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: mentor texts
Nature Poetry and Survival Instincts: Floating with the Vampire Squid
2020 has provided unique challenges to the effort to close the “Nature Gap”: minimal time spent enjoying outdoor play and increased time spent in front of screens has led to greater nature disconnection. One way I’ve tried to address this gap in the virtual classroom is to use poetry writing as an entry point for […]
What Comes After Mentor Text? Class Writing Moves Glossaries
I want my students to become confident using mentor texts to guide and inspire their writing — it’s one of the most transferable skills I can give them for school and life beyond school. But, as I shared last month, I’ve been thinking a lot recently about a kind of independence that comes after that. […]
Teaching from 10 Mentor Texts
A few weeks ago, I attended a webinar from Matt Glover and Carl Anderson on Writing Workshop. At the end of the webinar, Carl held a live conference with an amazing middle grade student. She wanted some help with her poem about her family’s annual trip to the beach, this summer during the pandemic. “How […]
Mentor Text Wednesday: The Connect
Mentor Text: The Connect podcast featuring Jason Concepcion and Shea Serrano Techniques: Summary Introduction Highlighting Resonant Elements of a Text Criticism of a Text Exploring Connections Brainstorming Peer Conferencing Background – Like many of us, spring brought about a shift to remote learning. A regular habit of mine became looking for the silver lining in […]
What Comes AFTER Mentor Texts?
My best writing advice for teacher-writers (and my best advice for how to stay in the classroom for the long term) is to write about those problems, issues, and shortcomings that niggle you in the back of your head. Angela Stockman calls them the “pebbles in your teacher shoes.” Instead of a series of beautified […]
Well, What are You Waiting For?: An End of Year Rant
Trigger Warning: this post opens with a possibly offensive rant. If you feel the need to skip said rant, I have inserted a subheading to indicate where it is safe to begin reading. When I first started this beat about starting over and about being more intentional with which practices we keep and which ones […]
Mentor Text Wednesday: Writing About The “Songs That Saved My Life”
Mentor Text – Bono’s Mash Notes to Songs He Loves Techniques: Expressing appreciation Audience Drafting Background – I’ve been using the phrase silver lining a lot lately. Mostly as a way to explain the moments I’ve enjoyed and appreciated as I figure out what it means to teach remotely during a pandemic. (To say nothing of […]
We’re All New Teachers Now: Tips for Teacher-Collaborators
Now that the pandemic has struck, many of us feel like we are starting over as we navigate this fluid and nebulous teaching situation. What’s a teacher to do? If you’re anything like me, you stand on the shoulders of other teachers. Every Sunday since this all began, the Ohio Writing Project has hosted […]
A 3D Model for Voice
One of my favorite things about being part of a community of English teachers both in my building and online (Hi Teacher Twitter Buddies!) is that every once in a while this really fun thing happens where a piece of writing gets published somewhere with really powerful voice or a really fun structure and all […]
moving writers 