A writing teacher’s attempt to fill her classrooms full of words. In this excerpt students use Two Truths and a Lie to explain their “Why”
Category: information writing
Becoming an “Expert”
(Above is a recording of the following article) If I had a quarter for everytime someone told me that we don’t have time to write in subjects other than ELA I think I might be a millionaire. Writing is such an integral part of every subject area and I am on a mission to make […]
Mentor Text Wednesday – The Day It Finally Happens
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 […]
Teaching From My Twitter Feed: Developing Messy Arguments
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 […]
A Cute Argument Against Obtuse Argument
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. […]
Tackling the Dry Stuff aka Footnotes made Fun
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 […]
A Firm Defense of “Squishy” Research
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 […]
Making Research Relevant: A Quick Way to get Researchers Writing
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?
A Lesson in Paraphrasing from Fortnite
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 […]
Making Research Relevant: Teaching Students to Synthesize Evidence
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. […]
