Thinking about our writing, big picture, helps us to think about who and how we want to be as people, and as we the people.
Category: Writing Study
The Argument Essay: A Contextual Pool Adventure
As the season of AP Lang exams fast approaches, I find myself more and more urgently seeking ways to help tighten gaps in my students’ skill sets. Fine tuning writing skills is a part of it, but when it comes to one AP Lang task–the Open Argument essay–there are more pressing issues that are a […]
Reading As Writers: Big Picture and Closeup
Great student writers, the ones whose work I can’t wait to read, notice what writers do and begin to see how it all works together.
Big Picture/Closeup: a model for reading and writing
Closeup elements are how the story is told. Big Picture elements are the story itself.
The Choices Writers Make (If Allowed)
“…in many writing classrooms, students are learning to write by not being allowed to do any of the things “real” writers do: make choices.”
Writers, Start Your Engines: A Mid-Leap Dispatch
Last month, I described my plans and worries for the new risk I’m taking with a familiar course: a mini fiction workshop in my IB English class. Last week we finished reading our mentor texts, stories from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s The Thing Around Your Neck, and now students are in the middle of some independent […]
Conferencing Through Chaos…by Maybe Embracing the Chaos of Conferencing?
For those who’ve been following the ongoing adventures (exploits? misadventures?) of my focus student, Troy, and me this year, be aware that I’m taking a blog off from that beat. Troy and I are kind of in a holding pattern right now, and we’re also in between writing assignments as a whole class, so as […]
Moving Writers’ Top Ten: What LEGO bricks and Writing Intervention Have in Common
As is our habit, we are taking the summer away from the blog to read, write, and recharge. We’ll be back in late August with new content, but for the summer, let’s take a journey down memory lane as we visit our ten most-read posts from the previous school year! “You have to learn the […]
TFMTF: Thanos, Endgame, and other Writing “Marvels”
I’ve been a film fanatic since college, so my Twitter feed has a disproportionate share of film criticism amidst all the excellent educator voices. One of the better sites I’ve discovered for film coverage is Film School Rejects (Twitter handle: @oneperfectshot). They often just tweet singular frames from films which makes for great visual analysis […]
Be Young! Have Fun! Teach Satire!
In one of her posts not so long ago, Hattie outlined a case for teaching a modern satire piece–a riff on the infamous A Modest Proposal. In her piece, she argues that there are three reasons the piece was worth examining in class alongside the original. I’d like to revisit two of those today as […]
moving writers 