A New Tilt on Art Can Spark Earth Day Conversations

Planning for Earth Day conversations can give educators pause.  In the attempt to create a sense of urgency for climate action, we might decide to subject our students to a parade of dire statistics.  This onslaught of information can have the opposite effect: instead of moving students from inaction to action, we can inadvertently move […]

Better Questions . . . Better Classrooms

Questioning strategies are a passion of mine. I’ve been doing some research into what academics call dialogic talk and what teachers call questioning for the better part of 25 years. Thinking about your classroom, I want you to consider the layered and nuanced dimensions purposeful questioning can take in your classroom. First-Write Them Down Do […]

AI Meets AP: A Collaboration Between Top Writers and ChatGPT

Like most English teachers, my AP Literature and Composition students have a special kind of scorn for AI writing. And it makes sense: They are some of the most skilled writers in the school, and likely they feel threatened by technology that claims to replicate the skill that helped propel them to academic success, often […]

Google Games: 3 Quick Tips for Helping Kids Level Up Their (Re)search

Most teachers have grand aspirations when embarking upon inquiry work with their classes, but when they get to the part where the kids actually have to find out stuff…it all comes crashing down. What if there was a game you could play with students to sharpen their Google searching skills, as well as their research […]

Making All Things New: Prompts for Thinking Creatively

This year on Moving Writers, I am dusting off some old-but-wise books on my shelf about writing, creating a tiny review, then considering how one passage from the book can inform writing instruction today, even decades after the book was first published.  This month, I’ll consider Metro: Journeys in Writing Creatively by Hans Ostrom, Wendy […]