January is a tough time of year for me. The holidays are over, the weather is just meh in Michigan, and the craziness of midterms and starting a new semester makes my room feel like chaos. I spent all fall writing my Moving Writers posts about balance in the ELA classroom and, at this point, […]
Today’s Mentor Text Wednesday post is a guest post from Kristie Keener, a 9-12 teacher at Horace Greeley High School in Chappaqua, New York! The lesson she shares today comes from a combined 11th and 12th grade course called Psychology in Literature. (How cool!) Do you have a mentor text that has worked well for […]
Stephen is our teacher-writer on the street, this year, focusing his posts on helping US develop OUR writing lives, which Penny Kittle calls “essential to your work as a teacher of writing” (Write Beside Them, 8). If you missed his first installment, check it out and then jump back in here! My friend, Chris, is […]
We are so very happy to introduce you to our newest contributing writer, Brett Vogelsinger. Brett teaches high school English in Pennsylvania, but might already know him from the brilliance he shares all day every day on Twitter (@theVogelman). We’ve been borrowing good ideas from him for awhile, and we are so happy that he […]
This series is called “Just Like Starting Over” because there are points throughout the semester (breaks, starting new units, abandoning disaster situations, etc.) in which we are given the opportunity to start over. In this series I’ll be asking a few important questions of myself, and in turn, of you, dear reader: what if you […]
Image via pixabay.com. Scaffolding. This is exactly what I had on my mind on the eve of a busy day this semester. I had spent the first quarter of the school year working intensely to give my senior honors students as much commentary on their writing as possible. Along with conferring with them verbally during […]
Today’s guest writer Emily Sommer walks us through a mentor text by one of our favorite pop culture writers, showing how it makes for a truly instructive piece for students learning the art of rhetorical analysis. Emily teaches AP English Language and Composition, AP Seminar, and Mythology at Stoney Creek High School in Rochester Hills, Michigan. […]
Happy Holidays, friends! Alas, technology is getting me down today, so you’ll have to accept all my written words instead of a quick tip video this week. Thank you for being brave and carrying on. A few weeks ago, I shared one way of creating a triangle of communication between teacher, parent, and child […]
It’s been a minute since I last wrote a post. With the ‘before winter break shenanigans’ in full effect the past couple of weeks, I just now feel like I can take a breath…in order to make a never ending list of things to catch up on—HA! Today’s post is about how I am helping […]
For the past two months, I’ve been posting about my seniors’ work with writing short stories inspired by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s short story collection, The Thing Around Your Neck. Writing short stories in lieu of literary analysis was a new challenge for all of us, and as I read the final products, I think we’ve […]
