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.
Tag: Notebook Time
Notebook Time for a New School Year
Every teacher has their own way of preparing for a new school year. I like to try out writing activities I might share with my students and see what I notice. What possibilities exist with this writing exercise? Is it something I could embed in all my classes? And a more interesting question of late–How […]
Using Mentor Texts to Write History
At this point in time, I’d be surprised if a teacher told me they haven’t gotten “the call” yet. And by “the call,” I mean when an administrator reaches out to teachers to inform them what the school and/or state would be doing in response to COVID19. I live in Illinois, so “the call” came […]
100 Days of Summer Writing: FAQ
The 2nd annual 100 Days of Summer Writing is underway! Welcome, new friends! So good to see you, friends from last summer! We are hopeful that this will be a restorative and transformative experience for you both as a person and as a writing teacher! We are also grateful to those of you who registered […]
What’s Saving My Life: Notebook Time Slidedecks
We’d all be perfect teachers if we had our students all day, every day, and English was their only class. Then we would have time to do all the things. We could use every single smart idea we found on Twitter. We could perfectly balance reading and writing and vocabulary study. We could study every […]
100 Days of Summer Writing: Introducing Notebook Time
You guys: it’s all happening! On Wednesday, we will release our first 100 Days of Summer Writing — a slide deck of 100 slides to inspire writing over the summer, instructions for how to participate yourself, and instructions for how to get your students involved. Over the next two weeks, the writers here at Moving […]
100 Days of Summer WRITING!
Summer reading is part of the school norm — we want ensure students’ engagement over the summer, we want to prevent “summer slide” in literacy. And yet, we tend to ignore writing slide. The Moving Writers staff have been asking: What happens to our writers over the summer? So we are gearing up to share a […]
What Time is It? Notebook Time!
We are singing Hamilton as we read today’s fantastic, deep-dive guest post from Scott Bayer, an English Language Arts (ELA) Instructional Specialist for grades 6-12 in Montgomery County, Maryland. He has taught high school English for 16 years and is passionate about creating meaningful learning experiences for students, teaching a more inclusive reading list, and developing student […]
YA Sentence Study Snapshot: We Were Liars
Text: We Were Liars by E. Lockhart Audience: Later middle school – high school (Perhaps 7-12?) Book Talk: Every summer, members of the incredibly wealthy Sinclair family gather on a private island. Everything appears to be perfect — perfect children, perfect relationships, plenty of money. But, of course, you know that things are […]
Beyond Notebook Time: The Journal Explode Essay
With thanks to guest contributors Kevin Mooney, rumored to be the inspiration for the teacher John Keating replaced, he is a lead teacher at North Hagerstown High School in Washington County, Maryland and is in his 22nd year in education. Liz Matheny, AP Language and Composition teacher in Frederick County, Maryland. (Check out a great […]
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