K-12 Teachers Alliance has launched a redesign of its proprietary website, teachhub.com. The new site features a cleaner, modern look, a more intuitive design, and better navigation to allow educators to more easily explore the site and find the educational resources they need.

The TeachHUB team has also revamped and launched their free lesson plans and writing prompts for teachers to take advantage of.

Educators will now be able to explore teacher-created resources that fall into five different categories – teaching strategies, classroom management, classroom activities, technology in the classroom, and professional development – as well as lesson plans and writing prompts for a variety of subjects and all grade levels K-12.

Educators can also utilize professional development services lead by industry experts to master new skills and refine their pedagogies.

“The effort to redesign TeachHUB was centered around our longstanding commitment to educators: to provide current, well-focused resources inspired by feedback from teachers meant to deliver an array of benefits to all teachers,” said Joe Mroz, Executive Vice President of University Relations; Managing Partner at K-12 Teachers Alliance.

TeachHUB, is also closely aligned with Graduate Programs for Educators to assist teachers in finding the right master’s and doctoral programs to further their education, master current pedagogies, and gain new skills. Graduate Programs for Educators gives teachers direct access to more than 19 of K-12 Teachers Alliance’s University partners who offer various online, hybrid, and in-person program formats.

About TeachHUB

At TeachHUB, it is our mission to improve the quality of education by providing K-12 educators with the latest teaching strategies, lesson plans, classroom resources, real teacher blogs, and professional development, created by teachers for teachers. Plus all the tools and applications 21^st-century educators need to maintain a level of excellence in their classrooms.

About K-12 Teachers Alliance

Sharing Solutions That Work for Teachers, Principals and the Children They Serve

With members across the spectrum of K-12 education — including public, private, charter, contract and online schools, as well as unions and other educator organizations — the K-12 Teachers Alliance serves educators by gathering the strengths of the entire K-12 community.

Since our inception, we have found surprising success in helping educators through the proactive method of communication and shared problem solving. We are now growing by leaps and bounds, based on the simple idea of “help us help you.”

With over 100,000 K-12 educators served, and so many more to serve, now is the time to join us as we face today’s education challenges together.

By coming together for the purpose of organizing and sharing resources, KTA is able to provide a range and depth of services that is truly different. It is the continual contributions of our membership and the pooling of resources that allow us to provide real solutions to the many challenges facing today’s K-12 educators.

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By the time students arrive in high school, we are teaching them to write for the real world, not the next grade level. In college and careers, students will be required to do three primary types of writing:

Informative

Informative writing requires explaining a topic or process. This could be analyzing a piece of literature, explaining a process, or summarizing a topic. This type of writing is useful for students to clarify and express their understanding of any topic. This type of writing requires students to make statements, not form or shape opinions.

Argumentative

This type of writing prompt asks students to take a stance on a position, while also considering other points of view by making claims and counterclaims. This type of writing also often requires research and critical thinking skills for students to arrive at an opinion. Topics of interest to teenagers, such as social media or driving age laws, make engaging prompts.

Narrative

In a narrative essay, students are asked to write about experiences that shape their lives and flex their creative writing skills. These are easy prompts in the sense that everyone’s favorite topic is themselves. It is difficult, however, to help students choose a story with meaningful implications, rather than just entertainment value. Once a story is chosen, students must learn how to punctuate dialogue and develop character, all of which can be difficult within the scope of an essay.

Writing Process

The writing process is the foundation for all of these types of writing. Students should follow this same basic process for all assignments.

Prewriting

During this stage, students brainstorm ideas, choose their best ideas, and create outlines or graphic organizers.

Drafting

At this point, students begin putting ideas into sentences and paragraphs using transitions. At this stage, students should not concentrate on grammar, spelling, or punctuation, but instead on explaining their ideas.

Revising

Revision involves looking at the work from your reader’s perspective. Students check for clarity and refine their style.

Editing

During this stage, students check their work, as well as other students’ work for grammar, spelling, and punctuation.

Publication

Students share their finished work with others. They might share it with the class, share it on social media, send it in a letter, or publish it in a traditional medium.

Writing Prompt Strategies

Engaging high school students in any type of writing can be very difficult. Here are some creative writing prompt ideas that can help:

Video Prompts

Video prompts use multi-media to immerse students in the prompt. Teachers create or find a video that explains the topic and outlines essay expectations. If shared digitally, students can re-play these video prompts to assist them in the writing process. Helpful resources can be linked from the video. This is a good option for a flipped classroom or an assignment that teachers want students to be able to access at various locations and times. It is also a great way to hook students into the process.

TED Talks

TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) Talks can work in two ways: One way is to use engaging TED Talks to provide writing material for students. Using this strategy, students watch TED Talks and write essays reflecting on the material in the talk. The other strategy involves students creating a TED Talk to accompany their writing assignments. TED Talks are a great way to integrate public speaking and multi-media skills into the English Language Arts curriculum.

Commencement Speeches

Students are prompted to write a commencement speech. Teachers can show some models of this type of writing, as well as videos of actual commencement speeches. Students can be prompted to write about lessons they have learned, people they have known, and hopes for the future. Much like TED Talks, students can also perform these speeches for the class.

Love Poems

Teachers can ask students to compare and contrast a modern love poem with a canonical one. How is the perspective different? How is it the same? Students can also write a poem of their own.

Choice Blogging

Choose a free blogging platform and allow students to blog about something that interests them. Students can take turns being the “teacher” and posting prompts for the rest of the students. This option would require teacher moderation of content, of course, but encourages students to have fun writing.

Global Letters

Global letters are pen pals for the digital age. Students can choose a student in another state or even another country with whom to correspond. Again, this writing would require teacher supervision and coordination with other teachers.

College Entrance

Most students today will be enrolling in some sort of post-secondary program after high school. Writing college entrance essays helps students practice this style of writing and receive feedback. These types of essays often require students to reflect on experiences that have shaped them so far, along with what they can contribute to the college to which they are applying.

No matter the type of writing, a consistent process and interesting, fun writing prompts will help students write their best works.

The post Writing Prompt Strategies for High School English appeared first on TeachHUB.

Halloween Writing Prompts

1. If you could create your very own monster, what would it look like? What would it be called? What types of things would it do to scare people? Where does the monster live? Tell me everything there is to know about your monster. If you want, draw a picture of the monster.
2. Do you love trick-or-treating? Dressing up in costumes? Haunted houses? Costume parties? Halloween games? Halloween decorations? Scary movies? Write a poem about your favorite part of Halloween, sharing why it is special to you.
3. Write a story about a kid who goes trick-or-treating. Start from the minute he or she puts on his or her costume and finish when he or she gets home and puts on normal clothes again. Tell me everything that happens.
4. If we had a Halloween party in class, what would you want to see? Should we decorate the classroom? How would we do that? What types of food and activities would we have? What costumes would you want to see?
5. What was the best Halloween you ever had? What made it great? What would make this Halloween even better than that?
6. Write a spooky story to tell around the campfire. Remember, you want to build suspense using onomatopoeia and alliteration. Don’t forget to have a big finale to frighten everyone who is listening.
7. If you could design a haunted house, what would you name it? What types of rooms would you have? Describe, in detail, three of the best rooms in your haunted house.

Have fun with these Halloween-themed writing prompts. Your students definitely will!

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