Last weekend I re-watched "With Honors," the 1994 film starring Joe Pesci and Brendan Fraser. If you haven't seen it, "With Honors" is about a Harvard senior who develops a relationship with a homeless man who unexpectedly lands up with the draft of his senior thesis. In order to get his thesis back, a page… Continue reading Make It Unique. Make It Your Own.
Category: mentor texts
Love is in the Air: Poetry in Middle School
Springtime not only brings more poetry into our classroom, but it also ignites a desire for many middle school students to ask each other out. When I taught fifth grade, I noticed some of my students were often lovestruck during the final months of school, even though they were just little kids a few months… Continue reading Love is in the Air: Poetry in Middle School
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Organzing Teaching Materials
I recently received an e-mail asking me: How do you organize your material (mentor texts, charts, minilessons, etc.) for Writing Workshop? I have just collected so much stuff this past year to do with Writing Workshop, but I just can't figure out a way to organize it. Most teachers are nearing the end of the… Continue reading Organzing Teaching Materials
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You Be the Poet!
My husband and I spent last week visiting our families in the NY Metropolitan Area. When we returned to our home in Central Pennsylvania, we were greeted by bursts of yellow on our street. The forsythia bushes had bloomed while we were gone. In the past five days, I've noticed April springing into action with… Continue reading You Be the Poet!
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Teach Students How to Grow Theories About Poems (During National Poetry Month & All Year Long)
Just as I have to think about how I can mentor myself after poets when I want to write vivid poems, I encourage children to make reading-writing connections with the poems they encounter. Young poets can be taught how to develop theories, or hunches, about what they’re noticing poets do in poems they admire. Teaching… Continue reading Teach Students How to Grow Theories About Poems (During National Poetry Month & All Year Long)
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Topic Choice Mentors
Sometimes, when we offer students choice during a poetry unit of study, they get come up empty. One topic that all kids have something to say about is school. Whether they love it or hate it, enjoy writing or shy away from it, all children have opinions and unique experiences about school. Reading, Rhyming, and… Continue reading Topic Choice Mentors
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Color & Poetry
Color poems are popular things to have students craft, especially in elementary school Writing Workshops. There are many books that provide examples of color poems for young writers to emulate. Some are fantastic, allowing readers to think about colors in new ways, and some are mediocre, at best. I was fortunate to be one of… Continue reading Color & Poetry
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A Fuzzy Poetic Mentor Text
Last week I wrote about a book with very different types of acrostic poems, after which students can mentor themselves. Since National Poetry Month is rapidly approaching, I thought I'd stick with poetry for the next few Thursdays. Ever since I learned about Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Kanab, UT, I've been hooked on stories… Continue reading A Fuzzy Poetic Mentor Text
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Writing Different Kinds of Acrostic Poetry
I had the pleasure of being part of the round two judges for the 2009 Cybils Poetry Panel. I really enjoyed all five of the books we had to judge, including the winner. One of the books that made it to the final round was called African Acrostics: A Word in Edgeways with poems written… Continue reading Writing Different Kinds of Acrostic Poetry
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Building Bigger Vocabularies Through Books: Part 1 of 2
In this month's issue of The Reading Teacher, there's an excellent article, "The Vocabulary-Rich Classroom: Modeling Sophisticated Word Use to Promote Word Consciousness and Vocabulary Growth," which deals with ways teachers can broaden students' vocabularies. Holly B. Lane and Stephanie Arriaza Allen, the article's authors, provide concrete examples from a kindergarten and a 4th grade… Continue reading Building Bigger Vocabularies Through Books: Part 1 of 2
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Yes, students CAN publish their writing in two languages!
“The worst thing about new books is that they keep us from reading the old ones.” -- Joseph Joubert When I was at NCTE less than three months I was captivated with the bilingual picture book, Si, Se Puede! / Yes We Can!: Janitor Strike in L.A., written by Diana Cohn and illustrated by Francisco… Continue reading Yes, students CAN publish their writing in two languages!
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Teaching Endings
On Monday we discussed endings to editorials in my ninth grade class. This is how the teaching went: Me: I've noticed many of you are ready to write an ending, but aren't sure how to go about it. So let's talk about it. Will you pull out the mentor texts we've been studying and reread each… Continue reading Teaching Endings
