Pretty much every trip my family takes to the city finds us in a bookstore. Not a surprise, I know. Recently, as I walked past the teen section, dragging my kids out of the children’s section, a book, of course, caught my eye. I picked up Get Lit Rising, and flipped through it. And headed […]
Recently …
Getting Ready to Go Beyond Literary Analysis!
We are joining our friends at Heinemann to present a 3-part webinar series designed to get you ready to help your students move beyond literary analysis! You can read session descriptions and register here. Here’s an overview: We are getting ready to go BIG—to a place in students’ writing beyond five-paragraph analyses of themes and […]
Reading Like a Writer in Troubled Times
We’ve been studying up on the idea of journalistic “angles”, in preparation for the writing of our big narrative journalism piece. It’s an unfortunate and important time to be examining such things with high school students. Where we’d normally examining several models about random topics and attempt to uncover the underlying purpose or persuasive efforts […]
Review Beyond Literary Analysis & Win!
We are dying to know what you think of Beyond Literary Analysis! So, we’re running a contest! Post a review of our new book on GoodReads or Amazon between today and Friday, April 6, and your name will be entered into a drawing for a 30-minute Google Hangout Q&A for you, or you and a buddy, […]
Allison & Rebekah on #CNUSDEdChat
We had the honor of joining CNUSDEdChat last summer when we were in California for their Literary is Everywhere conference! Take a listen!
Mentor Text Wednesday: Parents
Mentor Text: Parents by Julius Lester Techniques: Poetic Form Background: Last April, my co-worker Ashley and I went to see Penny Kittle speak. As is standard, we walked away inspired, full of ideas to try, and thoughts on how we could improve the program that we offer to our students. Penny is the best kind of […]
Teaching From My Twitter Feed: Two different Modest Proposals
Twitter never ceases to amaze me for its ability to come through with exactly what I need at the right moment. This week my students are studying Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” and my colleagues and I wanted to pair it with some modern satire. Though Swift’s text certainly has some shock value (eating […]
What Article of the Week is Adding to My Writing Instruction
Kelly Gallagher is well-known for a lot of reasons in our English teacher world. Killer writing activities. “Readicide”. Clark Kent vibe. (Allison and I once stalked him around a breakfast at NCTE. Remind me to tell you that story sometime.) But I would argue that the thing most frequently associated with Kelly Gallagher is the […]
Memoir Remix: Writing
The remix of our Memoir Study focused initially on the reading of memoir. Writing needed a touchup too. Last April, long after we were finished the semester we taught our Grade 12s, the students who studied memoir, in, my colleague Ashley and I were driving to the city to see Penny Kittle. An hour in […]
“Listening Is an Act of Love”
Full confession: I wanted to say something profound, to share some brilliant new teaching strategy that had emerged from my classes over the past month, but as I sit down to write on one of the first sunny days of a very gray February, I’m feeling a little tapped out of great ideas. Like Hattie, […]
moving writers 