I used to start every semester off with a brief unit on personal narratives. We would read short pieces and excerpts of longer narratives, discussing important themes and moves the writers made in telling their stories, and the unit would ultimately culminate in students writing their own personal narratives. I Read more…
Apples for teachers sure have changed over the past few years. Over the past few months, I have been working towards my certification as an Apple Teacher. Obtaining certification wasn’t really that difficult as I had to read 16 ibooks and take quizzes to prove that I had mastered the Read more…
Born from a pile of generally well-written but boring essays, The Dash Hunt is a fun way to remind students about sentence variety and to promote the development of voice.
By Adrin Fisher Not to date myself, but when I was in eighth grade, there was this thing called diagramming sentences. There was a lot of diagramming sentences in my English class: we headed to the blackboard and grabbed some chalk with our homework papers held in sweaty fists, filling Read more…
Penny Kittle absolutely ruined reading for me five years ago. You heard me. Destroyed it. In the summer of 2013, at the University of New Hampshire Literacy Institutes, Penny taught me how to read like a writer. Our class studied short poems and discussed the deliberation of the author’s diction with Read more…