Often, the what of holding writing conferences isn’t the problem… it’s the how. How to you manage the rest of the class while conferring one on one? How do you find the physical space in a packed classroom? How do you record writing conferences in a meaningful way that will help you and students down […]
Category: Writing Workshop
No Dumb Questions: Using Inquiry to Drive Research
In his 1995 work, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, astrophysicist Carl Sagan wrote a sentence that would be uttered in classrooms around the world for decades to come: “there’s no such thing as a dumb question.” We’ll assume, of course, that Sagan is excluding the students in your class who […]
First Year Teacher Support: Telling Yourself, “It’ll Buff”
There’s a saying a lot of students at my school use. If something unfortunate happens that they want to shake off— they’re having a bad day, they drop their iPad on the floor, they accidentally bump into someone on the way into class— you might hear them say it. When I first heard the expression, […]
A Message in a Bottle Narrative
The phrase, “a message in a bottle,” conjures an image of a weather-beaten bottle, bearing a message from an earnest sender. It came to mind as I prepared to share a National Geographic encyclopedic entry about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch with my students. Eager to provide them with more opportunities to process the implications […]
Learning From Poems: Grand Finales
This year on Moving Writers, my “beat” returns to poetry as a foundational element of a writing classroom. Each month’s post will examine how we can learn about an aspect of writing from a specific poem or poems, then look at what it might sound like to extend those ideas to a writing lesson in […]
Some of the Best Ideas Are Right Around the Hall
The best lesson I’ve learned about leadership is if you want people to listen to your ideas, you better be the kind of person who listens to theirs. And the best lesson I’ve learned about finding great teaching ideas is that sometimes the thing your teaching practice needs most is occurring just a few doors […]
Hitting the Reset Button: Pacing
At the beginning of this year, I committed to spending some time reflecting on what went well last year and which areas of my teaching practice needed a “reset button” after 18 months of interrupted schooling. This month I’m looking closely at one of the things my PLC discussed most during virtual and hybrid learning: […]
Making Asking Easier: Part 1
Far from admitting to a teacher, many of my students don’t want to admit to themselves that they’re struggling with something. They prefer not knowing, passing, and faking their way out of a task to the sheer torture of the confession of their struggles.
Ready to Find Love? Swipe Right on These Five Social Studies Writing Workshops
Choosing the right writing workshop (say that five times fast) at the right time in a content-based classroom will have a large impact on the success of your writing instruction. A workshop that is too complex or does not serve your class’s current needs could also derail your unit, resulting in total heartbreak for you and your students. Preview five, eligible workshops that will adapt to your curriculum and help your students write like historians.
Transitioning to Better Transitions
Transitions can be difficult – in life and in writing.
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