There aren’t any cheat sheets or formulas to help students do well on the SAT essay. But as it turns out, that might actually be a good thing.
Category: mentor texts
3 Ways I Approach Voice & Style with my AP Literature Class
I’d like to formally apologize to my college professors for my “I’m trying to sound smart” papers. I remember cranking out papers in college that, when looking back, make me shudder with embarrassment. How many attempts at “smart sounding” papers did I diligently and dutifully write while holed up in my tiny room in my […]
3 Moves Toward Better Teaching Tone and Voice
If our voice in writing is made up of a combination of our personality, our experiences, and our culture, we must let it inform our tone as we approach a subject.
Steal Like An Artist: A Swipe File of Mentor Texts
One of the books that my AP Lang students read is Austin Kleon’s Steal Like an Artist (the other is 1984; they make an interesting pair). I actually had the opportunity to meet Kleon briefly and hear him speak when he came to my school district as the keynote speaker for our in-service day earlier this month. […]
“Word by Word”: Thinking About Close Reading, Revision, and NCTE
The title of Anne Lamott’s book on writing, Bird by Bird, comes from a family story that a favorite colleague of mine also liked to tell when she was helping students get started with their writing. As Lamott tells it, when her father saw her brother overwhelmed by the task of a report on birds […]
Truman Capote’s “A Christmas Memory” as Mentor Text
We’ve been excitedly sitting on today’s guest post for nearly a year! We are so happy to finally share this lesson with you — perfect for the late fall and early winter as you scramble to engage your students in meaningful work before Winter Break! Adrian Nester is an AP English teacher and journalism adviser […]
6 Authentic Alternatives to the Book Report
I have inherited a legacy of book reports. Every quarter for eons, students in my school have written book reports. And, for whatever reason, parents in my community are rumored to be enamored with book reports — they are somehow a mark of a rigorous writing curriculum. So, while I work on a grand re-education […]
YA Sentence Study Snapshot: Everything, Everything
Today’s snapshot comes from Katie Stuart (@KatieStuart10) who teaches 9th grade English and 11th and 12 grade electives at Windham High School in Windham, NH. She previously taught at Windham Middle School and Pinkerton Academy in Derry, NH. She earned her B.A. in English and M.A.T. in Secondary English from the University of New Hampshire. […]
Making Hot Takes Cool Again
When my PLC revisited our Hot Take writing unit this year, we decided we needed to help students find a balance between voice, style, and evidence.
YA Sentence Study Snapshot: A Long Walk to Water
No matter how much we try, none of us can do it all; there simply aren’t enough hours in the classroom. So, whenever possible, I try to double-dip — pulling the learning from one area of our work to another. And that’s exactly my aim in this new column. To feed our students’ book love, […]
moving writers 