Fifteen Holiday Writing Activities to Save Your Sanity Before Break
Before your pants are covered in green glitter and your classroom floor is littered with candy cane wrappers, make sure to check out these holiday writing activities! Narrative Writing Activities Possible Key Terms for These Lessons: dialogue, characters, setting,...
Five Must Teach Mini Lessons
Many teachers think mini lessons are a way to teach writing or reading skills. THAT IS NOT TRUE! We should all be teaching behavior mini lessons too. Go directly to videos you can use with your writing class today by clicking on any of the links below… 1. What...
Why You’re Probably Teaching Information Writing WRONG
Most secondary teachers I know, wonderful teachers who are friends of mine by the way, teach information/expository writing using essay assignments. Here’s how it usually goes: Read & annotate articles Write an essay in response to the articles Teach how to...
5 Simple Ways to Improve Your Writing Units
Planning a unit can be time consuming but it doesn’t have to be. Planning a unit can actually be quite simple, especially if you plan as you go, based on the needs of the students in front of you. Below you’ll find 5 tips to help you plan your next writing...
How to Create Student E-Porfolios
Student E-Portfolios are an easy and engaging way to demonstrate growth and learning. But, what exactly are they and how do you make them happen in your classroom? E-Portfolios are websites that contain pages which show student learning throughout the course of a...
31 Mini Lessons for the First Month of School
676SharesShare Tweet Pin It What do you write in your plan book the first month of school, how about the first week? If you took a peek at my plan book you’d find mini lesson titles, mentor text lists, scheduled assessments, deadlines, unit plan...
Realizations About Teaching Writing
Don’t have time to read? Listen to this article instead! I’ve been teaching writing workshop for four years now with no formal training. Last week I attended the Summer Writing Institute in NYC organized and facilitated by the leading think tank in writing...
How to Support Your Writing Haters
Welcome back! This is part three of a series revealing the truth about writing with mini lessons! In each blog post I provide a mini lesson you can use with your class to discuss topics all students think about but rarely get the chance to talk about in their...
Ten Places to Find Mentor Texts
1.5kSharesShare Tweet Pin It What is a mentor text anyway? A mentor text is any text used to model the type of writing your students are learning. Mentor texts are the backbone of writing workshop because students need to see what the pros do, to get...
The Truth About Writing Part Two
Welcome back for part two of this three part series revealing the truth about writing with mini lessons! In each blog post I provide a mini lesson you can use with your class to discuss topics all students think about but rarely get the chance to talk about in their...
The Truth About Writing Part One
This is a three-part mini lesson series that will help you reach for the truth about writing with your students. Each post will include a mini lesson, not for the faint of heart. These mini lessons are for writing teachers who want to discuss difficult topics that...
8 Ways Teachers Kill a Love of Writing in Their Classrooms
Are you a writing teacher who wants to instill a love of writing in your students but aren’t sure how? Yes, teaching standards is important and students need to be college and career ready, but that doesn’t mean we have to suck the fun out of writing, does...
Opinion, Persuasive or Argumentative Writing?
Many teachers think argumentative and persuasive writing are the same. Some would go as far as to say that persuasive writing has just turned into argumentative because of Common Core (not true). And where does opinion writing fall into all of this? First of all, if...