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Mentor Text Wednesday: On Rey
Mentor Text: The Power of Rey by Nicole Sperling What Rey Means to Me by Gabrielle Bondi What is a Mary Sue, and does Star Wars: The Force Awakens have one? by Caroline Framke Writing Techniques: Character analysis Pop culture analysis Using a feminist lens to critique character and pop culture Background: I got two […]
So, I Quit Grading — Part II Update
This year, I quit grading almost entirely. While I still give quarterly grades (because my students have to have them!), I do not grade individual assignments. I’ve given up traditional grading for many reasons that I explain in my first post on this topic, but the biggest of the reasons is this: I don’t think […]
Mentor Text Wednesday: Golden Shovels are ‘Real Cool’
Today, we are thrilled to bring back an old friend, Mentor Text Wednesday, and a new friend, Jay Nickerson. Jay is something of a mentor text Jedi — magically and mysteriously finding amazing, current, engaging mentor texts and pairing them with oodles of ideas for uses in lots of different classroom contexts. We are […]
Supporting Our Most Reluctant-to-Share Writers
We’ve all wondered what more we could do to help the Todd Andersons of our class–the painfully shy writers who would rather do a week’s worth of extra homework than read one line from their writer’s notebook aloud. And while leaving the shy student alone and allowing him to skip his turn in the […]
Part II — A Podcasting Study!
On Monday, Stefanie shared the inspiration for her podcasting study and how she helped students identify the moves that podcasters make as they craft an episode of a podcast. As an added bonus, Stefanie used this podcasting study as a way for her IB students to dive deeper into Heart of Darkness. Today, in part two, Stefanie […]
Happy New Year from Moving Writers!
2015 was a momentous year for us at Moving Writers: we published a book with Heinemann, and collected over 52,000 views on our blog! This is all thanks to you, dear readers, for your support, your questions, and your continued interest and enthusiasm in our work. As a thank you, we are reposting our top […]
Writing Explorers: 4 Ideas for Approaching Writing as Discovery in Your Class Tomorrow
Have you read Donald Murray? In my career, I had read a lot about Donald Murray. Tons that was inspired by Donald Murray. Oodles that has flowed out of the legacy of Donald Murray, but I’m ashamed to say that until the last month, I had never read the man himself. Until Penny Kittle told […]
Using Mentor Texts to Teach About the Passive Voice
Today’s post is from a guest, Kelly Pace. Kelly teaches 9th, 11th, and 12th grade English and Theory of Knowledge to students at my former school home in Hanover County, Virginia. And aren’t they lucky to have her? Kelly has been regularly emailing me the mentor texts she is using with her students, and this […]
5 Ideas for Using “Dear Basketball” in Your Writing Class Tomorrow
When do English teachers get so lucky as to have a major NBA star validate what we do by announcing his retirement in the form of a poem? This week, Kobe Bryant did just that — he wrote a poem entitled “Dear Basketball” and released it to the media as an announcement of his retirement. […]
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