In a world where the love for books is timeless, as educators, we know the magic of a well-told tale. We ignite knowledge and passion for literature in our students. We spend hours immersed in stories, guiding young minds and sharing the joy of reading. Have you thought of gifting a little magic to yourself or other book lovers? Imagine unwrapping a gift that honors your love for books — and the immense joy that would be! In this blog post, I have curated a list of delightful gifts for book enthusiasts, including a FREE DOWNLOAD Gift Guide for you to skim through as well.

Valentine’s Day is the perfect way for ELA teachers at the high school level to have a little bit of fun and give students the chance to be creative. English classes almost always have a series of novels and characters at the ready, so why not ask students to write some haiku love poems between characters? Here’s the activity, how it started, and how to do it yourself.

Keeping rhetorical analysis fun isn’t easy, but here’s a simple idea that requires no extra work on your end. Handprint or five-finger analysis is a memorable and creative way to analyze an argument and you can easily customize this organizer to fit any season or text you are studying.

There’s a lot more to teaching in the month of December than just cute holiday sentiments.  This time of year is challenging for so many reasons; from the looming horror of final exams to the downright awful cold weather (remember, Chicago girl here!), December is a teaching challenge of focus, measuring learning from the entire semester, and finding ways to authentically remember the heart of the season in our classrooms.