Mentor Text: ‘The Day The Last Slaughterhouse Closes‘ from The Day It Finally Happens by Mike Pearl Techniques: Presenting Research Using Narrative as an Introduction Attribution Background – I realize that it’s almost stereotypical for an English teacher, and lifelong reader, to go on about the importance and impact of libraries. So, I won’t. Except […]
Last year about this time, this article from the New York Times showed up in my Twitter feed. I clicked on it because I was intrigued by the title (“Extensive Data Shows Punishing Reach of Racism for Black Boys”) but when I realized that the article was all moving data, I knew my students would […]
I promise the title is the last of the math-related humor in this piece. I’ve already profiled the big Narrative Journalism unit my PLC does every year, but I had an interesting experience today that made me think that maybe one element of that writing project is worth revisiting in a bit more detail. […]
Early in the school year, my Runner’s World magazine showed up in my mailbox with a new column. It’s called “How to Be a Runner” and I think it’s incredibly clever. The bulk of the column is a two-column list where the writer highlights a choice. Treadmill or Outside? Group or Solo? Some choices are […]
I recently dropped into a colleague’s class while her students were in the midst of a pretty deep dive of a research project and was impressed by some of the conversations I listened to about source reliability and peer-review. It made me second guess–for a moment–the project my kids are working on right now wherein […]
We came back from school this week and my students in AP Seminar are diving headfirst into a big research project. They’ve done some researching, started annotating sources, done a lot of thinking…so now what?
So far this year, all of my writing on Moving Writers has been dedicated to Research Writing. I’m teaching two sections of AP Seminar this year, so I spend lots of time guiding students through research. I know the traditional research paper often gets a bad rap as “boring”, but I think there are lots […]
Every time I go to a workshop about research writing and synthesis (and I’ve been to a few since I teach both AP Language and AP Seminar), we talk about making smoothies or chocolate chip cookies or chili. In every instance–much to my disappointment– we’re not talking about eating, we’re talking about blending evidence effectively. […]
There are lots of ways to “do” research in a secondary classroom–everything from small writing pieces with just a little research to full-blown research projects that span several weeks. However you do it, though, it can get messy quickly. How do we show them all the rules of citation without overwhelming them? How do we […]
I love the planning part of teaching, taking ideas, and seeing what they might become. It’s one of my favorite things about writing for Moving Writers, because it gives me another outlet for putting those ideas to use. As a planner, I’m constantly noting things that intrigue or interest me, filing them away for future […]
