I have recently found myself reinforcing (and re-teaching) the fundamentals of how to use a mentor text with my ninth graders. After our most recent unit, I asked students how many of them went back and looked at the mentor texts I provided on their own after we had used them in a mini-lesson. 56% […]
Tag: writing workshop
Writers Have Plans: Using Next Lists to Build Writing Lives
Last night I tossed and turned, hunting for an idea for this week’s post. This morning at the breakfast table, a steaming cup of coffee beside me, I scan through a Google folder labeled “Blog To Do List.” Rebekah and I created this file months ago, preloading it with ideas for future entries. I feel […]
A Lesson for Tomorrow: Layering Annotations for Richer Writing
As my IB seniors approach their exams — not to mention college life — I want to take these last months of teachable moments to take what they are already doing well and build on it. Push them deeper. Expel the idea that there is ever an “enough” point in their thinking and writing. In […]
Mentor Text Wednesday: An Article About Peyton Manning to Teach Supporting Evidence
Mentor Text: “Better With Age” by Chris B. Brown. Grantland.com. 30 January 2014. Writing Technique: Supporting an argument with evidence Background: Truth be told, I am not a sporty girl. Athletic metaphors in the writing classroom do not come naturally to me. Thus, whenever I see one of my favorite cultural institutions write about sports, […]
Guest Mentor Text Wednesday: The Book of Awesome by Neil Pasricha
Today’s MTW post is from a guest, Jennifer Isgitt of Empathic Teacher, whose blog we follow and love! I originally caught this post on her blog and begged to use it for Mentor Text Wednesday. Workshop Genre: Poetry Background: I first learned about The Book of Awesome from my friend Amy, who presented about nonfiction mentor texts at the TCTELA conference […]
When Even Writing Workshop Doesn’t Work
I am almost obnoxious in my whole-hearted evangelism of writing workshop. (Just ask my colleague who has banned the phrase “mini-lesson” from our future conversations.) And still, in all my crowing about the successes of writing workshop, I have to admit something to you. Sometimes it doesn’t work. “Kevin” nods furiously during our writing conferences. […]
A Lesson for Tomorrow: Writing a Persuasive Conclusion
“What do you need more of?” I queried. Within minutes, more than a dozen post-its on my board read: “A mini-lesson on conclusions!” “Conclusions! Please!” “Conclusions — I don’t know what to do! Help!” And these were my IB seniors, still convinced at the end of their K-12 careers that they couldn’t successfully wrap up […]
Mentor Text Wednesday: “Scary New World” by John Green for The New York Times
An Introduction to Mentor Text Wednesday Welcome to our very first Mentor Text Wednesday! Mentor texts are powerful in the hands of writers — they engage our students, they motivate our students, they guide our students, they inspire our students. We know they work. But finding mentor texts is a time-consuming task for teachers. I […]
The Fifth Pillar of Writing Workshop
Lucy Calkins says that kids “need to see their work reach other readers.” This explains why I spent much of winter break planning and writing posts for the new blog, checking blog stats, and refreshing my Twitter feed. Have my words reached anyone? Have they made a difference? A blogging neophyte, I had almost forgotten […]
Showing-Versus-Telling & The Walking Dead
The first twenty minutes of the pilot episode of The Walking Dead is virtually silent. I hadn’t remembered that when, out of desperation and end-of-October exhaustion, I agreed to show the episode to my ninth graders on Halloween. They begged. I was weak. In a lame effort to sound educational, I grasped wildly for one of our recent mini-lessons. […]
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