“What do you need more of?” I queried. Within minutes, more than a dozen post-its on my board read: “A mini-lesson on conclusions!” “Conclusions! Please!” “Conclusions — I don’t know what to do! Help!” And these were my IB seniors, still convinced at the end of their K-12 careers that they couldn’t successfully wrap up […]
Recently …
Mentor Text Wednesday: “Scary New World” by John Green for The New York Times
An Introduction to Mentor Text Wednesday Welcome to our very first Mentor Text Wednesday! Mentor texts are powerful in the hands of writers — they engage our students, they motivate our students, they guide our students, they inspire our students. We know they work. But finding mentor texts is a time-consuming task for teachers. I […]
The Fifth Pillar of Writing Workshop
Lucy Calkins says that kids “need to see their work reach other readers.” This explains why I spent much of winter break planning and writing posts for the new blog, checking blog stats, and refreshing my Twitter feed. Have my words reached anyone? Have they made a difference? A blogging neophyte, I had almost forgotten […]
Showing-Versus-Telling & The Walking Dead
The first twenty minutes of the pilot episode of The Walking Dead is virtually silent. I hadn’t remembered that when, out of desperation and end-of-October exhaustion, I agreed to show the episode to my ninth graders on Halloween. They begged. I was weak. In a lame effort to sound educational, I grasped wildly for one of our recent mini-lessons. […]
New Year’s (Writing Workshop) Resolutions (or, Why Didn’t I Do This in August???)
Midterms are over, and we have reached the point of the year where, inevitably, I second guess every decision I have made so far and long for a do-over. And while this year hasn’t been without its victories, I still wonder, What ever happened to that uber-planned-perfectly-balanced class I dreamed of while I sat by […]
Step-by-Step: The Value of Mini Mentor Texts
A few months before our wedding, my husband and I signed up for private dance lessons at the local dance studio. On the first day, we were brought into a small room with a large rectangular window that looked out into the main ballroom. Professional dancers in street clothes leapt and arabesqued across the wooden […]
The “Data” that Writing Workshop Works
I hear twitters and giggles behind me as I hurriedly move from student to student for writing conferences. I don’t have time to turn around, I think, working my way between desks. They – and I – always get anxious as we wrap up a genre study. Last-minute questions need answering. Mini-lessons need pointing to. […]
Moving Writers … an Invitation
Eight hours before your presentation at NCTE isn’t the time for second guessing. Huddled on a hotel bed, surrounded by a sea of papers, laptops, and California Pizza Kitchen take-out, we debated. Something was missing. After months of polishing the fundamentals, something wasn’t right. Something we couldn’t put our finger on. Some meaning for which […]
