Teaching students how to identify themes in literature can be challenging! It takes a lot of abstract thought which students may not even be capable of yet. Why not use the Valentine’s Day holiday to your advantage? Often, themes in literature involve relationships, and what better time to reveal this to students than on Valentine’s Day?!?!
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5 Simple Ways to Differentiate Writing Instruction in the Middle School Classroom
Teaching writing is tough and differentiating writing instruction is tougher! Student writers have so many varying needs. What do you do when Steven can crank out a well organized, thoughtful literary essay in twenty minutes and John can barely write a paragraph? What do you do when Cindy says she is confused about how to develop a claim and Sarah says she needs help organizing her essay?
10 Ways to Make Reading & Writing Joyful Before Break
Here you’ll find ten ways you can keep the learning happening while also remembering minds may be elsewhere. These are engaging activities to inspire joy in your classroom before break! Read more blog posts about bringing comfort and joy into your classroom from other stellar teacher authors.
How I Teach Reading & Writing Workshop in 54 Minutes
Writing and reading workshop are powerful methods to teach English. But, how can secondary teachers, who have less than an hour with their students, do it all?!?! I think I have found the solution!
5 Ways to Use Google Classroom During Writing Workshop
In the last three years Google Classroom has definitely transformed my teaching practices. It is such a simple system to use. At first I used it in obvious ways, create a Google Doc, type directions in that Doc and post it as a class assignment. But as time went on I began to see it […]
Launching Writing Workshop: The First 14 Days
This article outlines exactly what I did to launch both reading and writing workshop in my classroom. If you are an English teacher wanting to teach using the writing and reading workshop model, then this post is exactly what you’ve been looking for! You’ll find my exact lesson outline for 14 total school days. Students will get to know each other, you’ll build a writing community and begin teaching workshop routines in a matter of 14 days.
10 Ways to Publish Student Writing: A Step-by-Step Guide
Publishing student writing is the cornerstone of a successful writing workshop program. At the beginning of each of my writing units I tell students they will write many different drafts within a writing genre and pick one to revise intensely and then to publish.
10 Ways to Use PowToon in the English Classroom
PowToon is a fun and fairly easy video creation tool for teachers and students. The company already has an excellent blog post about how teachers can utilize this tool in their classrooms here. This blog post is about how students can use PowToon for ten writing and reading tasks! Here is an excellent tutorial video […]
The Ultimate Writing Workshop Routines Guide
Every teacher on the planet knows that the first weeks of school are all about routines, routines, routines and more routines. But, over time so many routines in our classrooms go overlooked. This guide discusses five important components of the workshop schedule and the routines you need to teach if you are planning to run […]
10 Best YouTube Channels for Writing Teachers
Ever spend hours looking for YouTube videos to teach writing? Youtube channels for writing teachers are hard to find! YouTube is an incredible resource bank for writing teachers…but sometimes it can be annoying to sift through all the junk to get to the good stuff. Believe me, this post took hours and hours of sifting! […]