By now, you’ve met Sam. Isn’t she a delight? I continue to win the co-worker lottery. I used to teach next door to Allison. Now, Sam teaches directly across the hall from me + stuns me with her brilliance and insight on a daily basis. Last year, at the height of COVID school and the […]
Choosing the right writing workshop (say that five times fast) at the right time in a content-based classroom will have a large impact on the success of your writing instruction. A workshop that is too complex or does not serve your class’s current needs could also derail your unit, resulting in total heartbreak for you and your students. Preview five, eligible workshops that will adapt to your curriculum and help your students write like historians.
I love reading New Year’s listicle articles. It’s fun to look back on the Top 10 best films of the past year and look forward to the Top 22 Things to Do in 2022. So with the new year approaching in just a few days, I thought I’d jump on the bandwagon and offer you […]
Writing poetry can reduce stress? Shouldn’t all children have access to this tool? In this months beat Abigail brings 3 familiar poetry templates into the content area classrooms.
Teaching students to hear the music in words, we can help them create writing that is not just efficient, accurate, and clear, but also playful, dramatic, and arresting.
Last month, I introduced two new means of reflection–a set of brainstorming questions inspired by Reading with Presence and a “poetry prescription” activity–that I hoped to implement in the weeks that followed. Today, I’m here with an update. Readers, they worked! The poem analysis letters inspired by The Paris Review’s “Poetry Rx” column were full […]
This is a love story. In 2012, Allison and I applied for the same job at a local high school. One position. Two of us. We had never met and were not remotely aware of one another’s existence even though we had shared a couple years at the same university. On a Monday, I got […]
Great student writers, the ones whose work I can’t wait to read, notice what writers do and begin to see how it all works together.
Hey there, new teacher! I hope you’re hanging in there! This is right around the time of the year during my first year of teaching when I learned teaching writing is a lot harder than it looks. By the end of first quarter, I had tried my hand at a writing assignment or two and […]
This year on Moving Writers, my “beat” returns to poetry as a foundational element of a writing classroom. Each month’s post will examine how we can learn about an aspect of writing from a specific poem or poems, then look at what it might sound like to extend those ideas to a writing lesson in […]
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