#writingwithmentors – moving writers

April 1, 2021April 1, 2021Abigail Lund

The Enneagram Meets the ELA Classroom

Ever heard of the Enneagram? How could implementing personality types into ELA help your students better analyze characters and create authentic characters? I take you through some moves in this MW piece

February 24, 2021February 23, 2021Jay

Mentor Text Wednesday: From a Certain Point of View

Mentor Text: ‘Vergence’ by Tracy Deonn From From a Certain Point of View: The Empire Strikes Back Techniques: Point of View Fan fiction as storytelling Background – In our house, it is a Christmas tradition that everyone gets new jammies and a new book on Christmas Eve. This year, as requested, I unwrapped the Empire Strikes […]

February 4, 2021February 4, 2021Abigail Lund

The Two Powerful Words… I Think

The powerful words I think can open a world of inquiry in our classroom especially in the science and math classroom. How can you use predictions and hypothesis in your classroom to generate critical writers? Abigail shows you some moves you can make!

December 3, 2020December 4, 2020Abigail Lund

Reading in Math? A Tale from Someone Who Survived It

Where do we start when teaching reading outside of the ELA classroom? Abigail takes you through some of the moves you may take. It’s not as scary as it might seem.

March 27, 2020March 25, 2020Paige Timmerman

Using Mentor Texts to Write History

At this point in time, I’d be surprised if a teacher told me they haven’t gotten “the call” yet. And by “the call,” I mean when an administrator reaches out to teachers to inform them what the school and/or state would be doing in response to COVID19. I live in Illinois, so “the call” came […]

March 12, 2020March 11, 2020Michael Ziegler

A 3D Model for Voice

One of my favorite things about being part of a community of English teachers both in my building and online (Hi Teacher Twitter Buddies!) is that every once in a while this really fun thing happens where a piece of writing gets published somewhere with really powerful voice or a really fun structure and all […]

December 13, 2019stefaniejochman

We’ve Landed! Reflections on A Writing Leap

For the past two months, I’ve been posting about my seniors’ work with writing short stories inspired by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s short story collection, The Thing Around Your Neck. Writing short stories in lieu of literary analysis was a new challenge for all of us, and as I read the final products, I think we’ve […]

September 11, 2019September 9, 2019Jay

Mentor Text Wednesday: (And Other Things)

Mentor Text: Basketball (And Other Things) by Shea Serrano Techniques: Writing About Sports (or Pop Culture) Engaging Non-Fiction Writing Using Footnotes Background – Like many Canadians, I got caught up in the Toronto Raptors’ championship run this past spring. I haven’t watched basketball since high school, really, so it was neat rediscovering the game. At the […]

April 18, 2019April 17, 2019Michael Ziegler

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 […]

May 15, 2018May 15, 2018stefaniejochman

Rolling Snowballs in Summertime: Using #100DOSW18 to Encourage Deeper Writing Next School Year

Remember how Olaf, the snowman from Frozen, sings about how excited he is to experience summer after Arendelle’s deep freeze? Consider me his opposite. As summer (and summer writing!) approaches, I, ever the Wisconsin girl at heart, am thinking about snow. Seriously. I’m thinking specifically about a snowman-size snowball, the kind you make by rolling […]