Mentor Texts: Sometimes, The Earth is Cruel by Leonard Pitts Jr. Patton Oswalt’s Facebook response to the Boston Marathon Bombing Take Time To Heal – A Gay Educator Looks At Orlando by Jess Lifshitz Finding Love In Our Anger – A Straight Educator Looks at Orlando by Doug Robertson I Still Love America by Devin […]
It was 9:45 on a Thursday night with two weeks left in the school year and I was crying. My eyes welled up as I read a mash-up of Death of a Salesman and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Years after the death of their father, Biff Loman was inviting Happy to join […]
Take writers outside and watch them bloom!
For a few years now, a debate has been simmering in my department about the college application essay: what’s our role? Some of my colleagues think we have an obligation to help the students with this very important piece of writing, and they’re not alone. Many of the school districts around us require all juniors […]
Creating maps allows students to turn their prewriting into a visual representation of their ideas.
Before reading this post, you might want to catch up with my grand grading experiment this year in my first post and second post in this series! I cried at graduation this year. No, that’s not right. I sobbed at graduation this year. Something that has never happened to me in the previous 10 graduations […]
Students have a story to tell. So why not let them tell it as a way in to literature — to walk an idea around to see how far it will go and where else it might lead them.
Mentor Text: CIVIL WAR, SPIDER-MAN 2, And The Dangers Of Assumed Empathy by FILM CRIT HULK Writing Techniques: Critical Writing Literary Analysis Voice & persona Background: I grew up a fan of comic books and science fiction. So, obviously, I’m in a great era for entertainment right now. As an English teacher, I bring the […]
Finding mentor texts can be hard. And time consuming. This, we know. Even after years of making mentor texts the fulcrum on which the rest of my writing instruction pivots, finding the right set of texts for the students in front of me can be a challenge. In Writing With Mentors, Allison and I share […]
Mentor Text: Various Poems Writing Techniques: Writing poetry Writing around a theme or topic Building a writing community Background: Though it’s no longer something that I do, I have taught Art. It’s pretty clear in my classroom, as I do a lot of work that incorporates visual elements. I love having students express their learning […]
moving writers 