I feel pretty good about Year 1 of ELA Academy. I got the channel started, decided I hated my microphone, found a good one after several duds, decided I hated the way my nonscripted videos turned out, deleted all the old videos, revamped the PowerPoint template, started scripting, remade some of the old videos, got some awesome graphic design work done, handed out about 100 business cards, and – most importantly – published 25 videos that I’m reasonably happy with.
So now we’re looking at Year 2, which I hope will be even better than Year 1. The most important thing is long-term and short-term planning because I want to take a more systematic approach to making these videos. To help make sure I’m meeting the needs students themselves think they have, I reached out to several student-related boards on Reddit and was rewarded with a flood of suggestions. (Thanks, Redditors!) So of course, I promptly felt overwhelmed and didn’t know where to start. But never fear: it’s nothing some color-coded index cards and orderly index tabs can’t solve!
Each index card in that box contains an idea for one video – so maybe 100 or so? I know, if I stuck with electronic planning I’d be able to quantify and organize these ideas more conveniently, but when I need to manage a large project, for some reason index cards work for me. (I still have boxes of notes on index cards from my master’s thesis.)
So I’ll be spending a little time sorting and prioritizing these ideas, and then I’ll get moving on my next project, which is a series on rhetorical analysis (hello, AP Lang question 2!) I’m hoping to double last year’s productivity and crank out at least 50 new videos this year. It’ll help if I can stop making gargantuan 15-minute videos! We teachers do tend to rattle on.
Here is a sampling of what I’m planning to cover this year:
- Sentence structure (syntax)
- Comma usage/errors
- Parallelism
- Writing a strong thesis
- Flow (sentence-to-sentence and paragraph-to-paragraph connections)
- Organizing your ideas for writing
- Taking research notes to avoid accidental plagiarism
- Weaving quotations into your own sentences
- MLA: In-text citations
- MLA: Works Cited
- Rhetoric/rhetorical analysis (especially Q2 for AP Lang)
- Literary analysis (especially Q1 and Q2 for AP Lit)
- And much more!
But while you’re waiting for these, check out what’s already available:
Essay Basics series (10 videos): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiUrfgvhnbxtgAN6YgGc-r8A_NbhkN-C0
How to Annotate Effectively (5 videos): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KU1IUP-NE0&list=PLiUrfgvhnbxtLTMaye87E_-kdAexdiQrP
Short Answer Question (SAQ) Basics (3 videos): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZn_vLS_3zI&list=PLiUrfgvhnbxuky69yMgJGOsQ4o7MP7cn9
Antony’s Rhetorical Appeals (from Julius Caesar): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIqdSkcNgrU
Antigone Literary Analysis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlYLBMmfQUM
Reading and memorizing the Reverdye from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (3 videos): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiUrfgvhnbxu1i3coZ3VBTtTe9MQhlKFC
Thanks for the support! Please share ELA Academy with everyone you know!
– KM
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