My notebooks are an important part of my process as a teacher, and as a writer. They are places that allow me to collect my ideas, and to work them through. I keep one on the go constantly, in my satchel. It comes to every PD opportunity with me, and is often open on my […]
Category: Planning
Academic Gifting: Offering Authenticity and Collaboration
Academic Gifting allows students to respond to authentic writing and to identify as authors.
The Fearless Writers
This fall, I’m teaching two classes. One starts with fiction and narrative writing, and the other launches with informational and persuasive texts. I committed to teaching each with a mentor text approach to analyzing our reading and crafting our own choice text. Within the first weeks, our narrative work was on a roll, but our […]
Titan Talk: Pen Pal Letters and Social Health
Aiming to bridge the social gap by creating authentic opportunities to read and write
That one time I was wrong: and how I was wrong again immediately afterward
How neuroscience informs my philosophy of teaching writing.
Pedagogical Documentation: How Writing Teachers Learn From Their Students
When Allison and Rebekah asked me to begin a new year of blogging by considering the first thing I would want the writers I teach to understand, this post nearly began writing itself. You see, I’ve spent this summer learning more about the power and practice of pedagogical documentation, and this has inspired some unexpected shifts […]
Permission to Start the Year with Blank Walls
Starting with blank space allows for more collaborative instruction throughout the year.
I Haven’t Forgotten About You: Honors Students and the Summer Reading Essay Anxiety
One of the writing teacher’s lesser-known jobs is to calm the writing fears of our gifted and talented students.
Best of 2015-2016: Writing Workshop Workflow
There are a million moving pieces in a functioning writing workshop — this is part of what makes it so exciting, so dynamic. Each student is in a slightly different place in their writing, and it’s our job to try to keep it all organized so that we can best help our students. In this post, […]
Mapping: Analyzing a Weird Text
Creating maps allows students to turn their prewriting into a visual representation of their ideas.
moving writers 