One of my greatest frustrations in teaching is waiting for – what feels like hours – as my students wade through their bags and files to find the draft or handout they’re looking for. The ticking of the clock slowly comes into my awareness and with every second, it gets louder and louder as I gather my wits together and desperately try to hold onto them while every part of me wants to scream.
When it comes to instructional time, what matters most is that we organize our plans around a purpose.
Zoom in on Henry, an eighth grader whose desk sits in the far right corner of the room. The other students sit down, pull out their notebooks and pencils, jot down the homework; Henry is frantic. Where it is? Please don’t tell me I’ve lost it! Noooooo! he silently panics. He opens his binder, closes his […]
A few weeks ago, I came across a post on the Teaching and Learning Forum on the NCTE website. The conversation centered around the usefulness—or the lack of usefulness—of the five-paragraph essay. Comments varied, with many teachers chiming in with their thoughts, both fervently for and against the form. I spent the first five years […]
In the last three years I have moved from a paper system to an almost exclusively digital system in writing workshop. Finding a good rhythm in a digital environment requires just as much thought as in a paper environment. After a lot of experimentation, I think I’ve landed on a workflow that satisfies my student […]
I found Rebekah’s visual guide to planning for writing workshop tremendously helpful, and I know many of you did, too. In an effort to be transparent and share the systems that work for us, this week I am going to write a little bit about the various organizational tools that help my workshops run more smoothly […]
Structure seems to be something young writers innately sense … or don’t. Those who don’t tend to have explosive bursts of thought, leaving word shrapnel all over the paper. To try to combat this, one of my first mini-lessons of the year is on brainstorming — hoping that if students write their ideas down somewhere, […]
moving writers 