As the season of AP Lang exams fast approaches, I find myself more and more urgently seeking ways to help tighten gaps in my students’ skill sets. Fine tuning writing skills is a part of it, but when it comes to one AP Lang task–the Open Argument essay–there are more pressing issues that are a […]
This month @mrsablund takes you through the mentor our students know best… social media. How can we use this in our classrooms as writers? Read to find out!
If you’ve ever taught a bunch of self-conscious middle schoolers, you know that adolescents are perpetually embarrassed about anything and everything. You also know that they don’t just “get over it” when they realize that embarrassment is an impediment to their learning. In that state of biological and emotional upheaval, the rational voice (even when it exists) is drowned in the fear of embarrassment.
Letting students journal freely about their lives, their feelings, may be the best emotional learning we can possibly give them.
Mentor Text: Salvage by Hedgie Choi Techniques: Exploring the use of profanity Poetic form Building connections Background – I’m a recovering magazine addict. I’ve gone from snagging every magazine that slightly caught my eye, and subscribing to numerous publications to buying more selectively, and holding a single subscription. That preamble is just so I can talk […]
I’ve been eager to shake up my classroom literature circles. Sometimes, it is easy to fall into a routine rut: assign some chapters to be read, passages to be annotated, literary techniques to be identified. As we read Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, I thought about what it meant for Lauren Olamina to come […]
As writing teachers, we’ve done our fair share of writing ourselves. We each have our own unique process, a set of strategies we’ve grown comfortable with from practice. If you’re new to teaching writing, that probably means you did a lot of writing recently in college. Your process is finely tuned; you’re likely a well-oiled […]
We are adding EVEN MORE opportunities for live, virtual professional development this spring! We hope that you’ll join us for one or more of these sessions! March 5 Poetry Pauses to Rouse Your Writers Next Week Brief “poetry pauses” not only build students’ capacity for critical reading + stamina for writing, but they can also […]
Earlier this week, I stood next to one of my administrators atop the brick edges of a flowerbed for a better view of the beautiful chaos of a spring club fair. Students shouted and sang and waved neon posters back and forth, courting new members and future leaders; they were eager to refresh activities that […]
A Brief Podcasting Primer If you don’t already know what a podcast is, it’s basically a radio show that people can stream or download to their own devices. It’s like listening to radio a la carte in that you can pick and choose what episodes you want to listen to–and you have the power to […]
moving writers 