Workshop + Don’t Drop: Resources from #NCTE19

One of my greatest NCTE joys have been the times members of the Moving Writers team have gotten to join forces at NCTE.  I love these people — their deeply-felt philosophies about teaching writing to make a difference in children’s learning and lives, their practical, boots-on-the-ground, why-didn’t-I-think-of-that brilliance. Here are some of the resources from […]

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 […]

Leaning into Difficult Topics: Toward an Informed Stance

After the Parkland school shooting in February, we witnessed something tangible shift in our discourse about school safety and gun regulation. Nationally, we saw and still see young people like the Parkland student survivors stand up and make their voices heard, including the CNN sponsored town hall with Florida politicians and a coordinated student-led walkout on […]

Low stakes writing: How I reclaimed my sanity and unburied myself from grading.

My first year teaching AP Language, I was overwhelmed by the grading. The class culminates in a three hour exam; for two of those hours, students are writing three different essays. The amount of prep your average student needs to confidently bang out three essays asking them to do three different things in two hours? […]