Planning for Earth Day conversations can give educators pause. In the attempt to create a sense of urgency for climate action, we might decide to subject our students to a parade of dire statistics. This onslaught of information can have the opposite effect: instead of moving students from inaction to action, we can inadvertently move […]
There are so many wonderful eclipse resources out there but this month I wanted to put a resource in your hands of some pretty beautiful writing that you can invite in your own classroom. Being that it is April, what a time to celebrate our beautiful nature with poetry. And while nature is doing […]
When we think of research writing, we often think of the laborious, quarter-long essay projects that often scare our students. And while there is value in teaching our students to use research that culminates in an academic essay, the truth is that not all research writing looks that way. My students have been doing infographics […]
Standards and pacing guides dictate the modes of writing students need to do in a given school year: informational writing, persuasive writing, argumentative writing, narrative writing. But these documents aren’t as good at sharing what that should actually look like. That — what modes of writing look like in the wild — is genre. The […]
Lately, I’ve been interested in what educators do to invite playfulness in the classroom. When we create conditions for playful experimentation, we can lower the stakes for communicating about a serious topic. In fact, we may lower an entire drawbridge, allowing students to enter into an imaginative space previously regarded as a formidable realm, where […]
Source If you teach a tested subject like me, February seems to be the month that everyone starts becoming “invested” in what you are doing in the classroom and how it is preparing our students to pass their TEST. This time of year students are taking “field tests” and “benchmark tests” in addition to […]
At the beginning of December, a local high school reached out and asked to come into our school to shadow our writing center and ask questions. They were interested in beginning their own center. It was a career-long dream of their English department chair, much like it was for my own department coordinator when we […]
Source Christmas is my favorite season. I love this time of year because I pride myself on being a great gift giver. There is no greater satisfaction in life than watching my loved one open their gift and the look of surprise, mixed with confusion wash over their face as they look up at me […]
This year, I’ve been making a point to try new and engaging ways to offer mini lessons to my students. In my last post, I discussed how I used samples from my students’ warm-up writing project to help students elevate their sentences. My next creative idea came during homecoming week on “Barbenheimer Day,” where students […]
This year, I’ve been making a point to try new and engaging ways to offer mini lessons to my students. In my last post, I discussed how I used samples from my students’ warm-up writing project to help students elevate their sentences. My next creative idea came during homecoming week on “Barbenheimer Day,” where students […]
moving writers 