-
Book Clubs for Challenging Topics
Check out my post on Edutopia!
-
Peer Feedback Strategies
Ask any ELA teacher to tell you some of the main challenges of the job, and a likely answer is keeping up with responding to student writing. It’s a laborious task, yet we know it’s a significant part of helping student writers. In fact, no writer improves without two things: lots and lots of practice,…
-
Teaching Flash Fiction — Lesson 4 Fleshing Out the Story
Now that students have ideas, it’s time to flesh out the stories. With any piece of writing, two parts are critical for students: ideas and organization. Both of these, known to many teachers as traits of writing, can be difficult for any writer. Who hasn’t labored over a first rough draft, trying hard to find…
-
Preparation, not Anxiety
It’s that time of year — the dreaded preparation time for state assessments! Over my career, many folks told me “Just don’t worry about it.” The reality for a classroom teacher is we have an obligation to our students, to their parents/guardians, and to the other stakeholders of our communities to do what we can…
-
Teaching Flash Fiction – Lesson 3 (Quickwrites)
Follow my blog with Bloglovin “It must be a piece of writing which, even if someone else reads it, doesn’t send any ripples back to you. It is like writing something and putting it in a bottle in the sea. . . . Freewritings help you by providing no feedback at all. ” Peter Elbow,…
-
Beginning Again
A few years ago, my best friend Penny gave me Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand in the Sun and Be Your Own Person by Shonda Rhimes. Penny and I have been faithful followers of Grey’s Anatomy since it first aired, so she knew I would enjoy learning a bit of Shonda’s…
-
Find Your Tribe
Remember assistant principal Richard Vernon from The Breakfast Club? Who could forget his hostile approach to supervising adolescents during a Saturday detention! We would like to think his character is more caricature than realistic, but versions of Richard Vernon seem to haunt most schools, and of course, as a new teacher, you will want to…
-
Teaching Flash Fiction — Lesson 2
After students practice reading like a writer to create anchor charts for elements of flash fiction, it’s time to apply their learning to new texts. Again, I like providing several text selections so students have choice, but this time, I give students a very brief text chat, a shorter version of a book talk, and let…
-
Teaching Flash Fiction Series – Part 1 – Intro Lesson
A few years ago, our state standards added fiction (Why fiction?) under the narrative mode strands, and in my roles as ELA teacher and instructional coach, I began a hunt for lesson ideas, resources, and research to share with my ELA team. After all, for most of my career, teaching students to write fiction was…