by Amanda | Jul 14, 2019 | Back to School, Mini Lessons, Podcast
307SHAREShare Tweet Pin It There are so many things we need to accomplish the first week of school. We need to get to the content but we also need to teach students about how our class will run and build relationships and community too. Now you may feel...
by Amanda | May 5, 2019 | Book Review, Podcast
335SHAREShare Tweet Pin It In this article you will get access to life changing podcasts and books for teachers! First, let’s start with a story… During the summer of 2018 I was feeling extremely overwhelmed and depressed. It was the much...
by Amanda | Apr 13, 2019 | Management, Podcast
221SHAREShare Tweet Pin It Kids love to talk to each other, they are human and humans are social! In a classroom of thirty plus secondary students how can we balance allowing that innate need to talk with maintaining a quiet, productive atmosphere? The...
by Amanda | Mar 17, 2019 | Management, Podcast, Writing Independence
1.3kSHAREShare Tweet Pin It Teaching writing is so hard! There are many reasons why, but one of the main reasons is distracting student behavior! With a plan in place, your ability to handle the distracting student behavior can improve. No matter what...
by Amanda | Feb 10, 2019 | Beginners, Mini Lessons, Podcast
534SHAREShare Tweet Pin It Teachers are busy and don’t have time to go looking for mini lessons. If you do have time, here are The Best Places to Find Mini Lessons Online. However, if you you don’t have time, like most teachers on planet...
by Amanda | Jan 26, 2019 | Make Writing Fun, Podcast, Writing Units
213SharesShare Tweet Pin It Table of contents: Give Student ChoiceMake it a ContestThrow a PartyPublish Student WritingUse Last Resort Tactics So you want to excite students about your upcoming writing unit? Before I wrote this post I asked some 7th and...
by Amanda | Jan 10, 2019 | Mentor Texts, Podcast
615SHAREShare Tweet Pin It One of the biggest challenges many writing teachers face is finding quality mentor texts. But is it really all that big of a challenge when we look closely at what mentor texts really are? The phrase “mentor text”...
by Amanda | Dec 26, 2018 | Back to School, Holiday Writing, Make Writing Fun, Podcast
2.9kSharesShare Tweet Pin It Don’t have time to read? Listen to this post here… Coming back to school after having two weeks off (or the summer off) can be really rough for students and teachers. The last thing anyone wants to do is...
by Amanda | Dec 10, 2018 | Podcast, Secondary Teachers
167SHAREShare Tweet Pin It Don’t have time to read? I received an email recently (I love receiving emails from teachers who read my blog!) asking me a really interesting question… Do you do workshop all year? I immediately yelled (in my...
by Amanda | Nov 18, 2018 | Beginners, Featured Post, Management, Podcast, Secondary Teachers
377SHAREShare Tweet Pin It Many secondary teachers, like you, are beginning to realize the power of running their English classes using writing workshop. Maybe you keep seeing references to it on Pinterest or in Facebook groups. Maybe a teacher friend...
by Amanda | Oct 28, 2018 | Assessment, Podcast, Writing Units
683SHAREShare Tweet Pin It Don’t have time to read this article? Listen here! Grading hundreds of papers is the bane of an English teacher’s existence. Don’t get me wrong. I love being able to get a thorough look into the minds of my...
by Amanda | Sep 23, 2018 | Featured Post, Mentor Texts, Podcast
6.9kSHAREShare Tweet Pin It Every writing unit should start with mentor texts. Students need many examples of the type of writing we expect them to do. In this article, I’ve compiled my favorite middle school mentor texts. Each mentor text...
by Amanda | Sep 23, 2018 | Mentor Texts, Podcast
643SHAREShare Tweet Pin It Most writing workshop teachers know what a mentor text is (examples of writing in books, short stories, articles, poems etc.). But, what about how to use a mentor text? When I scoured the internet for the answer to this...
by Amanda | Aug 26, 2018 | Featured Post, Make Writing Fun, Podcast, Writing Units
734SHAREShare Tweet Pin It Don’t Have Time to Read? Fiction writing is neglected in English classes everywhere for many reasons. We don’t have enough time. Or we are afraid students might produce pages and pages and pages and...
by Amanda | Aug 5, 2018 | Back to School, Management, Podcast
600SHAREShare Tweet Pin It I let students socialize the first day of school. Read on to find out why… After reading this important article by Write On with Miss G (which I highly recommend you read), I thought back to my first day of school, last...