I’ve written before about lessons inspired by my Twitter feed and it happened again early this week. Sometimes, right when you need it most, the universe drops the perfect mentor text right in your lap. My AP Language students are busy prepping for the exam and all of them need a little more work with […]
Mentor Texts: Another Nightmare in America – Cory Branan (listen here) American Tune – AJJ (listen here) Writing Techniques: Voice Adopting a persona Writing a protest piece Background – I’m a music fan. I use music in many ways in my classroom. It matters in my life so it features in my work. As I […]
As Jay said in his last post, the spring is full of Snake Men, stealing classroom time we’re desperate for, and, unfortunately for some of us in the midwest, this spring has also been devoid of sunlight, so I’m feeling like a bit of a nocturnal, cold-blooded creature myself. Thus, I was grateful for a […]
When I was at Teachers College, we had a professor, Rick MacDonald. He was the chair of the high school program, as well as the Social Studies department. Everybody wound up in his courses at one point or another. Ours was a small teachers college, made progressively smaller by the fact that I was a […]
An instructional writing model that allows for authenticity and self-directed learning.
Struggling writers have fun–and write better–when the emphasis is on creativity before mechanics.
Mentor Text:Which Famous Musician Who Died at the Age of 27 are you? A BuzzFeed Quiz by Eirean Bradley Writing Techniques: Poetic form Theme Social commentary Presenting research Background: I decided to use popular culture as the anchor for the Lit course I’m currently teaching. It’s been going quite well. In my prep work for […]
The idea that “everything’s an argument” seems almost too obvious these days. After all, talk to almost any adolescent today and it’s clear how aware they are of the ways in which they are constantly being persuaded, whether it’s an editorial from the Wall Street Journal or The New York Times, the latest newscast from […]
Sometimes we need to scaffold the thinking that goes into writing more than we need to scaffold where a topic sentence goes in a paragraph. Mentor texts can help with that!
Melissa Surber teaches 11th grade Junior and Senior College Prep English and AP Literature and Composition at Troy Buchanan High School in Troy, Missouri, an hour north of St. Louis. She is in her 18th year of teaching and just recently became National Board Certified. Connect with her at @ELAWordsmith. Mentor Texts: Patton Oswalt Facebook […]
moving writers 