If you are a teacher of writing, you have likely sometimes felt so immersed in a book that you could see the characters walking down the street along by moonlight or hear the sounds of a bustling marketplace. The author’s use of setting details is part of what makes this happen. Setting is more than […]
If you’ve read any of my articles before or know me as a teacher, you know I try to provide authentic, real-world experiences in my classroom whenever I can. I love when I have the opportunity to make some cross-curricular connections between ELA and other content areas, especially if the topic is applicable to life […]
Welcome back to the Inquiry Lab! In my last post, I shared ways I teach and coach students to nudge each other toward deeper learning. Today, we’ll get into ways the teacher can leverage a workshop approach to similar effect, especially when it comes to inquiry work. It all begins with effective anchor charts. To […]
In Charlie La Greca and Rebecca Bratspies’ environmental justice comic, Mayah’s Lot, the image of the aspen seed is prominent. The titular character intends to plant an aspen seed in a garden she secretly tends on a vacant lot, just before finding out a corporation’s plan to transform the lot into an industrial toxic storage waste facility. […]
“The river’s rhythm runs through my veins. Runs through my people’s veins.” My student unmutes herself in our video conference, identifying these two lines as her favorite in Carole Lindstrom’s We Are Water Protectors. The day before, I had read the book aloud to my students, enjoying the novelty of holding the pages close to […]
With all the conversation and debate around “student indoctrination” and political beliefs of educators, after weeks of contemplation, I decided to put my experience out into the world to help people navigate their personal and political beliefs in the context of writing instruction. There is a certain level of vulnerability that comes with addressing our […]
This semester I’m sharing my experiment with bringing Genius Hour into my writing workshop. You can catch up on the rest of the series here. I don’t have many crystal-clear high school English class memories, believe it or not, but one of them is sitting in the library with my 11th grade class, a stack […]
When I began incorporating inquiry into my instruction early in my career, I was excited by the possibilities. It was finally a way for students to personalize learning; I could hand over the role of the question-asker to the students and guide them as they found answers to topics in which they were invested. For […]
moving writers 