My journey (so far) with differentiating writing instruction to meet each learner’s needs.
Category: The Writing Process
3 Favorite Writer’s Notebook Prompts
I have a confession. I didn’t always use a writer’s notebook, either as teacher and especially as a student. It’s hard to remember what that was like—Where did I keep all my thoughts? How did I keep track of it all? Writer’s notebooks—or journals—were something I remember learning about in graduate school, and while I […]
Wonderfully Messy Notebooks
I had great plans to help my students organize their writing lives. Things didn’t go quite as planned, but their writing lives are alive and well!
From Facepalm to Firestarter: Embarrassment and Inspiration at a Writing Project Symposium
Facepalm. By the second panel of the 2017 Greater Madison Writing Project symposium, “From High School to College: Engaging in Writing Dialogue,” you could have made a meme of me (or at least my inner monologue, since I managed to keep my outer composure), sitting like Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Captain Picard with my head […]
Blending Genres with Narrative Journalism
Narrative Journalism provides a robust genre to help your students explore voice and strengthen their narrative and informational writings skills.
March (Madness) to Determine Significance
March Madness March is still two months away, but that didn’t stop my students from facing off March Madness style as we reviewed Lord of the Flies last week. One of the challenges students often face when writing literary analysis is that writing literary analysis asks students to demonstrate two important but distinctly different things: […]
The Quest to Reduce Text
In August, I gave myself permission to leave walls blank to make way for instruction. Halfway through the school year, I’m checking back in on that work.
What Are You Working On? Empowering Student Writers through Workshop
I’ve always believed in the writing process. My teaching didn’t always reflect that belief, as I spent too many years earlier in my career creating worksheets and essay prompts and outlines and templates. I soon realized that just because my writing instruction included steps didn’t mean it was a process. That said, in more recent […]
Breaking Mentor Texts into Loose Parts
Loose parts are easier to examine, replicate, and experiment with. How do we break a mentor text down?
Conferring as Prewriting
I was reminded the other day of the work of Don Murray (who, with Don Graves, I affectionately refer to as “the Dons” in my head). “Prewriting usually takes about 85% of the writer’s time,” Murray wrote in his wonderful essay, “Teaching Writing as a Process Not Product.” As my students begin work on one […]
moving writers 