Empowering Writers

5 ways to cut your grading time in half

(and make your students better writers in the process) Let's say you spend three minutes per essay grading 100 essays (and as English...

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Using Breakout Rooms to Inspire Young Writers

Mentor texts are my go-to when teaching any genre of writing. When moving to the hybrid model of learning in my classroom this year, I...

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Three high impact, low prep lessons for middle school ELA

If you’re like me, this school year feels extra exhausting, and now, we are entering the strange part of the school year with multiple...

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Work Smarter, Not Harder: Grading Papers Edition

English teachers: It is time we joined together and found a better way to grade papers. No more giving up weekends piled in papers or...

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Secondary ELA Writing Conferences: 4 Essential Tools

Conferencing with student writers can be magical. There is no greater feeling than seeing a student’s creativity come alive or seeing...

3 Ways to Empower Student Writers with Grammar

"Grammar is the skunk at the garden party of the language arts." --NCTE Grammar has had a bad reputation for good reason: most kids don't...

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Argument Writing as an Olympic Sport: 4 Steps to Gold Medal Writing

My students used to struggle to find strong evidence to support their claims when writing argument essays. Some would choose the first...

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The Ten Minute Teacher Conference

Imagine being able to conference with all of your student writers before they hand in a paper? With revision stations, it’s possible....

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Learning Stations

In the past two days, I have conferenced with 89 different student writers, giving feedback on 89 very different narratives. Like all...

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3 Reasons Students Should Learn Writing from Authors

When I started a blog, the first thing I did was scour the Internet for the best blogs and study them. I looked at titles, leads, hooks,...