Image via Pixabay If you’ve been following my posts this semester, you know I’ve been working on getting my students to look at research in a different light. I wanted to make the process more real world applicable to my students, so I designed a “Teens Take Action” project with my school librarian to give […]
Image via Pixabay In my first post of 2021, I introduced the “Teens Take Action” project, my attempt to make research more meaningful and applicable to my students. The goal of the project is for students to examine a social justice issue of their choosing through both a scholarly, academic lens (research) and a human […]
Image via Pixabay If you found yourself clicking on this article, you probably don’t need a lecture on why the traditional “research paper” is problematic and downright painful to teach. My biggest reason for wanting to ditch it? The lack of passion. The lack of passion students have about writing it, the lack of passion […]
Image via Pixabay They say when you turn off one of your senses, one or more of the others gets stronger. That’s what I love about teaching writing. The endlessness of possibilities for process means you get to start all over each time. Each time is an opportunity to focus on one of the “senses” […]
At this point in time, I’d be surprised if a teacher told me they haven’t gotten “the call” yet. And by “the call,” I mean when an administrator reaches out to teachers to inform them what the school and/or state would be doing in response to COVID19. I live in Illinois, so “the call” came […]
How many essays have you written for academic purposes? It is likely that if you are reading this, you have a minimum of a bachelor’s degree. Let’s say that while earning said bachelor’s degree, you took an average of 5 classes in the fall semester and 5 classes in the spring semester for 4 years. […]
Image via pixabay.com. Scaffolding. This is exactly what I had on my mind on the eve of a busy day this semester. I had spent the first quarter of the school year working intensely to give my senior honors students as much commentary on their writing as possible. Along with conferring with them verbally during […]
One of my greatest NCTE joys have been the times members of the Moving Writers team have gotten to join forces at NCTE. I love these people — their deeply-felt philosophies about teaching writing to make a difference in children’s learning and lives, their practical, boots-on-the-ground, why-didn’t-I-think-of-that brilliance. Here are some of the resources from […]
When I first moved from teaching middle school to teaching high school, I brought my workshop practice with me. At first, I was worried that this type of instruction wouldn’t meet the needs of my high school students, but it didn’t take me very long to realize that it was exactly what they needed. And […]
In my last post, I discussed how a small change I made to the seating in my classroom affected my day-to-day approach to teaching writing. Simply moving students into small groups allowed me to see so many valuable opportunities for collaboration in my instruction. Today, I’m going to talk about the collaborative benefits another small […]
