I think my students would tell you that our classroom is a happy, productive place. They would also tell you that it’s predictable. Monday through Thursday, we write during notebook time, read mentor texts and take notes during the lesson, and write and confer during workshop. We do this for 46 minutes four times a […]
Category: Lesson for Tomorrow
Notebook Time: What It Is & Why We Do It
Rebekah and I often often tweet ideas for notebook time, and recently many of you have been asking us to explain it and show how it fits into the workshop. Put simply, notebook time is an opportunity for students to play in their notebooks with different ideas, information, and genres. In our classrooms, notebook time […]
Teaching High Schoolers How to Read Like Writers with Cynthia Rylant’s When I Was Young in the Mountains
Fact: high schoolers love storytime. They love sitting cross-legged on a patch of carpet as the teacher reads a story from a chair, fanning open the pages of the book. When I told them we were having storytime, my ninth graders appeared confused at first, exchanging dubious glances around the room. “Like in elementary school […]
A Lesson for Tomorrow: Writing Like Crime Scene Investigators
I cringed as I listened to a former student explain how her teacher grades discussion. “You have to talk three times to even be graded,” she said, swirling the last inch of iced coffee in her plastic cup. “And you can’t ask questions. Questions show that you haven’t thought something through enough to talk about […]
A Lesson for Tomorrow: Layering Annotations for Richer Writing
As my IB seniors approach their exams — not to mention college life — I want to take these last months of teachable moments to take what they are already doing well and build on it. Push them deeper. Expel the idea that there is ever an “enough” point in their thinking and writing. In […]
A Lesson for Tomorrow: Using Art to Teach Repetition in Writing and Reading
Students are great barometers of lesson effectiveness. At the end of each writing workshop genre study, I ask students to reflect on the lessons that had an impact on their thinking and writing. When asked which mini-lesson she found to be the least helpful in our memoir genre study, a student wrote: The mini-lesson I […]
A Lesson for Tomorrow: Writing a Persuasive Conclusion
“What do you need more of?” I queried. Within minutes, more than a dozen post-its on my board read: “A mini-lesson on conclusions!” “Conclusions! Please!” “Conclusions — I don’t know what to do! Help!” And these were my IB seniors, still convinced at the end of their K-12 careers that they couldn’t successfully wrap up […]
moving writers 