If you teach writing, you’re likely very familiar with The Writing Process. Not a (lower-case) writing process: The Writing Process. The exact wording may shift slightly, but essentially it’s the same standard sequence that one must follow in order to fully be a capital W Writer: you plan, draft, revise, edit, and finally, publish. It’s […]
This year on Moving Writers, I am dusting off some old-but-wise books on my shelf about writing, creating a tiny review, then considering how one passage from the book can inform writing instruction today, even decades after the book was first published. September’s Book: The Creative Process by Carol Burke and Molly Best Tinsley. Length: […]
I recently read Simon Sinek’s The Infinite Game. In this book, he builds upon the ideas in James P. Carse’s work titled Finite and Infinite Games. As Carse’s original title suggests, there are two games in our world: finite and infinite. Exploring this concept, Sinek explains the contrast of these two games with specific criteria. […]
This is a follow-up conversation with Caitlin Wingers, a grade 3 teacher in Jubail, Saudi Arabia (The initial conversation, that occurred in October, can be found here). This time around, Caitlin reflects on the unit she implemented at the start of the year — a Writing Process Unit that was Non-Genre Specific. A unit that […]
With a new year comes that familiar and distinct habit for many: profound reflection on the last 12 months. We swap out our calendars for new ones, we declare sentiments like new year, new me (partially in jest, partially in earnestness), and we commit ourselves to learning from our mistakes in pursuit of self-improvement. […]
I have heard numerous teachers say that although the end of last year was crazy, the start of this academic year is crazier. With even more uncertainty of what the year as whole will look like, teachers are navigating unexplored territory. Yet, amidst all of this (along with the increased tension of a pandemic, politics, […]
We all take risks when we need to. In essence, risks allow us to squash the “what ifs,” to feed our curiosity, to discover what’s possible. And of course, they offer us the chance – through trial and error – to strike gold. While there is a time to play it safe and trust what […]
I find many of of my students have seldom, if ever, been allowed to choose and focus their own topics. They have been, as I often say, “prompted to death.” Yet the work of choosing and focusing a topic are essential writing moves – perhaps the most important writing moves of all, because they involve […]
(Sorry for the grainy sound today, folks!) Having students create documents that compile the writerly work in their notebooks has been a huge win! Students are able to share an often invisible process with their parents, they are able to share their reflections with me, and they are able to show themselves how far they […]
This is not going to be a post teaching you how to conduct a unit on podcasting. (If that’s what you’re looking for, maybe someday. But also Stefanie has written a brilliant series on this starting here.) Rather, this is a post where I will muse on what teaching podcasting has revealed about the process […]
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