Every day, the student walked into my class sighing, treating my classroom like it was maybe the second circle of hell, or, at the very least, purgatory. Every assignment induced moans, every request that the writer keep writing or try a little harder met with a roll of the eye. And now this student was […]
Category: Stefanie Jochman
Writing Our Way In…to a Quick Lesson for Tomorrow!
My beat this year is all about exploring how students can write their way INto texts and use their writing (or others’) to learn more about literature. If you’re looking for new ways to use writing in a literature study or hoping to blend writing workshop into a course where it doesn’t seem like a […]
This Is Letting Go, and This Is Good: A Lesson from Minute Maid (And Megan Kortlandt!)
One of the joys of a rainy Saturday afternoon when all the work is caught up and the laundry rumbles around in the washer or dryer is stretching out on my couch for a little channel surfing. Usually, a commercial break means it’s time to change the channel, but last Saturday, the break began with […]
Writing Our Way In: Tips for Balancing Literature Study and Writing Workshop
My beat this fall is all about exploring how students can write their way INto texts and use their writing (or others’) to learn more about literature. If you’re looking for new ways to use writing in a literature study or hoping to blend writing workshop into a course where it doesn’t seem like a […]
Writing Our Way In: Exploring Drama Through A Soliloquy Study– Part One
On any day last week, a quick sweep of my three senior classes offered the same scene: gaunt, gray faces; foreheads on tables; backpacks exploding with papers; hair teased and tangled by frustrated fingers. It’s the October crunch, and my seniors are feeling the pressure of first quarter assessments, college applications, and fall SAT testing. […]
Writing Our Way In: Using Writing to Introduce Literature
I think what I liked most about middle school was the fact that I had two English classes: Language Arts AND Reading. Now, as a high school English teacher with three sections of an intensive literature course, I often think back to middle school and wish my classes were twice as long so I could […]
What’s Saving My Life: Early Student Writing
“I’m crying in the middle of this Panera Bread”: not a comment I imagined I might need to add to a bank!
Rolling Snowballs in Summertime: Using #100DOSW18 to Encourage Deeper Writing Next School Year
Remember how Olaf, the snowman from Frozen, sings about how excited he is to experience summer after Arendelle’s deep freeze? Consider me his opposite. As summer (and summer writing!) approaches, I, ever the Wisconsin girl at heart, am thinking about snow. Seriously. I’m thinking specifically about a snowman-size snowball, the kind you make by rolling […]
March Museums and Mash-ups: Springtime Experiments in the Classroom
As the daffodils start sprouting near sidewalks and the draft in my apartment warms to where I don’t feel compelled to don a housecoat at all hours and become more of a Rose Nylund than I already am, the longer, sunshiny, pollen-y days give me the itch to experiment. In the last two weeks, my […]
“Listening Is an Act of Love”
Full confession: I wanted to say something profound, to share some brilliant new teaching strategy that had emerged from my classes over the past month, but as I sit down to write on one of the first sunny days of a very gray February, I’m feeling a little tapped out of great ideas. Like Hattie, […]