Mentor Texts: First few paragraphs of “The Tell Tale Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe Various photographs of your choice “After I Was Thrown Into the River and Before I Drown” by Dave Eggers Big Idea: Writers use syntax purposefully to create meaning and a desired effect. What’s ahead in this post: A 3-day lesson series […]
Tag: mentor texts
Beginning AP Argument Writing – Letter to the Editor
Today’s guest post is from our friend, Betsy Reid. Betsy is a colleague of Moving Writers founders Rebekah and Allison at Trinity Episcopal School, where she teaches AP Language and Composition and serves as the head of the department. For the past 20 years, she has taught all grades and levels in both public and private settings in Virginia […]
The Fearless Writers
This fall, I’m teaching two classes. One starts with fiction and narrative writing, and the other launches with informational and persuasive texts. I committed to teaching each with a mentor text approach to analyzing our reading and crafting our own choice text. Within the first weeks, our narrative work was on a roll, but our […]
3 Tips for Using Literature as Mentor Texts
Teaching is often a balancing act. We’re constantly balancing, sometimes battling, the seemingly opposing forces of lesson planning vs. grading, eating the cake in the workroom vs. not eating the cake in the workroom, literature study vs. writing study. But why can’t we have our cake and eat it, too? And by cake, I mean writing. […]
3 Simple Exercises to Help Your Students Read Like Writers
Imagine you’re eating at your favorite go-to restaurant, that small table for two in the back corner by the window. You place an order for dinner without the menu. You have been here more times than you care to count. You don’t need a menu! Now imagine that the head chef at this restaurant has […]
Making Writing with Mentor Texts
When writers use what they learn from mentor texts to create tools that invite experimentation, they’re making writing with mentor texts.
Breaking Rules Like a Pro
Last week I participated in a Twitter chat hosted by @TalksWTeachers and this blog’s creators: @AllisonMarchett and @RebekahODell1. It was a fast-paced flurry of awesome ideas and thought-provoking questions, but one question in particular kept me thinking the next day. Allison posed the following question: What do you struggle to teach and how might mentor […]
Voice Lessons: Helping Students Find Their Writerly Voices
Lessons to help students explore their unique and original voices in writing.
The First Thing: Writers are Readers.
On Moving Writers and in Writing With Mentors, you get a taste of my classroom and a peek behind the curtain of my planning process. But what you see is only half the story. While I am passionate about writing instruction, it’s only one half of my instruction. I also teach literature — through whole […]
The Narrative of Learning Essay: Personal Narrative Meets Literary Analysis
Students have a story to tell. So why not let them tell it as a way in to literature — to walk an idea around to see how far it will go and where else it might lead them.
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