I’m very happy that my idea of creating Embarrassment Free Zones resonated with many teachers and students. My goal in this post is to establish that there are situations when Free Zones won’t work. Yes, that’s right.
Recently …
Turn Local History into Advocacy with Three Different Writing Projects
One of my biggest challenges as a teacher is getting students to feel connected to history. To them, especially at the middle school age, history might as well be the Milky Way– kids are told that it’s real and that they are a part of it, but the scope of history often has such galactical […]
Writing Health
What does healthy literacy look like? What does a healthy reading life look like? What does Writing Health look like?
First Year Writing Teacher Support: Reserve Time for Revision
Hang in there, new teacher, you’re almost to the finish line. By this point in the school year, you’ve definitely had your students write a thing or two. So you now know that getting students to write perfectly polished drafts is a lot harder than meets the eye. I know when I first started teaching, […]
Mentor Text Wednesday: The Anthropocene Reviewed
Mentor Text: ‘Super Mario Kart‘ from The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green Techniques: Introduction Narrative Metaphor Review Background – How often do we set something aside, but never quite make it back to it? I tweeted, way back when I first read it, which was, admittedly, a while after it seemed like everyone else had, that […]
Where Dystopian Fiction Meets Water Journalism
One way to help students become climate stewards is to model how reading paired climate texts enhances our ability to both problem-spot and problem-solve. In our haste to offer solutions, we may insufficiently consider the root causes of environmental problems. While reading Neal and Jarrod Shusterman’s novel Dry, my students and I pore over local […]
“Letting Glow” Part Two: An Update on Our Independent Study
With one month left in the school year and just a few weeks remaining before my IB seniors take their exam, we are nearing the end of our independent studies, and I am excited by the results of this experiment! Earlier this week, students gathered in small discussion groups to talk about their independent study […]
Graphic Novel Writing: A Breather Unit
A few posts ago, I wrote about what Beth Rimer calls “Breather Units.” A Breather Unit is a 2-3 week mini-unit in which a teacher engages in something lighter–or perhaps does a bit of review–after a deep and intense unit of study. Inspired by a Graphic Novel Writing unit Rebekah posted to the Moving Writers […]
Need a break? Splash around in the contextual pool.
I’m writing this post during my SAT proctoring break and I’m exhausted. I just read mind-numbing directions for almost an hour, then checked calculators, then more directions, then watched kids bubble. I’m beat. And I didn’t even take the test! Maybe I’m getting soft in my old age, but I’m pretty sure that by Friday […]
9 Mini-Moves for Argument Writing
One of the things I’m loving most about Mini Moves for Writers is how flexible the video lessons are — able to slide into so many different kinds of writing units and activities. For example, take the Scene Drop Intro. Writers could use this in a review, an op-ed, a profile, a personal essay. And […]
moving writers 