Teaching is often a balancing act. We’re constantly balancing, sometimes battling, the seemingly opposing forces of lesson planning vs. grading, eating the cake in the workroom vs. not eating the cake in the workroom, literature study vs. writing study. But why can’t we have our cake and eat it, too? And by cake, I mean writing. […]
Category: Lesson for Tomorrow
Voice Lessons: Helping Students Find Their Writerly Voices
Lessons to help students explore their unique and original voices in writing.
The Narrative of Learning Essay: Personal Narrative Meets Literary Analysis
Students have a story to tell. So why not let them tell it as a way in to literature — to walk an idea around to see how far it will go and where else it might lead them.
No Writer Left Behind: How Night Writing Can Help Your Students
Night writing — the simple practice of writing after school hours — can be a game changer for some students.
Mini Personal Essays a la The Wall Street Journal’s Soapbox Column: An In-Between Study
Students love freestyling on topics like love, jealousy, and truth, so when I discovered The Wall Street Journal’s The Soapbox column, I knew I had landed upon a great mentor text for personal writing.
What Do You Do in the Last Days of a Writing Study?
As a writing study dwindles to an end, it can be hard to know what to do in those last few days — what minilessons your students want, whether to plan for more conferring time, how to address the range of needs at the end. Students are working toward a common deadline, but this can […]
5 Mentor Sentences to Help Students Write Better Analysis
If you haven’t checked out Rebekah’s series on analysis, stop what you’re doing and go read about her brilliant work with her IB students! I’ve never been more excited to teach analysis than after reading her thoughtful blog series. I’m going to piggyback on her posts and share something that I have found useful in the […]
A Writing Workshop Cure for the April Doldrums
T.S. Eliot wrote, “April is the cruellest month.” Sadly, this observation rings true for many students. I don’t know what it is about April, but it seems to bring on the stress, boredom, and lack of motivation that one would normally associate with months like December and February. The guidance counselor at our school recently […]
A Genre Mini-Study Perfect for April
With Saint Patrick’s Day, Easter, and the advent of spring, greeting cards are abound in our house. Perhaps most exciting of all are the blue cards with storks and animals that continue to show up in anticipation of our first baby’s arrival in early May! All of these cards, lined up along the sill above our kitchen sink, got […]
Sequencing and Scaffolding Writing Studies
Whether you work with students for two years or are searching for an effective way to organize writing instruction in your classroom, you have no doubt thought about sequencing your writing studies so they build on one another. This year I have the privilege of teaching a group of 8th graders whom I will also […]
moving writers 