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LinkTree is a platform designed to allow users to attach and publish various links all in one place. It is user friendly and perfect for the creation of an ePortfolio.

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Adobe Express is a user friendly platform that helps people produce digital media. For example, ads, video, photo editing, posters, etc. This is a great tool aiding in creating interesting details for lessons.

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¹ Enjoy limited free remove background Quick Actions. Unlimited with an Adobe Express Premium plan membership.

² Billing begins when your free trial ends. Cancel before free trial ends and you won't be charged. Subscription automatically renews until you cancel. Cancel anytime.

³ Adobe Express subscription required. The Adobe Stock photo collection does not include Premium or editorial content. Limited Adobe Stock functionality available in web page and video features.

⁴Introductory offer for Adobe Express starts at {{pricing.formatted}}/month per license for the 1st year, and renews at {{pricing.formattedBP}}/month per license. Price subject to change. Minimum 2 seat purchase.

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Free Design, Photo, and Video Tool | Adobe Express

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Adobe Express is an all-in-one design, photo, and video tool to make content creation easy. Quickly and easily make stunning social content, videos, logos, and more to stand out on social and beyond.

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Teach Thought is an organization based on this website and on instagram that offer advice, topic suggestions and how to facilitate learning for students! I'll be sure to refer to this source when I'm stuck on a lesson.

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Edutopia is an online resource made by teachers for teachers. It advises project ideas, how to go about situations and overall inspiration for strengthening education.

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George Lucas Educational Foundation

The benefits of movement in the classroom aren't limited to younger students. Pairing new words and concepts with gestures or dance moves locks in understanding-and active brain breaks prime students to learn even more.

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A free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education.

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Common sense education is like a master key of resources. It encourages media literacy, provides lesson ideas, YouTube video breakdowns, lesson templates, class activities and even articles for teachers needing guidance. It is the place for all the resources in one place! I’ll be sure to refer to it often.

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Our website for families provides reviews and ratings of movies, books, games, apps, and other media to help parents and families make informed decisions about the media their children use.

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Common Sense Education provides educators and students with the resources they need to harness the power of technology for learning and life. Find our free K-12 Digital Citizenship Curriculum, reviews of popular edtech apps, tips on teaching responsible AI use, and resources for protecting student privacy and online safety.

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The sift archive is an organization that targets improving news literacy for people and students. In this day, it is difficult to analyze media for accuracy or truth. In cases of doubt, I’d make it a point to refer to this!

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The Sift is a free weekly newsletter for educators delivered during the school year that offers a rundown of the latest topics in news literacy - including trends and issues in misinformation, social media, artificial intelligence, journalism and press freedom. It provides discussion prompts, teaching ideas, classroom guides and a monthly video series that features professional journalists.

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While growing in popularity with the youth, Canva is a pretty user-friendly designing platform. I’ve been using it for presentations, lecture slides and other creative projects. Despite the limited free features, I find it much easier to make pleasing presentations compared to google slides or PowerPoint.

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Canva is a free-to-use online graphic design tool. Use it to create social media posts, presentations, posters, videos, logos and more.

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This resources could be helpful to create worksheets for students. This website is managed by a few real world English teachers and specialists! It offers a wide variety of resources like advice, worksheets, reading comprehension tools, etc. It’ll be helpful to use as a reference in the classroom.

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You're in the middle of your school year and you're trying to keep your students motivated through those hump months. Or it's the beginning of a new semester and you want to make it clear that your classroom is a great place to be. Sometimes you just need something quick and engaging to get some engagement in the classroom, and the best way to do this is with short, activities that build skills at the same time. I've collected some of my favorite strategies here and am offering you 5 ways to energize your students while they learn.

1. Do it standing up

Many of the exercises we ask students to do can be done on their feet. When any human sits for long periods of time, the natural inclination to veg kicks in. If we build in opportunities for students to move a bit during class, you will be amazed at how it improves energy and engagement.

And you don't need to plan something elaborate to make this happen.

The think-pair-share is a well-used strategy in many classrooms: pose a question, give students time to reflect, then have them share with a partner. It's an effective way to get all students thinking. However, when I read the room and see that I may be losing the students, I'll get them to do a stand and share instead. It's exactly the same as the turn-and-talk, they just do it standing up.

And just giving students a few minutes to stand can do wonders for re-energizing them.
I used lots of activities that required students to work standing up. If you like the idea, check out these blog posts: The Gallery Walk Quote walk Take it to the wall 10 ways to get students moving to learn
NOTE: the first time you get students to stand to work, you may have to cajole them into it. You aren't teaching physics but a body at rest does tend to stay at rest. Once you train them, however, your students will get into it. Trust me. I did it every semester with every group of students I had- and it works!

Now on to some other ways you can energize your students while they learn.

2. Energize with a Sentence Stem Challenge

If you'd like to help your students improve the discussions they have in class, try this sentence stem challenge.

Tbis strategy is the perfect way to energize your students because not only will they enjoy the competition of the challeng e, they will also practice their skills for discussion. It's also something that can take very little time.

There are two ways you can do this:

The quickest and easiest version do when they are studying a text together - a novel, a short story, even a poem. Group your students and give them sentence stems for discussing author technique (👉🏻 grab it here). Tell your students that they will be competing to see which group can come up with the most accurate assertions about the text in the time you give them.

Timing will depend on the age of your students and complexity of the text, so you'll have to be the judge of that. However, I'd probably start with five minutes and then circulate to see how they are getting along. Give them a one minute warning when it looks like most are getting to the end.

This is a great way to know only energize your students, but also to have them practice writing analytically.

You can do something similar with discussion stems: assign a topic that you think students will engage with, one that will have multiple points of view. For example, should we have school uniforms? Would a four day school week work? Should our screen time be limited?

First, start by giving students a handout with some sentence starters or stems. You can access some of mine here. Then, group them and tell them you want them to brainstorm how they feel about the topic. Then, you get reps from each group up to the front of the room to practice debating the issue using the sentence stems. You'll get more detail and direction here.

If your students like this, extend it with an argumentative or persuasive challenge (that's fun to do and easy to grade!)

3. Sagas or 100 word narratives engage students

These short, meaningful stories can pack a powerful punch that energizes even the most apathetic student. Most students love to tell their stories, and when you give them a short, focused way to do so, they'll get engaged.

Start with a six word memoir: Tell the story of this class right now. Give them this example (or one of your own) as a jumping off point: Students look bored; must change something. Or Bell's ringing soon. Time to dance.

Next, you can move on to more words with sagas, short 50-100 word narratives that focus on point of view and conflict. My students used to have so much fun with these that they often begged to do more. Seriously.

You can check out my saga lesson here. The New York Times also has lots of ideas and examples for 100 word narratives.

4. Create a fake TikTok video as a character in your book

If your school is ok with students using phones, have them work in small groups or pairs to create a fake TikTok video that captures some aspect of a character in a text you are studying together.

Tell them to pick one characteristic and that the content of the video needs to illustrate this trait without a) saying who the character is and b) what the trait is. Students will submit the videos to you and guess as a class who and what each group was trying to capture.

Your students will have a hoot - and practice their analytical skills at the same time.

5. Teach analysis with visuals

If you want to build your students' analytical muscles, spend some time analyzing visuals. They find them much less intimidating than text. And, let's face it, many of them spend more time inundated with visuals than the ideas in the books we give them to read. So it makes sense to devote some time to analyzing them.

To do this, find some interesting visuals and ask your students to analyze what the creator was trying to achieve with it. Your students will enjoy the process and use skills they can transfer to close reading.

You can
get more ideas for teaching visual literacy here.

So there are 5 ways you can energize your students while they learn. Which one might you use with yours?
Here are more ideas from my friends here in the Coffee Shop: 8 Ways to get students moving

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5 Ways to Promote Reading in the Classroom

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A great blog of secondary English teachers helping you find great ideas to enhance your classroom!