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Early on in my teaching career, I fell in love with teaching the writing process. So much so, that I require students to follow the four steps of the writing process for nearly every writing assignment they complete – no more timed writes or sloppy first drafts! What is the Writing Process? The writing process …
Summaries are something every teacher does year after year to introduce and then to reinforce the skill. After all, it is a backbone writing skill that applies to all subjects, not just ELA. But summary writing is difficult for students… and teachers too! My way around these difficulties is to use a mixture of activities …
Do your students dread having to write? Do you struggle to get your students to write complete responses? I have a solution for you that has changed the way my students respond to text dependent questions: RACES. What is RACES? RACES is an acronym that gives students a step by step formula on how …
The argument that good readers make good writers has been around for as long as anyone can remember. Even as students, many of us probably found that as avid readers, we borrowed stylistic traits from the books we read and the authors we loved. The idea of mentor text has been around for a long …
When I started my career as a teacher, I made a lot of assumptions about students’ ability to write. After many years in the classroom, I’ve learned that teaching kids to write well is no small task. What I now understand is that we should be intentional about our instruction and lessons. Nurturing good writers …
“That was so much fun; I didn’t even realize we were learning!” When I hear a student say this, it makes my teacher heart so happy. Reading and writing instruction is a critical part of education. We want our students to be engaged and invested. When they are excited about a topic or lesson, …
By Missy Davis from ABetterWaytoTeach The beginning of the year can be overwhelming as a teacher. You want to build routines and norms while establishing clear expectations for your students. You want them to get to know you and each other. You want to establish a safe space for risk-taking. And if you’re anything like …
They say two heads are better than one, so it stands to reason that students working in pairs or groups can yield greater learning outcomes than individual performance tasks. Learning from our peers is usually more memorable and impactful than traditional lecture style teaching, even for us as adults! Before we assign writing tasks to …
When I started teaching, I knew I had to include vocabulary into my curriculum. Overwhelmed with all of the typical new teacher stress, I adopted the ancient practice of: vocabulary lesson on Monday, Kahoot! Review on Thursday, and vocabulary quiz on Friday. I even created a summative vocabulary test for students to take at the …
For Sale: Baby shoes. Never worn. 6 words but a full story, right? It has all of the parts of a story: character, plot (with a climax & implied resolution), and conflict. It also evokes a strong image and emotions. I find such stories are a great way to get students working more closely with …
