Writing

There are few things in the ELA teaching world worse than when a student flat out refuses to write. It happens for a myriad of reasons. Students lack confidence, interest,…

Teaching writing effectively includes research. And, how we differentiate research lessons matters. If you’re not sure how to teach the same concepts and skills to learners with diverse abilities and…

Have you ever had the experience of a student crying, arguing, or yelling after handing back a graded essay? Have you personally ever felt wronged by a teacher or college…

Have your students ever looked at you like deer in headlights when you ask them to provide you with a baseline writing sample? Mine have. That’s why I wanted to…

Looking for an instructional approach that will help students to write stronger conclusion paragraphs? You’ll find some ideas here. And these are the reasons why uniforms should not be required.…

Teaching writing is hard. It just is. For a handful of students, writing is second nature; still, most need support and guidance. Once students get passed the introduction paragraph, they…

Perhaps you stumbled on this post after reading my prior post about choosing a research topic. Or, maybe you googled “how to write an introduction paragraph” because you are struggling…

Mentor sentences have so many potential applications for the secondary classroom. If you’ve never used them or aren’t quite sure about their value, here’s a quick run-down. What are mentor…

Looking for ways to teach note taking strategies, but not sure where to begin? Keep reading. Okay class, today we are going to be taking notes during our mini-lesson on…

How do you help students choose research topics? I used to approach every class the same way. It only took me one year to figure out that approach didn’t work.…