Mentor Text: Swim Your Own Race by Mbali Vilakazi Techniques: Form Purposeful Use of Figurative Language Exploring Clichéd Sports Metaphor Using Contrast Background: I love the Winter Olympics. I’m setting my alarm to get up in the morning before school to watch sports that I normally dismiss. The excitement is so infectious. Especially fun this […]
Author: Jay
Memoir Remix: The Last of the Reading Work
A nice thing about sharing our remix of our Memoir Study here at Moving Writers has been that it’s been very much a reflective act for me. We’ve just wrapped the semester, and some elements of our memoir work came in as the semester ended. What’s funny about what I’m sharing this time is that […]
Mentor Text Wednesday: A MAD Fold-In Poem
Mentor Text: A MAD Fold-In Poem by Daniel Scott Tysdal Techniques: Poetic Form Writing Rough Drafts Analysis Visual Presentation Background – If you read this column regularly, you know that I’ve been reading a lot of poetry lately. I’ve actually made it a professional goal to explore poetry in my classroom with more intent the last […]
Memoir Remix: The Empathy Map
Today, I’ll get back to a series of posts I started in December, sharing how we revisited and remixed the study of memoir in our Grade 12 courses. When we sat and discussed what we felt we wanted to “get” out of studying a memoir, my awesome teaching homie Rachelle was emphatic that we wanted […]
Mentor Text Wednesday: Two Timberlakes
Mentor Text: The Selling of Two Timberlakes by Hanif Abdurraqib (via Pacific Standard) Techniques: Contrast and Comparison Criticism and Analysis Organization Making Connections Using Narrative to Make a Point Background – Full disclosure. It’s taking a lot of self-control to stop me from turning Mentor Text Wednesdays into a Hanif Abdurraqib fan column. I discovered […]
Planning a Course With a Looming Writing Test
As this post goes live, my Grade 12 students will be finishing their final assessment in their course, a Provincial Assessment. They will have written a process exam for the past four days. Based around a single theme, which they learn on the first day, they were expected to read, respond and write. The first […]
Mentor Text Wednesday: My Three Solaces
Mentor Text: My Three Solaces by Erin Fornoff Writing Techniques: Poetry Brevity Memoir Background: As this post publishes, many of you are headed back into your classrooms after a break for the holidays. (Monday for me!) It’s a new calendar year. This, combined with the holiday season, makes me reflective. The chaos of school before […]
Memoir Study Remix: Lessons Learned
As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, my team and I decided we needed to revisit and remix our memoir study. In that post, I talked about what we did in regards to the lowest moment experienced by the subject of the memoir. This week, I’ll share what we did with the lessons learned […]
Mentor Text Wednesday: Seven Matches
Mentor Text Seven Matches – Gord Downie Writing Techniques: Ambidextrous Lines Developing Symbolism Background: I had another piece in mind for Mentor Text Wednesday this week. However, we were listening to Gord Downie’s Secret Path album as we studied the story of Chanie Wenjack, a twelve year old First Nations boy who died trying […]
Memoir Study Remix: The Broken Piece
One of the best things about the Moving Writers community is the open sharing that happens here, as well as the sharing and discussion that occurs in our Twitter PLN. People ask questions, have them answered, find inspiration and share ideas and resources on a regular basis. It’s quite remarkable, and shows the importance of […]
