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The types of paper we are going to discuss in this article bring writing back to more than basic.  Of course, you need paper to teach writing, but who would have thought how important it is … Read more

A huge reason students don’t want to write or participate in school is that they feel like it’s another school skill that they aren’t going to use in real life. But writing is a skill that … Read more

Writing prompts can be a great way to support student creativity and teacher lesson planning.  They are convenient and help students start writing about their topics.  Sometimes writing prompts seem boring, or it can be hard … Read more

As students get older, teachers tend to step away from seasonal writing prompts.  Students still experience the different seasons and holidays, but it seems the time set aside to celebrate and enjoy the uniqueness of the … Read more

Saint Patrick’s Day is one of the less prominent holidays, but we can still recognize and celebrate it with Saint Patrick’s Day activities. We need to keep students learning while recognizing the holiday because there is … Read more

Women’s History is often brushed over or touched on slightly by school textbooks.   They don’t spend a lot of time recognizing the inequalities that women faced.  But Women’s History Month gives us the opportunity to … Read more

Culturally Responsive Teaching can help us build community in our classrooms and include all students.  When I was learning about cultural diversity in the classroom Culturally Responsive Teaching seemed like it was the most natural way … Read more

Black history shouldn’t be limited to a month, but I love that we have a month devoted to remembering and learning about it.  It’s a time to highlight how important black history is.  However, black history … Read more

Persuasive writing is a lot of fun to teach students because they get to talk about topics they are passionate about, convince their readers to agree with them, and write.  Even though persuasive writing is fun … Read more

New Year’s Day is a natural time to set goals and think about the future.  As teachers, we can do that for ourselves and teach our students how to do it too.  It’s a teachable moment … Read more

Faster grading for teachers can turn essay grading from dread to celebration.  It should be a celebration.  We get to see our students grow as writers after all the time and effort we spent.  We should … Read more

When kids are engaged and excited about learning they retain more.  So much of school is repetitive which means teachers are constantly trying to come up with ways to engage students better.  To put it eloquently … Read more

You probably need clever tips for building relationships with students quickly because it’s the first day of school with 25 names to learn and relationships to build.  The hardest part is that we do need to … Read more

Building a strong classroom community can help your students work as a team, get along, solve their own problems, value each other, and shape your classroom’s and school’s culture.  The time you spend helping your students … Read more

Teaching writing should be enjoyable and with a solid plan, it can be.  Planning a whole year of writing lessons can be easy if you approach the task from the right angle.  A simple plan is … Read more

Poetry lessons are my favorite part of teaching writing, but in many classrooms, poetry is forgotten. There are so many other parts of ELA and writing to teach that it can seem difficult to fit in … Read more

Teachers use written assessments to help guide instruction for each unit throughout the school year.  They are a reliable diagnostic tool that can help teachers understand their students’ strengths and weaknesses better.  They are also time-consuming, … Read more

Christmas writing activities can help you and your students celebrate the holiday while still learning important academic skills.  Christmas is one of the most difficult times of the year to teach because students are so excited … Read more

Graphic organizers are a powerful writing tool when we teach our students how to use them correctly. But for us to teach our students to use them effectively, we must pick the best graphic organizer for … Read more

Persuasive writing is a lot of fun to teach students because they get to talk about topics they are passionate about, convince their readers to agree with them, and write.  Even though persuasive writing is fun … Read more

Faster grading for teachers can turn essay grading from dread to celebration.  It should be a celebration.  We get to see our students grow as writers after all the time and effort we spent.  We should … Read more

Learning to counterargue is what helps elevate students from opinion to persuasive to argumentative writing.  Students can’t grow into mature writers or meet the common core standards until they know how to counterargue.  Teaching students how … Read more

Engaging Thanksgiving writing activities can help your students continue learning while they anticipate Thanksgiving break.  Students get so excited about taking time off from school that it gets hard for them to focus.  The best thing … Read more

Tips on persuasive writing can help prepare you to teach this unique type of writing. Persuasive writing is exciting for students because they can talk about things they are passionate about.  There are so many activities … Read more

Halloween is an exciting time of year for your students and one of the bigger holidays at the beginning of the school year. Your students are likely going trick-or-treating, getting dressed up, and maybe going to … Read more

Tips on persuasive writing can help prepare you to teach this unique type of writing. Persuasive writing is exciting for students because they can talk about things they are passionate about.  There are so many activities … Read more

Mentor texts are a valuable learning tool for writing lessons, especially persuasive writing.  Students often have lots of exposure to narratives and expository/informational literature, but not as much familiarity with persuasive texts.  Exposing students to persuasive … Read more

All the strategies writers use to persuade come back to three techniques of persuasive writing.  They might have a different spin or details put behind them, but when you examine them closely you will be able … Read more

What is a persuasive writing essay?  It’s when you try to get someone to do what you want.  The goal of a persuasive writing essay is to convince the reader to agree with the writer and … Read more

Essay grading is a time-consuming task that every writing teacher would like to see made simpler.  If you change your mindset about grading and make a few decisions about your grading system it’s possible to take … Read more

Having a unit example for expository writing can be incredibly helpful.  Expository writing is one of the most important types of writing for our students to gain a strong understanding of because they will use it … Read more

Teaching our students to ask detailed questions to gain the most information out of their research is an important skill.  But just like most things in teaching, we can assume our students know how to ask … Read more

What are graphic organizers? Graphic organizers are one of the most popular teaching tools for writing teachers.  Writing teachers use graphic organizers all the time to help students organize their thoughts in an accessible way, even … Read more

Our students need to learn how to perform a credible sources check because there is so much information in the world that is often false.  All-day long we are bombarded with information from news, radio, social … Read more

Our students need to learn how to perform a credible sources check because there is so much information in the world that is often false.  All-day long we are bombarded with information from news, radio, social … Read more

Writing across the curriculum can help all of our students be more successful in school.  I believe this is especially true of expository writing. Not only will our students become more successful when they learn how … Read more

There are four types of writing that teachers need to teach each school year: narrative, persuasive, descriptive, and expository writing. Expository writing is being pushed more and more in schools as part of college readiness.  The … Read more

There are several types of expository writing which are sometimes explained to students while they are reading non-fiction text, but rarely do we use the types of expository writing to help our students write more successfully.  … Read more

Does easy grading for narrative writing exist? Publishing, sharing, and grading are the final steps to every big writing assignment.  Watching students pour their hearts into writing a story, seeing how proud they are as they … Read more

Writing prompts are one of the tools that teachers use to get our students moving during writing. I think every teacher has had students who struggle to pick a topic or start writing. Students will sit … Read more

Teaching writing narratives can be and should be fun.  Mini-Lessons are a great way to tackle teaching writing narratives.  Mini-lessons offer our students support to learn about narrative writing while giving them lots of creative room … Read more

Personal narratives are our students’ first exposure to narrative writing and in many cases writing.  After students learn to write their names and the ABCs they start writing sentences about their day and their life.  It’s … Read more

What is the best graphic organizer for narrative writing?  After a lot of research, I discovered 13 Strategies for Prewriting to Help Your Students Efficiently Produce Writing.  I combed through the list to determine strategies that … Read more

There are so many things that we need to teach in writing each school year.  It’s overwhelming to think about all the mini-lessons, teaching moments, assignments, and grading. But if we can take a step back … Read more

Teaching literary elements is an essential part of teaching writing because our students can not write a story without using literary elements.  Our job as teachers is to help them use literary elements as effectively as … Read more

Figurative language is one of the best parts of teaching writing because it adds so much to student writing. Once students start to understand figurative language, their writing has new life and is more interesting to … Read more

Teaching writing is incredibly complex, but it’s also one of my favorite parts of teaching.  Everyone needs to know how to write well no matter what they decide to be when they grow up.  People are … Read more

One of my favorite things of all time to teach is poetry because I see students shine while creating these short writing projects.  Poetry elevates my struggling writers to share their work with confidence.  Poetry helps … Read more

Grading essays is the final step of a big writing assignment and the hardest.  Grading essays is time-consuming, possibly boring, and the whole time you are working towards completing this task your students are asking when … Read more

I have come to believe that the last step of the writing process is the most important.  Teachers often skip it or only do it halfway.  Really it’s not any teaches fault, it’s a lack of … Read more