As part of the NCTE High School Literature Series, Tim O'Brien in the Classroom focuses on opportunities for classroom discussion and writing assignments, including lessons, open-ended prompts, and student writing samples.
Tim O'Brien in the Classroom: "This too is true: Stories can save us"
Violent Red, Ogre Green, and Delicious White: Expanding Meaning Potential through Media
This article reports on the meaning potential of daily access to drawing/writing media for widening and deepening meaning construction.
A Failure of the Imagination
This article discusses the imaginative activities and assignments that teachers often assign that violate the text around which the lesson is focused and that mislead students about its meaning.
Adolescents and Digital Literacies: Learning Alongside Our Students
This book isn't about technology. It's about the teaching practices that technology enables. This book addresses the ways in which teachers and students work together to navigate continuous change and what it means to read, write, view, listen, and communicate in the twenty-first century.
A Conversation with Sara Zarr
Tune in to hear Sara Zarr discuss religious faith and some of the thinking behind her newest novel, Once Was Lost.
Life's Journeys: Help Along the Way
Tap into teen and preteen readers' interest in adolescent-mentor relationships with these recommendations!
Connection Stems
Connection Stems give students the language (and a reminder) to support their understanding by tying new learning to what they know about themselves and their world.
K-W-L-S Chart
This printable extends the familiar K-W-L's means of organizing students' prior knowledge, formulating inquiry questions, and recording new learning by adding space for questions for further inquiry.
Venn Diagram, 3 Circles
Students use this graphic organizer to describe similarities and differences between three objects or ideas.
I-Search Chart
As part of an I-Search writing process, this handout facilitates the formation of meaningful questions and subquestions for student inquiry.
I-Search Process Reflection Chart
This chart asks students to consider their challenges and successes across the span of the research process, from question formulation to the final write-up.
I-Chart
This printout assists students with generating meaningful questions about a topic and organizing their writing by using a structured guide while researching.
Power Notes
This printout teaches students a method for organizing their thoughts that involves assigning "powers" to different ideas. This outlining technique helps students differentiate between main ideas and supporting details.
Exit Slips
This printout provides prompts that help students reflect on and process new information and think critically, and offers teachers the opportunity to differentiate upcoming instruction based on these reflections.
Haiku Starter
This graphic organizer provides students the opportunity to brainstorm words about a given topic, count and record the syllables, and draft a haiku.
Connection Web
Students use this printout to expand on connections they have made to a text and use those details to write essays or create projects about the text.
Double-Entry Journal
This printout helps students record ideas and situations from texts in one column, and their reactions in the second, thus making a connection between the text and themselves, another text, or the world.
RAFT Writing Template
Students can utilize this printout to organize their writing as they learn to use the RAFT strategy. This printout enables students to clearly define their role, audience, format, and topic for writing.
Seed Discussion Organizer
Students can utilize this printout to organize their thoughts as a new concept or content is introduced through a Seed Discussion. This printout readies students to acquire new knowledge by organizing what they know and what they're prepared to learn.