Today’s snapshot comes from Katie Stuart (@KatieStuart10) who teaches 9th grade English and 11th and 12 grade electives at Windham High School in Windham, NH. She previously taught at Windham Middle School and Pinkerton Academy in Derry, NH. She earned her B.A. in English and M.A.T. in Secondary English from the University of New Hampshire. […]
No matter how much we try, none of us can do it all; there simply aren’t enough hours in the classroom. So, whenever possible, I try to double-dip — pulling the learning from one area of our work to another. And that’s exactly my aim in this new column. To feed our students’ book love, […]
When you need to explore the power of diction and syntax with your students, looking at actual editorial revisions made by professional journalists seems like a great place to start!
Each year, my students compose a series of brief writing pieces—each one describing a person, place, or thing. Currently, students are working on their “person” essay—a personal essay inspired by the beautiful mentor text, “The Stranger in the Photo is Me” by Don Murray. The essay is a meditation on memory and identity, and as […]
I thought I was so clever. I thought I had saved myself some time. Survey says…I was wrong!
Hi, Beth! Thanks for asking. As you know, mentor texts can be incredibly powerful tools to help students see the beauty in our language—and studying mentor texts at the sentence level can help students see what happens when we gather the best words in the best order. I almost always use mentor texts to […]
Today’s guest post is from one of Rebekah & Allison’s colleagues, Maria Bartz. Maria is an English teacher at Trinity Episcopal School in Richmond, VA. She loves a clean white board for spontaneous think tank sessions with her inspiring colleagues, a fully charged laptop to explore the ever-growing world of educational technology, and big circle […]
Now that it’s officially August, I’m starting to feel what I suspect many teachers feel this time of year—the all too familiar mix of anxiety and anticipation. While I use this time to cross off items on my summer bucket list—beach getaways, sticky popsicles, and poolside naps—I also use summer to reflect on all the […]
Today we bring you another amazing guest post from Jeremy Hyler, a middle school language arts teacher and co-director of the Chippewa River Writing Project. He is the coauthor of Create, Compose, Connect: Reading, Writing, and Learning with Digital Tools with Troy Hicks. There is no arguing that the landscape of teaching students how to write has […]
One of my favorites things about the end of the school year—aside from summer vacation, of course—is the opportunity to reflect on another year gone by. And as I look back on this particular year, I see many bumps in the road: lessons gone awry, students I didn’t quite reach, and material I didn’t get […]
