Mentor Text: Prologue from Life Hacks for a Little Alien by Alice Franklin Techniques: Background – I cracked myself up recently. Because I obsessively open my Libby app to see what books are new at my libraries, I’m perpetually placing holds on titles that grab my interest in the slightest. And I don’t always read the […]
I know that I am “preaching to the choir” as we say in the South, but the start of school gets earlier and earlier every year. So let’s get moving quickly into something you can start working on DAY ONE with students. Most state tests ask students a variety of questions rooted in analysis, specifically […]
In this summer’s beat Abigail takes you through two strategies that you can discover in Liz Prather’s new book “The Confidence to Write”… two strategies to start the school year off right and a great starting place for teacher growth this summer.
I’ve been eager to shake up my classroom literature circles. Sometimes, it is easy to fall into a routine rut: assign some chapters to be read, passages to be annotated, literary techniques to be identified. As we read Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, I thought about what it meant for Lauren Olamina to come […]
Mentor Text: excerpts from The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman Techniques: Descriptive Writing Background – I’ve shared pretty openly that there are a few parts of my practice as an English teacher that have made teaching during a pandemic easier. One of those things has been the fact that at our school, each of our courses […]
What does Stephen Sondheim have to do with writing instruction? The answer: Everything.
We know that writing strategies are everywhere. And, I am amazed at the amount of writing skills and strategies that are embedded into social media platforms. Although the student writer may not actually notice the author’s craft and intention that goes into well-crafted tweets, they are there in abundance, and I realized recently that these […]
Ever heard of the Enneagram? How could implementing personality types into ELA help your students better analyze characters and create authentic characters? I take you through some moves in this MW piece
When I was a drama student in high school, a theater teacher offered this important reminder as we choreographed stage blocking for a scene: “Every story has stakes.” These words were intended as a helpful cue to all the actors on the stage – to focus on conveying the risks involved as a character made […]
ESSENTIAL QUESTION: How do we provide students with the opportunities and space to write “sin miedo”? ADDITIONAL QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION: What does it mean to write without fear? Where does fear come from in the context of writing in the classroom? What kinds of classroom traumas create or worsen this fear? How do we help […]
moving writers 