Haley Lewis teaches eighth grade language arts in Cincinnati, Ohio. She loves getting new books into the hands of her students and reading YA novels to recommend to them. Haley is constantly seeking new ways to get her students engaged in reading and writing to help them develop successful literacy skills. She aims to show […]
Category: Books That Move Us
Books That Move Us: Project-Based Writing by Liz Prather
Today’s guest writer is Jennifer Brinkmeyer, who teaches Reading Strategies and U.S. Lit Honors in Iowa City, IA. Jennifer loves teaching students how to commit rebellious acts of literacy. She is constantly seeking ways to bring her writing life into the classroom to help students validate their own writing lives. Today, Jennifer shares about a […]
On Teaching Poetry
As I traditionally do in April, National Poetry Month, I’m dedicating my space here at Moving Writers to talking about poetry for the next few weeks. A couple of years ago, I made a decision to become a better teacher of poetry. I felt I was a good poetry teacher, but I had a handful […]
Recommended Reading: Get Lit Rising
Pretty much every trip my family takes to the city finds us in a bookstore. Not a surprise, I know. Recently, as I walked past the teen section, dragging my kids out of the children’s section, a book, of course, caught my eye. I picked up Get Lit Rising, and flipped through it. And headed […]
Recommended Reading: Intention
One of the greatest things about being active online as a teacher is that you get to interact with, and learn from, a lot of different people. I would never go as far to tell anyone that they absolutely have to be on Twitter to be a good teacher, but I can comfortably say that […]
No Happy Endings
“It doesn’t solve anything in an overly neat-and-tidy kind of way; rather, it honors the fact that sometime we are in a place where we are not okay.”
Recommended Reading: Lynda Barry
If you’ve taken note of my Twitter handle, you might be curious about where it comes from. I didn’t join Twitter as a teacher, and my initial avatar was a drawing I did of a stuffed monkey that used to travel with my wife and I wherever we went. Being drawn to artistic pursuits, and […]
Scaffolding Authentic Literary Analysis
Sometimes we need to scaffold the thinking that goes into writing more than we need to scaffold where a topic sentence goes in a paragraph. Mentor texts can help with that!
Bringing Life to Literary Analysis
This post explores an alternative approach to literary analysis that might make your students feel more engaged with the writing genre.
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. […]