(See what I did there?) “If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I […]
Tag: Mentor Text
Making All Things New: Imagery
This year on Moving Writers, I am dusting off some old-but-wise books on my shelf about writing, creating a tiny review, then considering how one passage from the book can inform writing instruction today, even decades after the book was first published. September’s Book: The Creative Process by Carol Burke and Molly Best Tinsley. Length: […]
First Writing Moves of the School Year: PART 2 (Storytelling)
How do we get students to buy into writing? How do we begin to hear their stories. Oral storytelling is a way to engage your writers in a low stakes way and create a basis for a really strong writing community.
First Writing Moves of the School Year
In this summer’s beat Abigail takes you through two strategies that you can discover in Liz Prather’s new book “The Confidence to Write”… two strategies to start the school year off right and a great starting place for teacher growth this summer.
Science Writing…For Kids!
Sodium Polyacrylate In science, my 4th graders are learning about the Law of Conservation of Matter after about a week of reviewing ideas around solids, liquids, and gases. Instead of doing the classic cornstarch and water lab, I decided to try something new this time around. If you go online, you can find packets of […]
A Perfect Personification Mentor Text
Abigail takes us through a mentor text which has endless amount of uses. She gives you a quick guide to this perfect personification mentor and hopes you will try it out too.
Turn Local History into Advocacy with Three Different Writing Projects
One of my biggest challenges as a teacher is getting students to feel connected to history. To them, especially at the middle school age, history might as well be the Milky Way– kids are told that it’s real and that they are a part of it, but the scope of history often has such galactical […]
An Epic Mentor: Social Media
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!
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 […]
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 […]