Writing Workshop

Reading Like Writers: Effective Writing Starts with Effective Reading

Reading Like Writers:  Effective Writing Starts with Effective Reading

As reading and writing teachers, we’ve all witnessed the seeming decline of student writing ability over the past years. We find ourselves as teachers pondering what is happening to our youth as standards drop lower and lower. We can certainly place quite a bit of blame on technology as students read less than ever, so reading in our classes is incredibly important.

How to Build a Writer's Toolkit for Students

How to Build a Writer's Toolkit for Students

A writer’s toolkit is a resource for students to use as a reference guide during writing workshop. A writer’s toolkit can take the form of a digital folder or even physical folder. Both options can work for students depending upon the needs of your students— or your individual preference.

Literary Analysis Essay Boot Camp

Literary Analysis Essay Boot Camp

This year, I have decided to start all of my high school ELA classes with a Literary Analysis Essay Boot Camp. I have discovered over the years that all students in grades 9-12 at all levels need repetitive practice of the same essential writing skills, no matter the grade or level.


Starting the School Year with the College Essay

Starting the School Year with the College Essay

If there is one writing assignment that has real life and real world purpose, it’s the college essay. I have never seen my students more motivated to write and more motivated to work on writing than with this particular assignment. And the reason is simple: this writing assignment truly matters to students.

How to Sequence a Literary Analysis Essay Unit

How to Sequence a Literary Analysis Essay Unit

Teaching literary analysis is key to teaching secondary ELA. Students need to be able to construct thematic arguments and prove them using textual evidence. But this process can be daunting for both students and teachers.

Five ESSENTIAL Questions to Guide Textual Analysis

Five ESSENTIAL Questions to Guide Textual Analysis

Textual analysis can be very confusing when it is anchored or bogged down by esoteric terminology, jargon, and specific devices. This terminology can make textual analysis and close reading and intimidating process for students.

How to get Started with Mentor Sentences

How to get Started with Mentor Sentences

Mentor sentences are an excellent tool to use in the secondary ELA classroom to model essential skills from grammar to literary devices.  They reinforce quality writing skills from published in authors in a positive way rather than the traditional sentence correction method that modeled negative traits.  

8 Ways to Help Students Break Through Writer’s Block

8 Ways to Help Students Break Through Writer’s Block

Writer’s block is real.  It can be the brick wall that stands between success and failure.  And it can be the force that prevents students from completing writing assignments.

Tone Tunes: Using Music to Teach Tone in Poetry

Tone Tunes: Using Music to Teach Tone in Poetry

Being able to decipher the tone of a piece of writing is crucial to being able to decipher the thematic message of a text.  This is absolutely true for analyzing poetry.

National Poetry Month: A WHOLE MONTH of Poetry Activities for Secondary ELA

National Poetry Month:  A WHOLE MONTH of Poetry Activities for Secondary ELA

Love it or hate it, poetry is unavoidable in the secondary ELA classroom.  I, for one, am a HUGE lover of poetry but fully acknowledge that it can be annoyingly cryptic at times.  Reading poetry reminds us that not all texts are meant to be beat "with a hose to find out what [they] really mean" like in the Billy Collins poem "Introduction to Poetry." 

Plagiarism Escape Room: A High-Interest Way to STOP Student Cheating

Plagiarism Escape Room:  A High-Interest Way to STOP Student Cheating

You’ll be kicked out of college!  You’ll never be able to have a well-defended argument!  It's just dishonest!  Each of my writing units begins with sharp warnings about plagiarism. 

The Five Most Important Argumentative Essay Topics of 2018

The Five Most Important Argumentative Essay Topics of 2018

As we kickoff 2018, the media is already reporting upon key issues that will define the new year.  These issues include women's rights, sexual harassment, DACA, the tax code, healthcare, unions, prescription drug abuse, cryptocurrency, and many others. 

10 Essential Writing Workshop Supplies from Amazon

10 Essential Writing Workshop Supplies from Amazon

Running an effective writing workshop can be a challenge on its own, but there are some supplies that can keep the writing process organized and effective for you and your students.  Here, I've compiled a list of my essential writing workshop supplies to get you through the rest of the year!

Thanksgiving & Abraham Lincoln: A Rhetorical Analysis Activity

Thanksgiving & Abraham Lincoln:  A Rhetorical Analysis Activity

For Thanksgiving this year, I decided to go back to the roots of our celebrated "Turkey Day" to address the fact that the original Thanksgiving had nothing to do with pilgrims or turkeys at all.

The Logline: A Screenwriting Tool that Helps Students with Textual Analysis in both Fiction and Nonfiction

The Logline:  A Screenwriting Tool that Helps Students with Textual Analysis in both Fiction and Nonfiction

In screenwriting (writing for movies and TV), the logline is key to brainstorming story ideas and also selling them or "pitching" them to buyers.  Crafting loglines can help the writer to flesh out new plot ideas before writing the entire script.  It's much easier to revise the logline rather than an entire hundred page script!  

Writing is Recursive, NOT Linear: Free Task Cards Included!

Writing is Recursive, NOT Linear:  Free Task Cards Included!

Writing goes all ways: forwards, backwards, sideways, over there, and over here.  In fact, the only piece of the writing process that occurs at a set point in time is publishing.

Commentary for Literary Analysis:  Four Square Strategy for Success

Commentary for Literary Analysis:  Four Square Strategy for Success

Do you ever see something like this when grading literary analysis essays?

“Frankenstein’s monster says, ‘If I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear!’”  This shows that the monster wants to cause fear.”

20 Prompts for Photo-Inspired Writing in Secondary ELA

20 Prompts for Photo-Inspired Writing in Secondary ELA

Photographs are great for inspiring all sort of essay writing from personal narrative writing to literary analysis writing to creative writing. Photographs serve the purpose of inspiring writing in our classes and can be used for writing workshop.

TEN Writing Assignments to Build a Writing Community in the Classroom

TEN Writing Assignments to Build a Writing Community in the Classroom

Creative writing is the art of constructing original ideas by synthesizing literary elements and techniques to communicate an overarching theme about life.  Oftentimes in our English classes, we spend more time on the deconstruction process, analyzing works of art by taking them apart.

The Worst Essay of Your LIFE: A Unique Approach to Assessing Writing at the Beginning of the School Year

The Worst Essay of Your LIFE: A Unique Approach to Assessing Writing at the Beginning of the School Year

The beginning of the school year is an important time to assess the writing skill levels of new students in our English classes.  One way to do this is to assign a diagnostic essay in order to "diagnose" each student's writing level.