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Grading Essays How-To: Use Macros to Save Time
Here is the skeleton in every writing teacher’s closet: grading essays is soul sucking, mind-breaking work. After fifteen years of dedicating obscene chunks of personal time to the task, I wish I could...
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Occam’s Razor, Summer Reading Essays, and Google Docs
I am ashamed. Why do simple solutions often elude me? I have been using Google Docs for five or six years now, and one of the main beefs I have with the system is the highlighting tool. It seems like...
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T.V. as Text: Secret Millionaire Essay
I will not shock fellow English teachers when I write that most of my students watch television more often than they read. I’m not complaining. I actually think the current generation of teenagers...
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Teaching Theme: The Red Tree
click the image to read more about this book My very first department chair regularly read favorite books to his classes. He wasn’t a snob, either. He reveled in good writing, regardless of genre or...
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Mini-essays: Go Small to Get Big Results
450 words are usually enough to communicate effectively, even in a blog post. Of course, bigger is not always better…or easier. Thinking back on my schooling, however, I always encountered a direct...
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Writing Rubric Reboot: 6plus1
In my second year of teaching, I made a grievous, but memorable, error. I was always the type of student who was motivated by tough love. My favorite teachers were the ones with the highest...
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Students Writing for Authentic Audiences
Ugh. Just ugh. I am human, I suppose. Lately, I have not been making the time to write. I know I should just be kind to myself about this, acknowledge the craziness that is starting a new school, and...
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Meaningful, Effective Peer Revision
Peer revision is a gamble. At its best, students offer rich feedback and revision becomes an incredibly rich learning experience for all involved. At its worse, peer responses can be a bit like turning...
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Putting It Out There: Take the Time to Publish
Just a short anecdote from an English 9 class that gives me a boost and reminds me why it is worth our time to make the extra effort to publish online. I have written before about how I use macros and...
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Teaching Metaphors and Similes: Make a Game of It
For students, learning about metaphors and similes can sometimes feel like doing taxes on April 14. Or taking your daily dose of cod liver oil poured over bran flakes. Or picking blueberries under a...
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No Dead Fish: Teaching Students to Write Effective Introductions
Dead Fish Handshakes are a huge pet peeve of mine. You offer your hand in greeting and the other person returns a grip that is downright soggy, their hand flopping in yours like a lifeless cod. It’s...
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Bitesize Rewrites: Paragraph Revision Assignment
This year my English colleagues and I have set a common professional goal of improving the effectiveness of our feedback on written work. I am very excited by this collaboration, as I am always...
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Robo Grader Review: ProWritingAid Google Add-on
A computer can give more effective and timely feedback than I can…sometimes. The potential of “robo grading” excites me. In the case of redundancies, clichés, passive voice, sentence variety, and other...
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Student Scribe Posts
Go to any grocery store parking lot in Germany, and you will never…and I mean never…see any stray shopping carts rattling along in the wind or parked in the hedges. Every carriage is always tucked back...
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Audio Feedback on Student Writing
Part of my job as Year Head involves dolling out consequences for misbehavior. In this work, I’ve quickly learned that a phone call saves time. When I speak to parents directly, they can hear my tone...
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Finding Time to Maintain a Blog
“Where do you find the time?” That’s the question fellow teachers most often ask me after reading my blog. I am a really busy person. They are really busy people. WE ARE ALL REALLY BUSY PEOPLE. The...
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Fragments, Run-ons, and Sentences: Resources for Students
Knowing how to identify and correct run-on sentences is one of the best skills any young writer can develop and this ability allows apprentice scribes to write more clearly and writing more clearly...
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Integrating Quotations with Style
Imagine one day I walk into class and say, “Happy Birthday! I brought you a chocolate cake.” Then, I take out a bag of flour, a bottle of milk, a cup of sugar, a few eggs, and a few bars of...
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