Simply Novel Blog - Teaching Tips and Ideas for Teachers

We all need a giggle every once in a while. (What’s even better is the English teacher nerd in me with the hearty guffaw!) Enter the church lady wi...

My school is in an accreditation year. So we have been preparing in many ways for formal observations. (I’m on the west coast, so we are governed b...

Several years ago, I read an interesting article from the New York Times about helping boys to become “readers” (Boys and Reading: Is there any Hop...

Study hall, Homeroom, WIN time, or some cutesy name related to your mascot (i.e., PAW Power time, Knight Time, you get the point). The part of the...

New Year, New Me. Right? I mean, all the intentions are there to exercise more, lose those extra pounds, read more, budget better, and the list can...

Over the years, I have gone back and forth about the necessity of review days. Sometimes they have felt like a cop-out or a waste of time, and some...

At this point in the semester, I am simultaneously exhausted and invigorated. I can feel the same sentiments coming from my virtual and school-sit...

I always seem to have students who believe that effective writing is verbose. If they exceed the page minimum, they expect a high grade. These stud...

Let’s talk argumentation and debates!  I love it. I love all of it. I love the serious relevant debates because there is so much information out th...

Teaching is complicated and sometimes downright impossible. There are countless viral stories from teachers about why they quit. I’m not too proud ...

Movie days in the classroom tend to have a bad reputation for being a waste of time or a teacher cop-out.  Sure, there are a few bad apple teachers...

Since 2020, the use of technology in the classroom has sky-rocketed. With school shut-downs, teachers were thrown into all sorts of overwhelming si...