Tricia Ebarvia

June 13, 2017Tricia Ebarvia

4 Ways of Looking at a Mentor Text: Incidental Comics

The school year is winding down—and I find myself thinking more and more of warm poolside days—yet everywhere I turn, rich mentor texts seem to come my way. I’ll find something and think, “Oh, that would have been perfect to use with ____” or “That would have worked great with ____!” Although it may be […]

April 18, 2017April 18, 2017Tricia Ebarvia

Argument in the Wild: Reading & Writing from Media-Rich Texts

The idea that “everything’s an argument” seems almost too obvious these days. After all, talk to almost any adolescent today and it’s clear how aware they are of the ways in which they are constantly being persuaded, whether it’s an editorial from the Wall Street Journal or The New York Times, the latest newscast from […]

March 21, 2017March 21, 2017Tricia Ebarvia

3 Favorite Writer’s Notebook Prompts

I have a confession. I didn’t always use a writer’s notebook, either as teacher and especially as a student. It’s hard to remember what that was like—Where did I keep all my thoughts? How did I keep track of it all? Writer’s notebooks—or journals—were something I remember learning about in graduate school, and while I […]

February 21, 2017February 22, 2017Tricia Ebarvia

To Blog or Not to Blog: Blog!

As Moving Writers readers know, one of the central ideas behind this site is authentic writing—what does writing in the real and wild world look like (versus the sometimes too-tightly controlled world of our classrooms)? Over the years, I’ve come to believe that the more the writing I ask students to do in the classroom […]

January 24, 2017February 28, 2017Tricia Ebarvia

March (Madness) to Determine Significance

March Madness March is still two months away, but that didn’t stop my students from facing off March Madness style as we reviewed Lord of the Flies last week. One of the challenges students often face when writing literary analysis is that writing literary analysis asks students to demonstrate two important but distinctly different things: […]

December 20, 2016December 22, 2016Tricia Ebarvia

What Are You Working On? Empowering Student Writers through Workshop

I’ve always believed in the writing process. My teaching didn’t always reflect that belief, as I spent too many years earlier in my career creating worksheets and essay prompts and outlines and templates. I soon realized that just because my writing instruction included steps didn’t mean it was a process. That said, in more recent […]

November 22, 2016January 2, 2017Tricia Ebarvia

“Teachable Alternatives” to the 5-Paragraph Essay

On Friday morning at the NCTE Annual Convention, I sat in a session that featured Tom Romano, Mariana Romano, and Linda Rief. My hands failed me that session. I simply could not get all the ideas down in my notebook fast enough. One after another, each teacher spoke to the importance of giving kids the […]

October 25, 2016October 26, 2016Tricia Ebarvia

Conferring as Prewriting

I was reminded the other day of the work of Don Murray (who, with Don Graves, I affectionately refer to as “the Dons” in my head). “Prewriting usually takes about 85% of the writer’s time,” Murray wrote in his wonderful essay, “Teaching Writing as a Process Not Product.” As my students begin work on one […]

September 27, 2016September 27, 2016Tricia Ebarvia

Writing in the Wild: Beyond the 5-Paragraph Essay

“What do you think about when you hear the word essay?” A moment of silence. Some confused looks. Others, blank stares. A few, smirks. IT’S LATE AFTERNOON, September, last period. My AP Lang class and I are in the midst of finishing up our discussion of Joan Didion’s wonderful essay, “On Keeping a Notebook.” It’s a relatively […]

August 30, 2016September 1, 2016Tricia Ebarvia

Never a Day Without a Line… or a Word

“Never a day without a line,” Brenda repeated. In the summer of 2011, I had the pleasure of participating in the PA Writing and Literature Project Summer Invitational Writing Institute. Although I’d been teaching for several years by then, my experience with the writing project that summer was the first time I started to think […]