Writing alongside our students is one of the most important instructional moves we can make – both for our students and for ourselves.
Category: The Writing Process
Teaching From My Twitter Feed: Fun with Maps
A post exploring two Twitter accounts that provide a wealth of interesting visual material for your classroom writers!
The SAT Essay: Preparing Students for the Test & Tips for Sealing the Deal
There aren’t any cheat sheets or formulas to help students do well on the SAT essay. But as it turns out, that might actually be a good thing.
3 Moves Toward Better Teaching Tone and Voice
If our voice in writing is made up of a combination of our personality, our experiences, and our culture, we must let it inform our tone as we approach a subject.
A (Writing) Library of Possibility: Structure and Freedom
In recent years, I’ve moved further away from assigned writing prompts to a more open workshop model. It’s been a hard shift, though, and it’s messy. Really messy. Like many teachers, my planning for writing often goes one of two ways: 1) read mentor texts and then develop a writing prompt, or 2) develop a […]
Researching the Future
This piece explores ways to let your below-grade-level learners imagine and envision a pathway to their career aspirations all through the use of research writing.
3 Techniques for Students Who Know What They Want to Say But Not How to Say it
Can you picture the student who has just said this in a writing conference? He smoothes the pages of his notebook to reveal countless scribbles and doodles that he has spent the past few days getting down. He has generated multiple ideas for his next writing project. He has done his homework. But he sits […]
Steal Like An Artist: A Swipe File of Mentor Texts
One of the books that my AP Lang students read is Austin Kleon’s Steal Like an Artist (the other is 1984; they make an interesting pair). I actually had the opportunity to meet Kleon briefly and hear him speak when he came to my school district as the keynote speaker for our in-service day earlier this month. […]
Making Hot Takes Cool Again
When my PLC revisited our Hot Take writing unit this year, we decided we needed to help students find a balance between voice, style, and evidence.
No Happy Endings
“It doesn’t solve anything in an overly neat-and-tidy kind of way; rather, it honors the fact that sometime we are in a place where we are not okay.”
moving writers 