According to AP® instructor Craig Nicoletti, students must be taught more than how to memorize information. In our latest Norton Learning Blog post, AP® instructor Nicoletti encourages his students to “think like historians” by synthesizing historical information, constructing arguments about the past, and recalling specific historical details.
Tag: teaching reading
Going Fishing with Author Michal Brody: A Q&A on Selecting Model Readings for Students
A reading should also be relevant to a critical mass of our student readers. And that's an interesting part because “student readers” doesn’t mean “college age”—that doesn't mean anything anymore. There's this image of your classic “four-year liberal arts student,” but that’s a small proportion of who our intended audience is.
Teaching READING THE WORLD in Prison
Author of Reading the World, Michael Austin discusses how instructors can use Reading the World and Norton’s textbooks to help them should they need to lesson plan on the fly. Read how using dramatic excerpts from Reading the World kept his students engaged, excited, and encouraged to read more.
“Digital Detox”: Using Norton Critical Editions To Promote Critical Thinking
The Norton Learning Blog has recently featured several posts that offer suggestions for generating greater classroom success by integrating ChatGPT and similar machine-learning-applications. (I find the latter a more accurate—and less anthropomorphizing—term than AI.) However, this particular post goes out to all who—for pedagogical, or numerous other reasons—search for the grail of LLM-free spaces.
Storying the Classroom: Why ELA Is the Perfect Place for Ethnic Studies
Since the fall of 2021, I’ve taught a class called English 12 Ethnic Cultures, a course designed specifically to incorporate Ethnic Studies principles into English Language Arts. After doing this work for some time, I am convinced that the Language Arts classroom is a perfect place for this kind of work. English teachers are natural storytellers, and our classrooms can be the place where students’ own stories emerge.
The Best of Both Worlds: Using Print and Digital Tools in your AP® Literature Course
As an older Millennial teacher, I find that I am stuck between two worlds: the one I was born in and the one in which I grew up. The one I was born in was analog: paper, pencils and highlighters, and books. The one I grew up in—although it was ever-evolving—was decidedly not analog. It was keyboards, screens, and software updates. Like me, students are caught between these two worlds.
Using Courseware to Gain Meaningful Insight and Inform Teaching and Learning
I have long observed in my teaching practice that the most memorable learning tends to occur after students are able to pinpoint gaps in their own knowledge or understanding of course material. Put another way: failure is an effective teacher. However, many college-level courses are delivered in a mode of instruction traditional to higher education: lectures followed by summative assessments, such as term papers or exams. The feedback students receive is delivered and received not as an opportunity for reflection or further inquiry but as a final, definitive grade.
Using the Norton Critical Edition of WIDE SARGASSO SEA in a High School Literature Survey
Pamela J. Franics, PhD, outlines the many ways the Norton Critical Edition of Wide Sargasso Sea brings a deeper analysis to her classroom, including teaching her students the importance of critical literary lenses, context, and backstory when analyzing text.
Is It Poetry?: Engaging Students with Taylor Swift
When is the last time any of us saw that question in the popular press or animating everyday conversation? Lately, those words are on everyone’s lips because of the release of Taylor Swift’s latest album, The Tortured Poets Department.
Getting to the Heart of Positioning Language: Who Is “They”?
Deanna Brossman started teaching English in Geneseo, Illinois, in 2001. She earned her MA in English literature in 2007 and National Board Certification in 2012. She teaches dual credit composition, AP English Language and Composition, and a transitional English course for seniors wanting to strengthen their fundamental reading and writing skills before college. She and …
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