English & Language Arts Teacher BlogThis blog is for secondary English, ELA, and language arts teachers filled with lesson plans, humor, product recommendations, teaching ideas, tips, and tricks and much more! “Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.” ― Winston Churchill So let’s keep moving forward! Helpful Stuff “There is more to life than just work, even if you really enjoy your career a lot like we do.” Check out these awesome self-care tips from these teachers of the year:
Side note: As teachers, we know that just because a reading test says that it’s for a specific grade, it is often more versatile. We often have students that read a few grade levels above & below the grade they are currently in. You know your students best so you are the best judge of what your students need! All of our reading assessments come in an editable Microsoft Word format that lets you customize to your style, add & remove questions, and make it your own! Check it out here how long will it preview so you can check it out before you buy. Try it out and let us know how it goes! Don’t forget to tag us in your posts on Instagram as @shining_scholar_education and Facebook as Shining Scholar Education! A Little Inspiration Because our headspace matters when we are trying to show up as our best selves for our students, our loved ones, and ourselves! Check out the Emotional Cycle of Change podcast episode of the Mindset Mentor with Rob Dial (which the podcast show “The Mindset Mentor” covers frequently) and see if you can spot any patterns in your life where you do this. Stage 1: Uninformed Optimism Stage 2: Informed Pessimism Stage 3: Valley of Despair Stage 4: Informed Optimism Stage 5: Success & Fulfillment Change can be hard but knowledge is power! Now let’s go apply this in our lives!
As always, please forward this to any teacher that could benefit from this message and help spread the love! The goal of these messages is to help ourselves improve—for our students, for our loved ones, and for ourselves. You can always reply to this message or message us on Facebook here! Keep changing the world! Charlie with Shining Scholar Education P.S. Consider joining our TPT Affiliate Program for 25% commissions here! Want to join our email list? Click below! MS ELAR teachers Click here! HS ELAR teachers Click here! And check out our TPT store here! Get up, get it done, No excuses —none! But First, A Chuckle!  Helpful Stuff (The following links are Amazon affiliate links, but don’t worry, it does not affect your price at all :)) These amazing removable, waterproof, dishwasher-and-freezer-safe, self-laminating labels are not just perfect for the house but I use them at school too! I label the hot chocolate, coffee, and tea containers that I have available for students in my classroom. I also use them to label all my ceramic plates and cups I leave in the cupboards in the teacher’s lounge (since they have a habit of growing legs and disappearing from time to time, lol). They have also helped save the life of some utensils I leave at work for making my lunch. Since we have a dishwasher in the teacher’s lounge, I’ve made sure to label all my utensils that are not dishwasher safe, because many have sadly met their demise in the dishwasher, haha. Here’s a pic of a basting brush that we all use with our new air fryer!  As you can see, the label has gone through several washes already and still looks good as new! These amazing little labels have paid themselves off tenfold with the money & time saved by not having to replace things over and over again! Check them out on Amazon here! Recommendations Who doesn’t love to argue and win? Check out our “Student Lawyers: Criminal Court Mock Trials & Cases with PowerPoint” lesson to help your students sharpen their critical thinking skills and have fun trying to win the case for their client! This activity is perfect as a filler activity or as a full class-period lesson to improve students’ logic and reasoning skills! You decide the duration for the activity and in my experience we have often extended it to a few days (as long as we get through the required stuff first) and boy, are they motivated to get to this activity! Here's a quick video summary of this awesome activity!
Don’t forget to tag us in your posts on Instagram as @shining_scholar_education and Facebook as Shining Scholar Education! A Little Inspiration This AMAZING podcast episode entitled “Enjoy It Now” (from the show Let It Be Easy with Susie Moore) reminds us of the importance of being present and enjoying the blessings you have NOW. Enjoying *every* bite of your food. Not putting off the really important things because “how you spend your time, what you give your attention to, is the deepest, truest reflection of your priorities .” BAM! As always, please forward this to any teacher that could benefit from this message and help spread the love! The goal of these messages is to help ourselves improve—for our students, for our loved ones, and for ourselves. You can always reply to this message or message us on Facebook here! Keep changing the world! Charlie with Shining Scholar Education P.S. Consider joining our TPT Affiliate Program for 25% commissions here! Want to join our email list? Click below! MS ELAR teachers Click here! HS ELAR teachers Click here! And check out our TPT store here! Remember, what we do everyday matters more than we think! Helpful Stuff This YouTube video reminds us of the most fundamental things to help build upon so we can actually teach! Recommendations I really, really geek out on pens. Like, bad. 🤓 So believe me when I tell you that I literally tried pretty much all the erasable gel pens Amazon had to offer (final count was about 13 different brands and types of pen tips) and the final verdict was clear: Sunacme erasable gel pens! I thought the .7mm tip would be too broad since I usually prefer .5mm but these are a perfect balance in between for signing all sorts of stuff at school. As far as the erasable part, they can only be erased by friction (the tip at the end is a silicone-like material that erases the ink with friction) and this brand is the only one that let me erase it AND rewrite in the same spot over 3 times! Of course as English teachers, I’m sure we all hope we would never have to rewrite something three times, lol! Sunacme’s ink was also the more vibrant and bold of the options; the others looked too light and somewhat faded. These are indistinguishable from regular, non-erasable gel pens! Check it out:  Available in packs of red, blue, and black ink (16-pack for $10.99 right now —that’s less that $1 per pen!) and in packs of just black and blue ink (16-pack for $9.99!) (These links are Amazon affiliate links, but don’t worry, it does not affect your price at all :)) Try these out and let us know how you like them! Don’t forget to tag us in your posts on Instagram as @shining_scholar_education and Facebook as Shining Scholar Education! A Little Inspiration  Reflection question: how many things and possibilities do we block ourselves off from because our beliefs are set that something is bad or has to be a certain way?
As always, please forward this to any teacher that could benefit from this message and help spread the love! The goal of these messages is to help ourselves improve—for our students, for our loved ones, and for ourselves. You can always reply to this message or message us on Facebook here! Keep changing the world! Charlie with Shining Scholar Education P.S. Consider joining our TPT Affiliate Program for 25% commissions here! Want to join our email list? Click below! MS ELAR teachers Click here! HS ELAR teachers Click here! And check out our TPT store here! Here’s to another great week! Helpful Stuff & Recommendations  Last week we shared the 7 levels deep exercise to help students discover their deeper purpose and motivation for success. Now we are very excited to share this lesson plan on how to help students build better habits and continue to reach their goals! It’s called “How to Develop Good Habits, Reach Your Goals, and Improve Your Life”! We are all about staying motivated and personal growth so we decided to make this lesson to help students set clear, realistic goals, monitor & adjust their progress, break bad habits & form good ones, and provide key strategies to help keep them motivated throughout the whole process. Inspired by books by Tony Robbins, Napoleon Hill, Jim Rohn, Sean Covey, John C. Maxwell, Martin Seligman, and countless other successful mentors and coaches, we have filtered out & concentrated the strategies, wisdom, and steps needed for effective change for teens and young adults. Some topics discussed and aimed for improvement are: • Psychology (Positive, Cognitive, Social, Behavioral, Industrial, and others) • Psychosomatic Illness • Positive & Negative Reinforcement and Punishment • Behavior Modification Everything in this lesson is worded in teen-friendly language with relatable ideas and situations adolescents would find themselves in. It also includes helpful pictures and graphic organizers for students to interact with the lessons effectively. Some notable Daily Thought titles are: 1. The Beauty and Struggle of Self-Transformation 2. Attitude is 99% of Success...and Write it Down! 3. Hard Truths in Life We Must All Accept...But There’s Good Ones, Too! 4. It’s not your potential that matters - it’s what you actually do! (And Ways to Stay Motivated) 5. Adopt an Attitude of Gratitude! 6. Patience, Small Grasshopper (Instant Gratification VS Delayed Gratification) 7. Time Management (Don’t Spend Your Time...Invest it!) 8. Handling Failure...Because Everyone Fails at Some Point 9. Shifting from the Subconscious to the Conscious 10. Happiness is a Muscle...so Work it Out! Every Daily Thought comes with space for students to personally reflect on the day’s lesson on how it relates to them and how they will implement the strategies and practices personally. This lesson is designed to be worked on and reflected daily and it is very important that the participants adhere to the schedule to achieve the intended desired results! We have made it free for a limited time so grab yours now and start helping your students become even more successful by working to build better habits daily! Try it out and let us know how it goes! Don’t forget to tag us in your posts on Instagram as @shining_scholar_education and Facebook as Shining Scholar Education! Because through helping others, we all win! A Little Inspiration Here’s a powerful quote I heard on the Mindset Mentor podcast recently and absolutely had to share! Preparing to do the thing isn't doing the thing. Scheduling time to do the thing isn't doing the thing. Making a to-do list for the thing isn't doing the thing. Telling people you're going to do the thing isn't doing the thing. Messaging friends who may or may not be doing the thing isn't doing the thing. Writing a banger tweet about how you're going to do the thing isn't doing the thing. Hating on yourself for not doing the thing isn't doing the thing. Hating on other people who have done the thing isn't doing the thing. Hating on the obstacles in the way of doing the thing isn't doing the thing. Fantasizing about all of the adoration you'll receive once you do the thing isn't doing the thing. Reading about how to do the thing isn't doing the thing. Reading about how other people did the thing isn't doing the thing. Reading this essay isn't doing the thing. The only thing that is doing the thing is doing the thing. -Gareth Evans As always, please forward this to any teacher that could benefit from this message and help spread the love! The goal of these messages is to help ourselves improve—for our students, for our loved ones, and for ourselves. You can always reply to this message or message us on Facebook here! Keep changing the world! Charlie with Shining Scholar Education P.S. Consider joining our TPT Affiliate Program for 25% commissions here! Want to join our email list? Click below! MS ELAR teachers Click here! HS ELAR teachers Click here! And check out our TPT store here! Hope you all had a fun & relaxing break and are coming back recharged to the classroom! Helpful Stuff & Recommendations Dean Graziosi's "Seven Levels Deep" exercise is a transformative journey tailor-made for students navigating the exciting path of self-discovery. This exercise empowers students to delve deeper and explore the profound reasons driving their ambitions. Starting with the first goal, each layer peels away to reveal the real passions and values that motivate them. This introspective process equips students with a profound understanding of their inner motivations, enabling them to make informed decisions, set meaningful goals, and approach their school work with purpose. By reaching the seventh level, students unlock a roadmap to not only academic achievement but also a more fulfilling and purpose-driven time in class. This is an incredibly powerful tool to help students gain clarity, direction, and a deeper connection to their purpose not just in school but in life! Check out our adapted version of Graziosi's exercise to help students (anyone, really!) find their deepest motivations and true purpose for their goals! This can truly TRANSFORM your classroom for this second semester and beyond! Try it out and let us know how it goes! Don’t forget to tag us in your posts on Instagram as @shining_scholar_education and Facebook as Shining Scholar Education! Because through helping others, we all win! A Little Inspiration Extraordinary people are ordinary people making extra ordinary decisions. -Sharon Pearson As always, please forward this to any teacher that could benefit from this message and help spread the love!
The goal of these messages is to help ourselves improve—for our students, for our loved ones, and for ourselves. You can always reply to this message or message us on Facebook here! Keep changing the world! Charlie with Shining Scholar Education P.S. Consider joining our TPT Affiliate Program for 25% commissions here! Want to join our email list? Click below! MS ELAR teachers Click here! HS ELAR teachers Click here! And check out our TPT store here! |
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