My whole teaching life I have been in search of a way to teach grammar that is meaningful, effective, and enduring. I have tried bits and pieces of other people’s curricula for years––Kelly Gallagher’s Sentence of the Week, Nancie Atwell’s editing sheets and proofreading lists––but I’ve never been able to find my groove with these […]
You know how the greats always make it look easy? This is the way I feel whenever I get to listen to Katie Ray or Tom Newkirk — they say something clear and simple and beautiful and even common sense, but it absolutely rocks my world. So it was when I read Dan Feigelson’s Reading […]
Your students will love this wintry mentor text about a first experience by Australian writer Mim Kempson.
Inspired by Rebekah’s decision to quit grading earlier this year, I have been trying to take more risks with assessment in my own classroom. I haven’t gone grade-free quite yet, but I’m looking for more opportunities to involve my students in the assessment process. Since it is end-of-term time for many schools, I thought […]
We are looking for passionate teacher-writers with a special interest in writing instruction to blog for us!
Mentor Text: The Power of Rey by Nicole Sperling What Rey Means to Me by Gabrielle Bondi What is a Mary Sue, and does Star Wars: The Force Awakens have one? by Caroline Framke Writing Techniques: Character analysis Pop culture analysis Using a feminist lens to critique character and pop culture Background: I got two […]
This year, I quit grading almost entirely. While I still give quarterly grades (because my students have to have them!), I do not grade individual assignments. I’ve given up traditional grading for many reasons that I explain in my first post on this topic, but the biggest of the reasons is this: I don’t think […]
Today, we are thrilled to bring back an old friend, Mentor Text Wednesday, and a new friend, Jay Nickerson. Jay is something of a mentor text Jedi — magically and mysteriously finding amazing, current, engaging mentor texts and pairing them with oodles of ideas for uses in lots of different classroom contexts. We are […]
We’ve all wondered what more we could do to help the Todd Andersons of our class–the painfully shy writers who would rather do a week’s worth of extra homework than read one line from their writer’s notebook aloud. And while leaving the shy student alone and allowing him to skip his turn in the […]
On Monday, Stefanie shared the inspiration for her podcasting study and how she helped students identify the moves that podcasters make as they craft an episode of a podcast. As an added bonus, Stefanie used this podcasting study as a way for her IB students to dive deeper into Heart of Darkness. Today, in part two, Stefanie […]
moving writers 