Most teachers have grand aspirations when embarking upon inquiry work with their classes, but when they get to the part where the kids actually have to find out stuff…it all comes crashing down. What if there was a game you could play with students to sharpen their Google searching skills, as well as their research […]
The late Sir Ken Robinson once asked why we value analyzing literature more than we value actually creating it. I share his concern.
“I don’t think you should be talking about this,” a ninth grader muttered under his breath as he gritted his teeth and sank a bit lower in his chair. No, this was not the response when I started a lesson about healthy relationships during our Catcher in the Rye study (everyone likes hearing their English […]
Mentor Text: The Night Attendant at the Gas Station by Michael Penny Techniques: Extended metaphor Imagery Memoir Background – I’m going to pass along what may seem like a somewhat pithy piece of teaching advice. Zero inbox is your friend. Since school resumed after the holidays, I delete or file everything almost instantly. (professionally and personally) […]
Research writing has been a big part of my teaching for the past few years as I’ve moved more and more into the world of AP Seminar. In 2018 I spent most of my blogging time thinking about how to Make Research Relevant. That year and the years that have followed have yielded all kinds […]
In spite of my protestations to the contrary, I want to be the fun teacher. It’s just that often my definition of fun involves annotating or revising or learning etymology and that doesn’t consistently align with students’ definition of fun. After four months of what even I deemed to be not-fun work (various iterations of […]
You can hardly get online recently without seeing an article or other hand-wringing about ChatGPT and what this means for the world. Especially the English teacher world. Thankfully, Brett Vogelsinger has done some thinking about this. Instead of fighting against it, what if we could use ChatGPT and other AI to actually benefit our writers? […]
Writing is thinking on paper. Our thinking is the fabric of our minds: our memories of the past, our imaginative hopes for the future.
This year on Moving Writers, 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 Metro: Journeys in Writing Creatively by Hans Ostrom, Wendy […]
Mentor Text: Pause and Reflect by Melissa Martin Techniques: Narrative introduction Reflecting as a writer Writing about place Writing about the hard stuff Background – Fellow teachers. Do you, like me, find yourself wondering how it’s possible that this school year, of the last few “unprecedented” years, seems to be the hardest? Those of us who […]
