, but given what we have in our junior curriculum, I think poetry will genuinely help shape bigger conversations we are having in other parts of the school year. Also, I like that they’re seeing it all year rather than in just one stagnant unit.