During the school year, Time is one of our biggest hurdles. There is never enough time to do all the things. Summer is a fantasy with its long, light, unencumbered days spread out before us. We plan road trips and brewery crawls and projects and beach days and fill our calendar with all the things […]
Text: We Are Okay by Nina Lacour Audience: 9-12 (The narrator, Marin, is a freshman in college, and the book contains some very mild sexual themes.) Book Talk: It’s not uncommon for teens to feel betrayed by their parents at some point — when they show up at that party and drag you home, or […]
Text: Turtles All the Way Down by John Green Audience: 9-12 Book Talk: If you’ve ever felt that your life was being written by someone else — your parents, your teachers, even your friends — you’ll relate to Aza, the main character in Turtles All the Way Down. Aza is a smart, sensitive sixteen year old […]
Today we present Part II of Sarah’s thinking on building student interest in your writing classroom by weaving in video games and video game writing. You can read her full post from Wednesday here. On Wednesday, I discussed a few small ways teachers can use to bring video games into their classrooms. Today, I want […]
I’m so excited to present today’s guest post by Sarah Jones, whom I met through the Ohio Writing Project last summer. Sarah is an avid writer, reader, and gamer and is working to incorporate the workshop approach in both her Writing Through Video Games and Spanish classes. You can connect with her via email at […]
I grew up in Connecticut, so the old southern phrase “Bless your heart” isn’t a part of my everyday vocabulary. However, I’ve caught myself saying it a few times, in identical situations. Here’s the scenario: Student: Ms. Marchetti, I’m finished. [I look down at the student’s paper, see a few sentences scribbled. The mentor […]
Today’s post comes from Amy Estersohn, a middle school English teacher in New York and a 2016 recipient of the NCTE/ALAN Gallo Grant. She writes comic book reviews for noflyingnotights.com and blogs on books and teaching at teachingtransition.wordpress.com Mentor text: Creepy Pair of Underwear! by Aaron Reynolds and Peter Brown Writing Techniques: Elaboration Story Structure Effective […]
Can you picture the student who has just said this in a writing conference? He smoothes the pages of his notebook to reveal countless scribbles and doodles that he has spent the past few days getting down. He has generated multiple ideas for his next writing project. He has done his homework. But he sits […]
It’s #NCTE week, and the #movingwriters team couldn’t be more excited! Because we pretty much can’t take our mind off of #NCTE, we had a little pre-NCTE celebratory chat last night exploring some of the themes we’ll be uncovering in our presentation on Sunday at 12:45! Here are the questions we considered: Missed the chat? […]
I have been using writing portfolios to assess my students’ writing in December and June for as long as I’ve been teaching. Portfolios are wonderful for so many reasons: they invite students to compile a body of work, encourage revision, show growth over time, and so forth. But sometimes they feel a little stale, a […]
