Back in the dark days of COVID school, my social studies colleague, Sam Futrell, and I started making videos for our students — the tiniest of mini lessons that may, perhaps, help them be able to write successfully on their own from home, or when they had an extended absence, or when they were sitting […]
Category: Rebekah O’Dell
Teaching Grammar with Mentor Texts
One of the most common questions I get asked when I speak with teachers is “Okay, but how do you teach grammar?” And this mini-course is my answer to that! Yes, I use mentor texts to teach grammar just like I use mentor texts to teach any other writing skill. But in this course, I […]
Coaching Call with Rebekah: How Can Teachers Gather Data About Students in English?
In my twenty years of teaching, I have been in many IEP / 504 meetings and participated in the writing of student goals. And, always, the more qualitative nature of English is a challenge. It doesn’t make sense, for instance, to write a goal necessitating a student to “correctly identify the main idea of a […]
Coaching Call with Rebekah: Nonfiction Reading Strategies
Over the last year or so, I’ve been thinking about how I can do more to help teachers. A one-day workshop or webinar is great, but I’m also convinced that the most important conversations we have are individual, one-on-one, and speak into the specifics of our lives. So, I started offering private coaching sessions just […]
A Peek into this Summer’s Camp Rewrite
Nearly eight years ago, I heard Rebekah O’Dell speak at a conference here in Los Angeles, and I was immediately struck by something. She didn’t sound like most keynote speakers. Instead of staging some sort of expertise, she was sharing her enthusiasm. As she talked about the possibilities that could be found with bursts of […]
A Guide to Narrative Writing Genres
Do students in your school write a personal essay of some kind every single year? They do in the three schools I’ve taught in. In fact, narrative writing — especially nonfiction, personal narratives — are perhaps the most ubiquitous piece of writing taught in every school I’ve ever visited. How can we differentiate that — […]
Introducing: The Planning Series
Hey there, I’m introducing a brand new professional development series this spring that I think you’ll love! This three-session series helps you learn a process that will quickly and effectively plan writing units that are rooted in mentor texts. I’m MOST excited about session three — a one-on-one, by-appointment session where we plan a unit […]
A Flash-Drafting Revolution!
Long after I had moved to a workshop-style classroom, I couldn’t shake a very typical writing-class problem: kids didn’t write. Well, they did, but they still didn’t write until the very last minute, procrastinating and frozen until the assignment was due. Sure, I’d dutifully teach mini-lessons, but then, instead of writing, students would stare, doodle, […]
November Webinar: Using Independent Reading to DO MORE!
We are ALL too busy and have too much to teach for any classroom routine to only serve one function. Independent reading is a tentpole in many of our classrooms, working to build reading passion and stamina simultaneously. But what if that same independent reading time could do even more? What if it could teach […]
Building Capacity for Revision 10 Minutes at a Time
Revision is the vegetable of the writing process. And, as such, we have to build capacity for revision — like building capacity for eating broccoli — by finding ways to sneak it in. I’ve been doing this in quick 10-minute bursts this year that I call Reflection + Revision. Here’s how it works: Here are […]
moving writers 