Teaching students to hear the music in words, we can help them create writing that is not just efficient, accurate, and clear, but also playful, dramatic, and arresting.
Tag: writing
Learning From Poems: Imagery
This year on Moving Writers, my “beat” returns to poetry as a foundational element of a writing classroom. Each month’s post will examine how we can learn about an aspect of writing from a specific poem or poems, then look at what it might sound like to extend those ideas to a writing lesson in […]
Are We a Match? A Remix on Dating Profiles
This months beat Abigail takes you through a Remix using “dating profiles” Students create matches which allow for students to deepen their understanding of characterization, comparing/contrasting, and creating an engaging writing lesson. This one really can expand any content area.
The Choices Writers Make (If Allowed)
“…in many writing classrooms, students are learning to write by not being allowed to do any of the things “real” writers do: make choices.”
The Emotional Underlife of Writing
Through all the unprecedented changes the pandemic has brought into our classrooms, something that hasn’t changed and is highly unlikely to change is, how, despite seemingly perfect external conditions, the inner condition of the writer affects their writing.
The Infinite Game of Writing
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. […]
Helping Students Think About Who They Are as a Writer from Day 1
Have you been able to take a deep breath yet? I hope so. Cause I don’t know about you, but it feels as though this past year happened to me — too much time spent being reactive. And now I need to just take some deep breaths — a lot of them. Because before I can […]
Old Connections Made New
Despite all that the pandemic has stolen from us, it has given us a few things too. I’m sure that over the course of the last thirteen months, everyone can relate a story of a connection they have restored thanks to the speed of technology and the slowdown that coping with COVID has imposed. Through […]
To Teach Writing Sin Miedo: Rethinking how we create fear or courage for our writers
ESSENTIAL QUESTION: How do we provide students with the opportunities and space to write “sin miedo”? ADDITIONAL QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION: What does it mean to write without fear? Where does fear come from in the context of writing in the classroom? What kinds of classroom traumas create or worsen this fear? How do we help […]
What Comes After Mentor Texts? Student-Created Mentor Text Rubrics
I’ve been on a journey this fall to think about ways to move students toward increasing writing independence. We know mentor texts benefit writers of all ages. We know that isolating the moves writers make helps newer, less-experienced writers demystify the writing process and take their own work to new heights. But we also want […]
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