Author Archives: Bill Sullivan

About Bill Sullivan

I am an English teacher working with great students at Suffield Academy. I also teach seniors in various project-based learning environments. Some of the #PBL topics included global issues, such as Pandemics, Climate Change, and Water; more recently I have asked students to research and identify topics important to our school community and their generation. We curate these topics with a #StudentCenteredPBL. For the past eleven years, I also created a driving question for a class to research a local history mystery and present their findings in a community program partnering with our local historical society. These topics encompass researching the lives of enslaved individuals who were contributors to the foundation of our community.

Leveraging this year’s Booker Prize Short List for #PBL

Posted on October 9, 2021 by Bill Sullivan

How can we measure growth or create a capstone assessment at the top of a vertical design? How can we ask students to figure out what makes a novel literary? More specifically in each work of fiction, how do we … Continue reading →

Posted in 2021 Booker Prize Short List, booker prize | Tagged | Leave a comment

Appreciating Our Literature Circles aka #LitCircles

Posted on May 13, 2021 by Bill Sullivan

How can we measure growth or create a capstone assessment at the top of a vertical design? What makes a novel literary? How do we locate a novel’s literary qualities? How can a project encourage opportunities for life-long reading? How … Continue reading →

Posted in #PBL #StudentCentered, Literature Circles aka #litcircles, Project-Based Learning | Leave a comment

How can we apply an interdisciplinary approach to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein?

Posted on January 28, 2020 by Bill Sullivan

We will return to the “In Our Time” podcast to open our unit on “The Modern Era.” This particular podcast will help us appreciate Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and promises to be quite a podcast. It has been noted to be … Continue reading →

Posted in 21st Century Learning, British Literature, Interdisciplinary, Podcast, YouTube | Tagged | 24 Comments

What Will You Create for the Sonnet Project?

Posted on January 21, 2020 by Bill Sullivan

This sonnet project will be a great learning opportunity for you to express your understanding of Shakespeare’s language and content as well as how it might illuminate something of our humanity today. While I have been giving time lengths for … Continue reading →

Posted in 21st Century Learning, Digital Shakespeare, Shakespeare, YouTube | 1 Comment

Let’s Celebrate Divergent Thinking!

Posted on October 29, 2019 by Bill Sullivan

Do you see how one thing these two thinkers have in common about explaining divergent thinking involves school? With that in mind, let’s leave behind your school brain and enjoy this moment to foster a new cognitive skill that helps … Continue reading →

Posted in #PBL #StudentCentered, 21st Century Learning, 21st Century Skills, Design Thinking, Design Thinking on HMK, Divergent Thinking, Project-Based Learning, Reflective Assessment, TED Talks/TEDx Talks, Twitter | Tagged , | 43 Comments

Let’s Have Each Student Design a Project in our British Literature Survey

Posted on October 21, 2019 by Bill Sullivan

What is project-based learning? Let’s start by celebrating this diagram that will explain our instructional goals during this creative and meaningful learning process. After deliberate reflection, the way for us to enter into this great mode of learning is for … Continue reading →

Posted in #PennPBL, Project-Based Learning, Reflective Assessment, Twitter | 30 Comments

Aiming for a Learner-Driven Classroom

Posted on October 12, 2019 by Bill Sullivan

This is an embedded Microsoft Office presentation, powered by Office.

Posted in 21st Century Learning | Leave a comment

Make One Critical Observation between Shakespeare & Sting

Posted on October 9, 2019 by Bill Sullivan

What is happening in the Sting song, “Consider Me Gone”? In five to seven sentences of Standard English, create a critical observation about Sting’s lyrics. Be sure to supply at least one word, phrase, or line of textual evidence to … Continue reading →

Posted in Flipped Classroom, Learning Through Technology, Reflective Assessment, Shakespeare, YouTube | 11 Comments

How did The Last Lecture Inspire You?

Posted on September 13, 2019 by Bill Sullivan

While you may know that the word inspiration means to motivate or stimulate, the word inspiration derives from the root spiritus, which means breath. Part of the reason why we say “God bless you” to someone who sneezes, is that we … Continue reading →

Posted in 21st Century Learning, Community Theme, Text, Learning Through Technology, Summer Reading | 26 Comments

Why #PBL for Students Today?

Posted on August 22, 2019 by Bill Sullivan

While this recent PBS documentary Cyber Work and the American Dream reports serious concerns about the future, there are some positive suggestions about how to get this current generation ready for their turbulent careers ahead of them. Students today must … Continue reading →

Posted in #PBL #StudentCentered, Metacognition, Project-Based Learning | Tagged | Leave a comment