Whether we are teaching poetry or memoir or literary analysis, the requirements for mentor texts are the same: they must be accessible and relevant for students, and they should be richly crafted. And while poetry and memoir texts are ubiquitous, many of us struggle to find literary analysis mentor texts that are developmentally appropriate and engaging […]
Author: Allison Marchetti
Mom, Teacher, Writer, Postpartum Doula.
Books: Writing with Mentors & Beyond Literary Analysis (Heinemann)
Best of the 2016-2017 School Year: Ten Ideas for Notebook Time
This post by Karla is kind of like a really great Oprah episode in which everyone walks away with an amazing goody bag. YOU WIN A PRIZE! YOU WIN A PRIZE! EVERYBODY WINS A PRIZE! Yep, everybody’s walking away with ten amazing notebook time invitations that you can use with your students in the first […]
Best of the 2016-2017 School Year: Writing in the Wild: Beyond the 5-Paragraph Essay
I love this exploratory, confessional, honest narrative in which Tricia invites us along on her journey to her discovery, along with her students, that five paragraph essays were not only not serving them as writers, but were actually limiting and caging them. Tricia shares resources for thinking beyond five paragraphs, but more importantly, she opens […]
Ask Moving Writers: How do you authentically support and assess vocabulary?
Dear Noel (and fellow readers!), In a recent webinar, 2010 National Teacher of the Year Sarah Brown Wessling posited an idea that really rocked my world. It was at once so simple and so profound: Vocabulary is not a task or a thing, it is a literacy practice. Not so much a skill, but a […]
Best of the 2016-2017 School Year: 3 Favorite Writer’s Notebook Prompts
Last year, Rebekah and I committed to opening our classes with “notebook time” — ten minutes at the beginning of every class period for our students to write and think and sketch in their notebooks. Best decision ever! But let’s be honest, sometimes we’re still searching for the perfect writing invitation seconds before our students […]
Best of the 2016-2017 School Year: Three Simple Exercises to Help Your Students Read Like Writers
Learning to read like a writer is a skill that takes time and practice, but there are some simple scaffolds for moving our writers towards this special way of reading that can help. In this post, I offer three try-it-in-your-classroom-tomorrow ideas for helping your writers understand how a piece of writing was put together, so […]
Best of 2016-2017 School Year: “Teachable Alternatives” to the 5-Paragraph Essay
It’s no secret that the five paragraph essay is dead. But what goes in its place? In this post, Tricia examines several ways of moving beyond the contrived essay formulas of the past and into new writing territory that ultimately lets our students write what matters and find the forms that best showcases their ideas. […]
Best of the 2016-2017 School Year: Permission to Start the Year with Blank Walls
Each summer we press pause for a few weeks to tackle new writing projects and plan for the upcoming school year. And we reflect on where we’ve been by sharing with you the most popular posts of the past school year. We will share these with you over the next ten weeks, beginning with today’s […]
Mentor Text Wednesday: My Three Go-To Personal Essays
Today’s guest blogger, Christina Gil has written for Moving Writers before. You can read her post about using satire writing as a tool for self-discovery here. Christina is a veteran high school English teacher who recently left the classroom to follow a dream and move her family to an ecovillage in rural Missouri. Mentor texts: “Fish Cheeks” […]
Books That Move Us: Beyond the Five Paragraph Essay
Today’s guest writer is Chasidy Burton, who teaches English to juniors and seniors in Nashville, TN. Chasidy loves to teach writing for the empowerment students experience with getting words on the page and the discovery of their own voice. She is constantly seeking to better her teaching practice, and she enjoys reading about unconventional approaches to teaching and literacy. […]
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