Mentor Texts: Jon Recommends: “Head Rolls Off” by Frightened Rabbit By Jon Johnson Sean Recommends: “Ocean Drive” by Lighthouse Family By Sean Cunningham Techniques: Using music as inspiration for memoir writing Mood Connecting elements in writing Symbolism Brevity Background – This is the first of two Mentor Text Wednesdays that finally allow me to fulfill a vision I’ve […]
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Rolling Snowballs in Summertime: Using #100DOSW18 to Encourage Deeper Writing Next School Year
Remember how Olaf, the snowman from Frozen, sings about how excited he is to experience summer after Arendelle’s deep freeze? Consider me his opposite. As summer (and summer writing!) approaches, I, ever the Wisconsin girl at heart, am thinking about snow. Seriously. I’m thinking specifically about a snowman-size snowball, the kind you make by rolling […]
100 Days of Summer Writing: Introducing Notebook Time
You guys: it’s all happening! On Wednesday, we will release our first 100 Days of Summer Writing — a slide deck of 100 slides to inspire writing over the summer, instructions for how to participate yourself, and instructions for how to get your students involved. Over the next two weeks, the writers here at Moving […]
Using Writing For Diagnostic Purposes
I used to work a very structured private school. It was a school for students with ADHD and learning disabilities. The structure was part of the programming there that served to support these students as learners, not just at that school, but if they returned to public school classrooms. Though I teach much differently now […]
The Most Essential School Supply (Plus 3 Instructional Practices to Make the Most of It!)
It’s that time of year. Yeah, we may sometimes feel like we’re in survival mode with eager tallies marking how many Mondays are left in the school year, but as much as we might be counting down, we’re also starting to plan ahead for next year. We’re waxing reflective and submitting school supply lists to […]
Mentor Text Wednesday: Defining Charmed Childhood Objects
Today’s guest post is from Amy Heusterberg-Richards, an eleventh-year ELA teacher at Bay Port High School in the Howard-Suamico School District, located north of Green Bay, Wisconsin. Just named Wisconsin’s 2018 NCTE High School Teacher of Excellence, she currently teaches Writing, Literary Analysis, and IB English Literature HL Year Two. She previously wrote a post […]
When a Writer Growls: 4 Questions for Helping Resistant Writers
I used to be the proud mother of this beautiful beast: He crossed the rainbow bridge a few years ago, but I’ve been thinking about him a lot lately because I have some writers who remind me of him. Before you get offended on their behalf (She’s comparing children to a dog?!), I need to […]
YA Sentence Study Snapshot: Turtles All the Way Down
Text: Turtles All the Way Down by John Green Audience: 9-12 Book Talk: If you’ve ever felt that your life was being written by someone else — your parents, your teachers, even your friends — you’ll relate to Aza, the main character in Turtles All the Way Down. Aza is a smart, sensitive sixteen year old […]
Podcasting as Writing Process
This is not going to be a post teaching you how to conduct a unit on podcasting. (If that’s what you’re looking for, maybe someday. But also Stefanie has written a brilliant series on this starting here.) Rather, this is a post where I will muse on what teaching podcasting has revealed about the process […]
The Making of a Mentor Text Believer
Adrian Nester is an AP English teacher and journalism adviser at Tunstall High School in Dry Fork, Virginia. After 16 years of teaching, she is thankful to have met her AP Lit Help teaching community when entering into her mid-career crisis years. She is the mother of two, wife of one, and teacher of many. […]
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