There’s a John Lennon song that addresses an issue that teachers know all too well: “Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making [lesson] plans.” Even the most responsive and differentiated approaches can fall victim to the different kinds of chaos that life throws our way (Technology, I’m talking to you). On top […]
Years ago when I taught debate, there was nothing that frustrated me more than a student saying, “I need to switch topics. I’m researching and there’s nothing on this.” Really? There’s nothing out there about abortion (or fill in any other widely written about topic)? Of course there was, and I usually needed to […]
After the last installment of my four-part series on reading like a writer, I received a question from Lisa in Waunakee, WI about helping students better understand what they are doing in their own writing: “How to help students explain WHY/HOW an aspect of the piece (like a description, an added scene, a certain line, […]
Mentor Text: Five Truths and a Lie about Paxton Avenue by Jose Olivarez (pdf) Techniques: Writing Memoir Using a Structure Background – In the first paragraph of this column, I usually reference my Twitter feed. I follow a lot of poets, not only because they share their work, but the poetry community is wonderful at sharing […]
It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Time to gather (in Houston) to learn together! Here’s where you can find members of the Moving Writers team at #NCTE18. We hope you’ll come say hi!!!
In this series, we’ve been going back to the basics of writing workshop — those fundamental pillars that distinguish workshop teaching from other teaching. The things that make the biggest difference when you want to grow — and move — writers. Giving frequent chunks of time to the practice of writing is hard for all of […]
If you follow me on Twitter, you’ve probably noticed by now that I’m as likely to retweet something that entertains me as I am to retweet good educational practices when I see them (I’d argue both are important–one for reasons of my sanity and…actually I guess both of them for that.). Which means, for me, […]
This whole scaffolding series has been building up to this last post. Everything we do to teach kids how to read like writers is in preparation for the last leap: trying the craft in your own work. In literature heavy classrooms, teachers may skip this step: The peak of literary analysis instruction is teaching students […]
A little context to preface this post… I teach high school English at an international school in Abu Dhabi (in the United Arab Emirates). The curriculum in grade 9 and 10 uses the Common Core Standards, and we offer both an IB and AP stream in the upper grades. This year I teach grade 10, […]
If choice is the easiest element of writing workshop to implement, time might actually be the hardest. Because we never, ever have enough of it, do we? And if you don’t currently dedicate class time to writing — and a lot of it — this is going to be hard. But don’t worry. We’ll take […]
moving writers 