In this school years last beat Abigail takes you through a writing strategy of “dream/vision boards” to cast a vision for the future with your students.
Category: feedback
The Argument Essay: A Contextual Pool Adventure
As the season of AP Lang exams fast approaches, I find myself more and more urgently seeking ways to help tighten gaps in my students’ skill sets. Fine tuning writing skills is a part of it, but when it comes to one AP Lang task–the Open Argument essay–there are more pressing issues that are a […]
A Conversation that Nudges Students out of Embarrassment
If you’ve ever taught a bunch of self-conscious middle schoolers, you know that adolescents are perpetually embarrassed about anything and everything. You also know that they don’t just “get over it” when they realize that embarrassment is an impediment to their learning. In that state of biological and emotional upheaval, the rational voice (even when it exists) is drowned in the fear of embarrassment.
First Year Writing Teacher Support: Use Your Resources
As a first year teacher, I was so excited to teach writing. When I sat down to plan my year the summer before it started, I had so many writing units planned. I wanted my students to write paper after paper, knowing they needed the practice but also hoping they would begin to view writing […]
The Un-Rubric: An Experiment in Feedback
Rubrics tend to be about compliance, not thinking…
Genius Hour, but for Writers
Breather Routines and the Misdiagnosis of Writing Stamina I produce a podcast called Write Answers, and about a month ago, Beth Rimer (co-director of the Ohio Writing Project) and I recorded an interview in which she talked about a between-unit-plans break that she called “Breather Routines.” A Breather Routine can be a 1-3 week series […]
3 Conferences
Some case studies of student writers midway through a school year of conferring about writing
Big Picture/Closeup: a model for reading and writing
Closeup elements are how the story is told. Big Picture elements are the story itself.
It’s a Celebration!: Why We Should Honor Achievements in the Classroom
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 […]
A Systematic, Realistic, No-Worksheet Approach to Teaching Articles (a, an, the) to ELLs
This ready-to-use mini grammar unit aims to provide a framework for the student to systematically learn and use articles in their spoken and written English. Slides included.
moving writers 