Revision is the vegetable of the writing process. And, as such, we have to build capacity for revision — like building capacity for eating broccoli — by finding ways to sneak it in. I’ve been doing this in quick 10-minute bursts this year that I call Reflection + Revision. Here’s how it works: Here are […]
We are thrilled to share a new contributing voice today, Marcus Luther! We spied his smart tweets about student reflection in writing and begged him to write something for us! Marcus is currently in his eleventh year as a public high school English teacher. He teaches 10th grade English and AP Literature in Keizer, OR, […]
Questions Instructional Leaders Can Ask To Support Their ELA Teachers I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard or seen teachers complain about how they are expected to go to professional learning where the facilitators teach in ways that would never fly for classroom teachers. As someone who does an awful lot of facilitating […]
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 […]
My 40th birthday is in a couple of days, June 6th to be exact. I expected this to be a difficult time in my life as I don’t like accepting that I’m getting older (turning 30 involved a lot of crying!). It has been kind of the opposite; it has made me appreciate the cliche […]
Image via Pixabay If you’ve been following my posts this semester, you know I’ve been working on getting my students to look at research in a different light. I wanted to make the process more real world applicable to my students, so I designed a “Teens Take Action” project with my school librarian to give […]
I write this post coming off of a “grading high.” Assessing student work does not always leave me feeling cheerful and refreshed. There are times it leaves me feeling discouraged and plagued with questions: “What went wrong? How did so many of my students miss the mark on this skill?” But as we race into […]
Finding balance in the classroom is one of the most challenging aspects of instruction, especially now that time is even more valuable than before. And, every year at this time, conversations start about how teams of teachers are providing intervention and about what the data says in regards to which students are on track to […]
If you’ve read any of my posts this year, you might notice a theme: I feel like I am constantly referencing Sarah Zerwin’s Pointless, which I read over the summer. I ordered it immediately upon reading the title, thinking, This is great! Maybe it will give me ideas for reducing the time I spend assessing […]
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. […]
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