prewriting – moving writers

April 1, 2021April 1, 2021Abigail Lund

The Enneagram Meets the ELA Classroom

Ever heard of the Enneagram? How could implementing personality types into ELA help your students better analyze characters and create authentic characters? I take you through some moves in this MW piece

December 11, 2020December 10, 2020Michael Ziegler

Virtual Teaching Is the Worst Video Game I’ve Ever Played…But I Think I Figured Out How to Beat the Game!

Reconsidering my classroom practices from the perspective of a very serious video gamer…a post about writing that just happens to use video games as a metaphor

October 16, 2020October 15, 2020Michael Ziegler

Writing Relationships: “Slide”ing into Writing

This year at Moving Writers, I hope to explore various ways to utilize writing practices in your classroom to build strong social-emotional relationships with students despite the physical separations imposed on classrooms by the pandemic. I hope very much that this proves to be a limited series… When I posted my first contribution of the […]

October 9, 2020October 7, 2020mrfitzfinkle

How To Focus a Topic

I find many of of my students have seldom, if ever, been allowed to choose and focus their own topics. They have been, as I often say, “prompted to death.” Yet the work of choosing and focusing a topic are essential writing moves – perhaps the most important writing moves of all, because they involve […]

October 2, 2020September 30, 2020Shawna Easton

True Crime During Class Time: Engaging Writers Using a Crime Scene

Everyone is obsessed with true crime lately. True crime podcasts, true crime TV shows, true crime movies, true crime documentaries. I feel like every time I turn around, I see another preview for another true crime series on Netflix. And, here’s the thing, I’m totally down for it. My podcasts, my list on Netflix – […]

September 18, 2020September 13, 2020Brett Vogelsinger

On the Lookout For Happy Accidents

My greatest hope is that amid this newness, the “I-feel-like-a-first-year-teacher-again” of it all, we can all learn some things about teaching writing that we may never have otherwise explored.

March 27, 2020March 25, 2020Paige Timmerman

Using Mentor Texts to Write History

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 […]

February 19, 2020February 18, 2020Jay

Mentor Text Wednesday: How to Play Night Baseball

Mentor Texts: ‘How To Play Night Baseball’ by Jonathan Holden Techniques: Imagery Writing Poetry Adding Flavour Background – So, often, I use this column as a chance to plan a lesson. Sometimes, I’m planning a lesson using a mentor text I know I’ll be using somewhere down the road, and other times, I’ve found a […]

January 22, 2020January 21, 2020Jay

Mentor Text Wednesday: Purr-fect Mentor Texts for Film Analysis

Mentor Texts: “All of the Little Things That Made the Original ‘Lion King’ so Great” by Shea Serrano “The effanineeffable, deep and inscrutable, singular Cats” by Alissa Wilkinson Techniques: Developing an argument Pre-writing Writing Introductions Writing Listicles Background – I’ve been thinking, for a long time, about the listicle form. We all know that it’s a […]

January 13, 2020January 12, 2020Rebekah O'Dell

Poetry as Prewrite (part 1)

We are so very happy to introduce you to our newest contributing writer, Brett Vogelsinger. Brett teaches high school English in Pennsylvania, but might already know him from the brilliance he shares all day every day on Twitter (@theVogelman). We’ve been borrowing good ideas from him for awhile, and we are so happy that he […]