Three Heads

What if we told you that you could get access to 60 ready-made First Chapter Friday materials each year with only one click of a button?

It’s true! Each month, we’re sending out five (yes, five!) free First Chapter Friday Nearpods ready to be assigned to your students. Each one includes a book trailer, audio preview, and 2–3 multiple-choice questions for accountability. This is a quick and easy way to introduce your students to a variety of high-interest novels pre-screened by former English teachers. And better yet? You don’t have to do anything but assign them!

This month’s novels:
📚All My Rage by Sabaa Tahir ()
📚All American Boys by Jason Reynolds ()
📚I Must Betray You by Ruta Sepetys ()
📚Truly Devious: A Mystery by Maureen Johnson ()
📚We Are Not Free by Traci Chee ()

Don’t miss out! Sign up at the link in our bio to get five free Nearpods delivered to your inbox every month!

Teacher mental health and workload are, unsurprisingly, hot topics right now. And yet so much of the advice we receive to address these topics is contradictory (you can work only your contractual hours, but also you need lesson plans that are engaging, culturally responsive, and rigorous, but also your students are multiple years below grade level) or even worse, make you feel 𝘺𝘦𝘵 𝘢𝘨𝘢𝘪𝘯 like you’re doing something wrong by not being able to get it all done in your contractual hours.⁣
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We need to be honest: there are too many expectations placed on us as teachers and we cannot fulfill them all excellently within our contractual hours. It literally cannot be done. None of us are doing it all and walking out the door at 3:30 p.m. Can we be good teachers while still caring for our own health and maintaining relationships? Yes. Can we find a system that will enable us to do all the things a “good” teacher does within our contractual hours? Nope. Not even close.⁣
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So what do we do? Today on the blog (link in bio), Steph’s reflecting on a few podcasts she’s been listening to lately and sharing some advice she found helpful when it comes to setting realistic goals that will allow us to feel good about the work we’re doing without feeling like we have to have it all figured out. ⁣
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Check out the blog (link in bio) and let us know what you think. What decisions are you making about what you prioritize? Are you making the same choices you always have or are you trying something different this year?

While it may seem obvious to us as teachers that cheating isn’t okay, many students need instruction in what, exactly, cheating is and why, exactly, cheating is NOT okay. We’ve also found it helpful when implementing consequences for students who do cheat if we have this conversation to refer back to.

Now, you might be thinking, “Thanks a lot, guys. It’s December. This is not helpful.” If your experience is like ours, cases of cheating skyrocket the closer we get to the end of the semester. We find it to be very helpful and worthwhile to have this important conversation with students at the beginning of both semesters. In fact, we think it resonates more second semester than first. Students have a better idea who we are, what our expectations are for student work, and just how carefully we look at things (read: very carefully).

Consider making a discussion about cheating and plagiarism a part of your second semester kick off.

Let us know in the comments: Do you talk with your students about cheating directly and before it happens, or do you wait and address it as it come up?

🎄It’s Day 1 of our Holiday Challenge! 🎄

Lots of holiday decorations and lights have gone up over the past few days and we are here for it!

Tonight after dinner or on your way home from work (since it’s getting dark so early these days), head out to check out some of the light displays in your neighborhood (or, if yours is a dud, a more festive neighborhood nearby).

We used to work near a major shopping center that goes all out with their decorations and we’re not going to lie, we may have done a few laps around the parking lot—or even gone inside for a glimpse at the tree—on particularly hard days.

Kate and her family love to do this a few times each season. Checking out different neighborhoods each time. A little coffee or hot chocolate and some festive tunes is a great way to spend a Monday night!

Spread the holiday cheer and tag us with a pic your favorite display. Have a friend who should participate in the challenge? Don’t forget to share!

The TPT Cyber Sale is this Monday and Tuesday, November 28th and 29th. We’ve partnered with to provide one lucky winner with a $10 gift voucher! Who can’t use that?!

Here’s what you need to do to be entered:
• Follow us here on Instagram
•• Complete the entry form (link in bio)
••• Comment on this post letting us know what’s on your wishlist this year!

Winner will be notified via email from [email protected] on Monday morning at 7:00 am PST.

P.S. The voucher code does not expire, so if you don’t find anything to buy during the cyber sale 😳, you’ll have $10 to spend another time.

If you love Black Friday, we hope you are encountering the most awesome deals. If this is the weekend you decorate your Christmas tree, we hope it looks as beautiful in reality as it did in your imagination. If you’re traveling, we hope everything runs smoothly. If it’s just a regular old weekend for you, we hope it’s a restful one.

Steph (this is Kate writing), posted a great blog for us today (link in bio), one that is a good reminder for us all about the value of taking time for ourselves and engaging in activities and with content we enjoy, and how doing so helps to unleash our creativity. It may not always be the first thing that comes to mind when you think of the teaching profession, but what we do is most definitely a creative act.

We hope you’ll take a few minutes to give it a read. But even more importantly, we hope you’ll take some time this weekend for yourself and do whatever it is that fills your cup.

As we head toward Thanksgiving, we can’t help but think about online discussion boards. Strange, we know, but bear with us for a moment. Think about the dynamics of your family on Thanksgiving.

Is yours the type that needs some type of structured activity, a game, puzzle, something, anything, to keep conversations from moving in, let’s call it, an unfortunate direction.

Does everyone pitch in, in the kitchen working together to prepare the meal, potluck style, or is your family better off bringing in food no one who will eat it has prepared?

Can you spend an entire leisurely day together or does everyone show up at dinner and leave directly after dessert?

Figuring out how your family can have the best day and end up with both full bellies and hearts doesn’t just happen, right? There’s a bit of work that goes into it. A bit of trial and error. A bit of luck.

We found this same thing to be true of online discussion boards (you had faith we’d bring it back around, right?). This week on the blog (link in bio), we’re sharing how we arrived at a strategy and approach that led to authentic learning and meaningful results.

We hope you’ll check it out. Bon appetit!

What’s your opinion on online discussion boards? Yay? Nay?

A lively, engaging whole class discussion. It’s what the dreams of English teachers everywhere are made of.

We’re sitting perched on a stool, steaming cup of coffee in hand, listening with a smile as our students share thoughtful, relevant insights they worked out themselves and didn’t find on the Internet and pretend we’re their own.

And then reality hits.

A third of the class isn’t participating and we’re beginning to wonder if they read the book. Two students insist on dominating the conversation, but they don’t seem to offer anything remotely close to being right. Your always-can-be-counted-on-super-student is out sick and you need to get these kids to make some sense of this book before Friday, when they’re supposed to write an essay. Your mind wanders as you begin to prepare your defense for when you’re called in by admin to explain your grades.

Please tell us this sounds familiar. It can’t be just us.

We’ve gone through a lot of trial and many errors as we’ve worked to find a strategy for whole class discussion that keeps the nightmare situations at bay. This week on the podcast (link in bio), we’re sharing what we consider to be the three most important factors when looking for a strategy that works for you and providing a glimpse at what works for us. Give it a listen. It’s a quick one!

What wins have you had with class discussion? What leads to the best conversations for you? Let us know in the comments. We can all learn something from each other!

Maybe it’s our close proximity to high school drama, our woeful lack of resources, the stress, or the constant tiredness. For whatever reason, adult relationships on the campuses of secondary schools can be fraught. There’s gossip and backstabbing. Fights over parking spaces and copy machines. There’s long histories and even longer grudges.

We’re reaching out to the new teachers with this blog post (link in bio). It’s for all you new teachers trying to figure out how to navigate “office politics” as a teacher. We’re sharing 9 tips to help navigate these potentially perilous situations.

Experienced teachers, what advice would you share with new teachers? Is there anything you wish someone told you?

Check out the post and let us know if you agree or disagree. We don’t think we’re the type of people who bring or attract “the drama,” but maybe after you read this you’ll tell us differently! 😅🤣

We love to read. We’re English teachers, so it’s not all that surprising. We love curling up with a good book and escaping from reality for a few minutes (or a few hours). The majority of our students, though? They don’t.

It’s raining in Southern California today. The day is practically screaming for a good book and a mug of hot chocolate. While a few of our students share our sentiments, most of them don’t.

A few years ago, we started a gentle campaign to try to win over a few students to the world of reading. We started spending one day a week reading in class, projecting YouTube videos of a relaxing beach scene on warm days and crackling fire on the colder ones. We also started leaning in to popular YA novels. We scoured the Internet and polled our students to find the books that captured their interest and imaginations, and we started making time for First Chapter Fridays. Now we’re sharing our activities with you and your students!

Check out the link in our bio to learn more and sign up to receive access to one First Chapter Friday Nearpod activity or dive right in and sign up to receive five First Chapter Friday Nearpod activities each month.

Nothing for sale. Nothing to buy. Just wanted to share something you can start using in your classroom to help build a community of readers.

📚📖What are you reading right now? Do you love it? Let us know in the comments!