This month @mrsablund takes you through the mentor our students know best… social media. How can we use this in our classrooms as writers? Read to find out!
Tag: featured
A Conversation that Nudges Students out of Embarrassment
If you’ve ever taught a bunch of self-conscious middle schoolers, you know that adolescents are perpetually embarrassed about anything and everything. You also know that they don’t just “get over it” when they realize that embarrassment is an impediment to their learning. In that state of biological and emotional upheaval, the rational voice (even when it exists) is drowned in the fear of embarrassment.
Picture Book-Driven Inquiry: Picturing Survival with Octavia Butler
I’ve been eager to shake up my classroom literature circles. Sometimes, it is easy to fall into a routine rut: assign some chapters to be read, passages to be annotated, literary techniques to be identified. As we read Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, I thought about what it meant for Lauren Olamina to come […]
First Year Writing Teacher Support: Your Moves Are Not Their Moves
As writing teachers, we’ve done our fair share of writing ourselves. We each have our own unique process, a set of strategies we’ve grown comfortable with from practice. If you’re new to teaching writing, that probably means you did a lot of writing recently in college. Your process is finely tuned; you’re likely a well-oiled […]
We are BURSTING with New Synchronous Virtual Learning Opportunities!
We are adding EVEN MORE opportunities for live, virtual professional development this spring! We hope that you’ll join us for one or more of these sessions! March 5 Poetry Pauses to Rouse Your Writers Next Week Brief “poetry pauses” not only build students’ capacity for critical reading + stamina for writing, but they can also […]
Letting a “Pandemic Illumination” Glow: Avoiding the Senior Slump with Independent Study
Earlier this week, I stood next to one of my administrators atop the brick edges of a flowerbed for a better view of the beautiful chaos of a spring club fair. Students shouted and sang and waved neon posters back and forth, courting new members and future leaders; they were eager to refresh activities that […]
Mini-Mentors for Making a Claim
My students have been working on their first pieces of serious analytical writing this year, and as they drafted I noticed two main issues with their claims: Many were not clearly or obviously stated Some were overly-simple, cliched, or, to be honest, boring Ever have these problems? (Always? Are you like me and you always […]
Setting the Hook
If I ask my students what makes a good introduction, they can quickly rattle off a list of “hooks” —a question! a definition! a surprising fact! I bet if you asked your students, they could do the same. Have you read your fair share of essays with these types of hooks? Merriam Webster describes a […]
7 Ways to Get Students Writing about the War in Ukraine
Between this post and my last, a war began. And we shouldn’t be surprised. Like the rise of Nazi Germany after WWI, the conflict in Ukraine has been building for more than twenty years. Putin and his post-Soviet ancestors have been playing a game of Hungry Hippos with the Ukraine and former Soviet satellite states […]
Get Your FREE 10-page Quick Start Guide to Using Mini Moves for Writers
Download our FREE 10-page Quick Start Guide We’ve made it even easier to use Mini Moves for Writers in your classroom with a free 10-page quick start guide — full of ideas for incorporating our video writing mini-lessons into your curriculum! We’re releasing two new writing lessons each week! Make sure to subscribe so that […]
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