Text: The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill Audience: Grades 6-12 — Truly, there is something here for middle grades readers, and something for AP/IB literature students. (It’s my dream to do a joint middle school / IB seniors book club around this text. Hear that, Stefanie? ;)) Book Talk: This fairy tale […]
Mentor Text: The Selling of Two Timberlakes by Hanif Abdurraqib (via Pacific Standard) Techniques: Contrast and Comparison Criticism and Analysis Organization Making Connections Using Narrative to Make a Point Background – Full disclosure. It’s taking a lot of self-control to stop me from turning Mentor Text Wednesdays into a Hanif Abdurraqib fan column. I discovered […]
My first year teaching AP Language, I was overwhelmed by the grading. The class culminates in a three hour exam; for two of those hours, students are writing three different essays. The amount of prep your average student needs to confidently bang out three essays asking them to do three different things in two hours? […]
I acknowledge that learning to really craft writing on demand (rather than brain-dumping on demand) is an important skill for our students to cultivate. They will all engage in some kind of timed, test-like writing situation in their academic lives. And after that, they will still be asked to compose something on-the-spot in job interviews […]
As this post goes live, my Grade 12 students will be finishing their final assessment in their course, a Provincial Assessment. They will have written a process exam for the past four days. Based around a single theme, which they learn on the first day, they were expected to read, respond and write. The first […]
I’d like to formally apologize to my college professors for my “I’m trying to sound smart” papers. I remember cranking out papers in college that, when looking back, make me shudder with embarrassment. How many attempts at “smart sounding” papers did I diligently and dutifully write while holed up in my tiny room in my […]
Test Prep for below-grade-level writers needs to involve strategies that build them up without overwhelming them
Although there may be a horde of teachers who have whittled it down to a perfect science, no teacher has ever been excited or invigorated by preparing his or her students for a standardized writing test. And yet, it’s something that pretty much every one of us must do in one way or another. Like […]
If our voice in writing is made up of a combination of our personality, our experiences, and our culture, we must let it inform our tone as we approach a subject.
Mentor Text: My Three Solaces by Erin Fornoff Writing Techniques: Poetry Brevity Memoir Background: As this post publishes, many of you are headed back into your classrooms after a break for the holidays. (Monday for me!) It’s a new calendar year. This, combined with the holiday season, makes me reflective. The chaos of school before […]
moving writers 