Nancie Atwell calls theme “the chilliest mind Popsicle” of all the writing lessons that young writers need to learn, and I couldn’t agree more. (Atwell, 2015, 101) Theme is one of the toughest lessons I have had to learn to teach in both reading and writing and by the time I did, I not only […]
Thinking about our writing, big picture, helps us to think about who and how we want to be as people, and as we the people.
I’m very happy that my idea of creating Embarrassment Free Zones resonated with many teachers and students. My goal in this post is to establish that there are situations when Free Zones won’t work. Yes, that’s right.
In his 1995 work, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, astrophysicist Carl Sagan wrote a sentence that would be uttered in classrooms around the world for decades to come: “there’s no such thing as a dumb question.” We’ll assume, of course, that Sagan is excluding the students in your class who […]
This ready-to-use mini grammar unit aims to provide a framework for the student to systematically learn and use articles in their spoken and written English. Slides included.
“..most long term plans address curriculum, a few good ones address pedagogy; but, most don’t address the single most important data point: what we know and don’t know about ourselves and our students.”
I have had a lot of conversations this year with teachers about expectations for students, specifically 9th grade and high school students, and it is clear that not everyone agrees on what the expectations should be for writers at the secondary level. Which, honestly is ironic considering the amount of standards and standardized assessments that […]
We often give them common prompts, or common texts sets with common prompts. We give them common pieces of literature to write about. So why not a common experience?
Ever heard of the Enneagram? How could implementing personality types into ELA help your students better analyze characters and create authentic characters? I take you through some moves in this MW piece
Dear (overly tested subject) teacher, How are you? February in Texas was a rough ride. And, I’ve been thinking about how to support you. I’ve been thinking about the most meaningful thing to write about this month every day to add to the writing resources and ideas for supporting teachers of writing and writers themselves. […]
moving writers 