Google Games: 3 Quick Tips for Helping Kids Level Up Their (Re)search

Most teachers have grand aspirations when embarking upon inquiry work with their classes, but when they get to the part where the kids actually have to find out stuff…it all comes crashing down. What if there was a game you could play with students to sharpen their Google searching skills, as well as their research […]

Turn Local History into Advocacy with Three Different Writing Projects

One of my biggest challenges as a teacher is getting students to feel connected to history. To them, especially at the middle school age, history might as well be the Milky Way– kids are told that it’s real and that they are a part of it, but the scope of history often has such galactical […]

Writing a Climate Victory Garden

Louise Maher-Johnson’s poem, “Notes from a Climate Victory Garden,” offers a series of calls to action, as seen in the poem’s opening: Rebalance: Greenhouse Gases (CO2,N2O, CH4, H2O vapor) with                                                                                 photosynthesis. Recognize: Plants cool by evaporation, ground cover, shade, and                                                                                     precipitation Replant: Lawns with Victory Gardens, as in world war past. Organized by lines beginning […]

Inquiry Lab: Anchor Charts that Help Students Go Further

Welcome back to the Inquiry Lab! In my last post, I shared ways I teach and coach students to nudge each other toward deeper learning. Today, we’ll get into ways the teacher can leverage a workshop approach to similar effect, especially when it comes to inquiry work. It all begins with effective anchor charts. To […]

Inquiry Lab: Teaching Students to Nudge Each Other Toward Deep Learning

Welcome to the Inquiry Lab! In this series, we’re thinking through how we can use the workshop model to teach inquiry work, in any subject (writing included, of course). For the last year or so, I’ve been rethinking the way we teach into group work and partner collaborations. To that end, here at Moving Writer’s, […]

Environmental Justice, Comic Book Storytelling, and Seed Work

In Charlie La Greca and Rebecca Bratspies’ environmental justice comic, Mayah’s Lot, the image of the aspen seed is prominent.  The titular character intends to plant an aspen seed in a garden she secretly tends on a vacant lot, just before finding out a corporation’s plan to transform the lot into an industrial toxic storage waste facility.  […]