Creative English Teacher — Book Review

Recommendation: Free Educational One-Pagers

May 25, 2025 • Book Review • Old School Meets New School • Teaching Ideas

It’s tough recommending educational reading to teachers. We are busy people. And although a lot of educational books have merit, sometimes reading 200 pages only yields a handful of usable ideas. There is a ton of educational research out there waiting to impact your classroom, but how do you find the time? I’ve often wished there was a way to access it in a concise and practical way. That’s why I was excited when I discovered DistillED, a FREE email newsletter by Australian educator Jamie Clark.

Book Review: Build Reading Fluency: Practice and Performance with Reader's Theater and More

July 30, 2024 • Book Review • Elementary • Readers Theater Script-Stories • Teaching Ideas

One of the most effective ways to improve students’ reading ability is through repeated readings of the same text. But what reader would want to re-read a passage over and over again? Enter Reader’s Theater. In this post, I will review Build Reading Fluency by Drs. Tim Rasinski and Chase Young.

Book Review: The Writer's Journey by Chris Vogler

March 15, 2019 • Book Review • Mythology • Teaching Ideas

Although I am a teacher of typical English courses as well, it was a mythology course that gave me the biggest challenge of my life. (You can read more about that adventure here.) Teaching mythology challenged me to develop my teaching style—prompting the creation of almost all the materials you will find on this website. So, needless to say, mythology is special to me. Beasts, quests, and monsters are all part of mythology, but at its heart is the hero. Not surprisingly, one of my favorite things to teach is heroes and the concept of the Hero’s Journey. If you...