Through all the unprecedented changes the pandemic has brought into our classrooms, something that hasn’t changed and is highly unlikely to change is, how, despite seemingly perfect external conditions, the inner condition of the writer affects their writing.
My 40th birthday is in a couple of days, June 6th to be exact. I expected this to be a difficult time in my life as I don’t like accepting that I’m getting older (turning 30 involved a lot of crying!). It has been kind of the opposite; it has made me appreciate the cliche […]
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 […]
When was the last time you took a multiple-choice test? For me, the last time I took a multiple choice test to demonstrate mastery was during our beginning of the year compliance training courses (you know, those courses we have to take every year). Here is the real question though: Did it show my mastery […]
Playlists are constantly playing in my classroom and house. But what are the playlist of our lives? In this piece Abigail takes you through the moves of using writing playlists to create meaningful narratives.
Recently, my eleventh grade writers have been drafting their own Opinion-Editorials – a student (and teacher) favorite. Writers are tasked to select a topic of recency for an immediate and practical audience: peers, friends, teachers, parents, and/or the local community. Students have a lot of fun and put a great deal heart into this piece, […]
My beat this year is all about teaching in the hybrid classroom, but I’m taking a break this month to share an outside-of-the-classroom project that could easily be adapted for in-person, virtual, or hybrid learning. Just two months before my city locked down, I attended a public forum about storytelling featuring StoryCorps founder Dave Isay. […]
Teaching writing, at first, was a struggle for me. It was a struggle because the kids seemed to detest it. When I asked them why I received all sorts of answers, but one answer that kept coming up was that they didn’t feel like the writing was “real”; they turned in all their writing to […]
Dear (overly tested subject) teacher, How are you? February in Texas was a rough ride. And, I’ve been thinking about how to support you. I’ve been thinking about the most meaningful thing to write about this month every day to add to the writing resources and ideas for supporting teachers of writing and writers themselves. […]
Things are a little stressful in Texas, where I live. We just survived a snow-pocalypse the likes we’ve not seen in a century. Many of us had power outages, no internet, no water, or busted pipes, and this was just during the week of SNOVID! That doesn’t include all of the trials of the aftermath. […]
moving writers 