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Make Your Own Burger: Creating what is Missing
Making their own burgers provides students with both direction and freedom in creative writing.
What We Wish We Had Known …
This weekend as so many teachers graduate from college and begin this wonderful, crazy, noble, life-changing career, Allison and I wrote about what we wish we had known when we started at the Education Week Teacher blog! We thought we knew everything when we left our teacher ed programs. We could plan a perfectly balanced […]
Mentor Text Wednesday: Ron Swanson on Using Quotations
Mentor Text: Barney Frank & Frederick Law Olmsted excerpts from Nick Offerman’s Gumption Writing Techniques: Integrating quotations into writing Essay Writing Voice Highlighting an Opinion or Personal Connection Background: The thing about being a teacher on the lookout for mentor texts is that you never know where that inspiration will come from. Pretty much every […]
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Happy Teacher Appreciation Week! We certainly appreciate you, loyal readers, and all you do every single day to do the hardest, most noble, and most wonderful job in the world! Our friends at Heinemann are offering an amazing deal this week — use the code UTEACH to get 30% off your purchase AND free shipping! What better […]
Five Ways to Use Sketching in Writing Workshop
Bring sketching into your workshop to help students visualize details and reflect on the writing process.
Mentor Text Wednesday – Found Poetry: The Online Version
Mentor Text: WFM: Allergic to Pine-Sol, Am I the Only One by Melissa Barrett Writing Techniques: Poetry (specifically found poetry) Manipulating existing text for creative purposes Critical Thinking Creative response Editing The importance of a title Background: In the spirit of Poetry Month, I decided to commit the remainder of April’s columns to poetic mentor […]
Introducing Argumentative Writing with Infographics
Like Rebekah, Allison, and probably many of you, I am a big fan of Kelly Gallagher’s work. In fact, a colleague and I structured our freshman curriculum to mirror the writing scaffold in his book Write Like This: our first freshman writing assignments encourage students to “express and reflect” in personal narratives, assignments throughout the […]
Finding Writing Time Where Time Doesn’t Exist
With a little bit of creativity and flexibility, you can add more writing time to your classes!
Mentor Text Wednesday – TV Poetry
Mentor Text: The Twin Peaks poetry of Liz Worth Writing Techniques: Poetry Manipulating existing text for creative purposes Pop culture analysis Creative response Editing Background: I’ve already admitted to how I feel about magazines in this column. They’re these wonderful collections of information and inspiration that call to me on a regular basis. I read […]
moving writers 