Photo by Ian Taylor on Unsplash My students love debating, but the conversations often stall when it comes to addressing environmental solutions. The discomfort experienced in this moment can be attributed to missing opportunities for discussing and practicing climate stewardship. Navigating unfamiliar language associated with environmental problem-solving can reinforce the sense that weighing environmental solutions […]
Category: Writing Workshop
The Benefits of Writing 4: It’s FUN!
Consider it your holiday gift to your students: The gift of fun.
Place-Based Poetry Writing “Slow Unit”
Sometime during the first week of school this year, I taped this note to my desk: I wanted this year to be different. Not just different than the last few years of COVID School, but different than all the other years of my teaching that valued efficiency and productivity almost above all. (I love efficiency. […]
The Benefits of Writing 3: Remembering Your Life
Speaking as a teacher of 30 years experience who has, for all of those 30 years, asked students to write about their lives, I can only say I have never had a student complain about writing about their lives after the fact.
A New Spin on an Old Text: The Catcher in the R(I)
(See what I did there?) “If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I […]
Making All Things New: Rules for Writers
This year on Moving Writer’s, I am dusting off some old-but-wise books on my shelf about writing, creating a tiny review, then considering how one passage from the book can inform writing instruction today, even decades after the book was first published. This month, I’ll consider Winter Hours: Prose, Prose Poems, and Poems by Mary […]
What do YOU want in writing PD?
We haven’t asked in a while, so we’re asking! What would you like to learn about in writing pd? What are those nagging pebbles in your teacher shoes that you just can’t figure out? What would help you grow in your practice so you can move writers in your classroom? We’re all ears! Please share […]
The Same…But Different
In his post yesterday, Jay mentioned how he is struggling to find the groove this year. And last week, Rebekah shared her eagerness to move out of survival mode toward outgrowing her best work. I hear that, Jay and Rebekah. On the one hand, my classes have finished our launch units, and students seem familiar […]
The Benefits of Writing 2: Discovering the Power of Words
…In our classrooms, we can read for meaning, discuss meaning, and allow students to write things that mean something to them.
The Moving Writers Community Guide to Article of the Week
Each month in the Moving Writers Community, I share a complete reading or writing unit plan from my classroom. But this month, by popular demand, I am instead sharing an 11-page e-book detailing the process and resources I use for Kelly Gallagher’s famous Article of the Week in my own classroom. Here’s what you’ll find […]