For those who have been around Moving Writers for awhile, we typically shutter (or go very quiet) for the summer to give both teachers and our writers a well-deserved break before the new year begins. But, if for you summer is equal parts rest and creative sprint as you gather inspiration for the new year, […]
Placing Maggie Smith’s “Good Bones” and Craig Santos Perez’s “Good Fossil Fuels” side by side can elicit a wide-ranging classroom conversation about the ways the climate crisis is downplayed. Through describing points of convergence and divergence, students can ponder how the “recycled” aspects of Smith’s syntax and prosody appearing in Perez’s poem challenge their thinking […]
Mentor Text: excerpt from Stay True by Hua Hsu Techniques: Background – The week in which I’m writing this is one of those weeks we have as teachers, where we’re overwhelmed with obligations and expectations. A couple of weeks ago, when I felt like I had a bit more breathing room, I was reading Hua […]
Mentor Text: Fairy-tale Logic by A.E. Stallings Techniques: Background – In my Grade 9 class right now, we’re working on our essays discussing scary stories. We do a little short film study, allowing us to practice analysis skills, and give us some fun ground to cover in an early essay this semester, learning the ropes of […]
Writing is the act of asking yourself hard questions and then trying to answer them.
When Allison and I wrote Beyond Literary Analysis, we read thousands of pieces of writing in the quest to figure out what kind of analysis professional, published writer truly write outside academia. In other words, beyond what English teachers have culturally and historically deemed to be our analytical territory, what kind of analytical writing will […]
Mentor Text: The Greatest Nature Essay Ever by Brian Doyle Techniques: Background – Almost exactly a year ago, I threw a tweet out into the void about my desire to find more joyful texts to put in front of my students. The heavy stuff is so very rich, but finding things that express joy, and that […]
My point is this: using your knowledge to create something new in writing not only helps learning stick – it can inspire more learning.
Mentor Text: Top Down by Scott Nolan Techniques: Background – For the last few years, second semester has held a nice treat for me as an English teacher, my Lit class. There’s something special about teaching the course that students have chosen to be in. It’s a Grade 11 & 12 split, which means we split […]
We are thrilled to share a new contributing voice today, Marcus Luther! We spied his smart tweets about student reflection in writing and begged him to write something for us! Marcus is currently in his eleventh year as a public high school English teacher. He teaches 10th grade English and AP Literature in Keizer, OR, […]
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