This post by Karla is kind of like a really great Oprah episode in which everyone walks away with an amazing goody bag. YOU WIN A PRIZE! YOU WIN A PRIZE! EVERYBODY WINS A PRIZE! Yep, everybody’s walking away with ten amazing notebook time invitations that you can use with your students in the first […]
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In Pursuit of Meaningful Feedback
Hi, Elizabeth! First, thank you for asking this important question! We know how important it is to find ways to give meaningful and timely feedback to students. But we also know how limited our time is—there are only so many minutes in a day, in a class, during prep periods, after school, before school. Finding […]
Best of the 2016-2017 School Year: Writing in the Wild: Beyond the 5-Paragraph Essay
I love this exploratory, confessional, honest narrative in which Tricia invites us along on her journey to her discovery, along with her students, that five paragraph essays were not only not serving them as writers, but were actually limiting and caging them. Tricia shares resources for thinking beyond five paragraphs, but more importantly, she opens […]
Ask Moving Writers: How do you authentically support and assess vocabulary?
Dear Noel (and fellow readers!), In a recent webinar, 2010 National Teacher of the Year Sarah Brown Wessling posited an idea that really rocked my world. It was at once so simple and so profound: Vocabulary is not a task or a thing, it is a literacy practice. Not so much a skill, but a […]
Best of the 2016-2017 School Year: 3 Favorite Writer’s Notebook Prompts
Last year, Rebekah and I committed to opening our classes with “notebook time” — ten minutes at the beginning of every class period for our students to write and think and sketch in their notebooks. Best decision ever! But let’s be honest, sometimes we’re still searching for the perfect writing invitation seconds before our students […]
Some strategies for motivating writers to engage in meaningful revision.
Best of the 2016-2017 School Year: Three Simple Exercises to Help Your Students Read Like Writers
Learning to read like a writer is a skill that takes time and practice, but there are some simple scaffolds for moving our writers towards this special way of reading that can help. In this post, I offer three try-it-in-your-classroom-tomorrow ideas for helping your writers understand how a piece of writing was put together, so […]
Ask Moving Writers: What does a writing unit look like?
We are spending Mondays this summer answering reader questions in a series called Ask Moving Writers. If these reading our answers sparks yet more questions, please feel free to ask below and join the conversation! Here’s our first question: Hi, Sylvia,
Best of 2016-2017 School Year: “Teachable Alternatives” to the 5-Paragraph Essay
It’s no secret that the five paragraph essay is dead. But what goes in its place? In this post, Tricia examines several ways of moving beyond the contrived essay formulas of the past and into new writing territory that ultimately lets our students write what matters and find the forms that best showcases their ideas. […]
Best of the 2016-2017 School Year: Permission to Start the Year with Blank Walls
Each summer we press pause for a few weeks to tackle new writing projects and plan for the upcoming school year. And we reflect on where we’ve been by sharing with you the most popular posts of the past school year. We will share these with you over the next ten weeks, beginning with today’s […]
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