Incorporate “Answer of the Day” in your morning-work routine

One teacher finds that the best way to get students to write great questions is to simply give them the answers!    read more...

Engage more students with highlighter tape

West Side Middle School (Union City, IN) seventh grade teacher Carla Durham likes to engage her students with fun reader and writer tools in the classroom. One tool that she has found many uses for is highlighter tape.    read more...

Write about convention characters

Students need to understand the purpose of punctuation marks before they will utilize them accurately, intentionally, and consistently. That said, consider challenging students to think of a punctuation mark as a person and the role it plays in writing.    read more...

The Test Lady Lives!

The Test Lady is alive! WOW! The creativity in your mini-lessons on the Test Lady was astounding.    read more...

Use grammar to improve sentence fluency

Sentence fluency is a difficult trait to master. Because we often speak in short choppy fragments or long, gangly run-ons, students bring those habits into their writing. They write how they speak. It doesn't take long for students to realize if they just write short, choppy, simple sentences, they will be grammatically correct. Unfortunately, this creates a lack of sentence length variety.    read more...

Teaching grammar within the writer’s workshop

Attempting to fit grammar and convention lessons into the writing time can prove troublesome for many teachers. In order to ensure they are "getting their grammar in," many resort to a separate time of the day/class period. While this does provide for regular grammar study, it is done in isolation. There is little to no skill transfer for students into their own, authentic writing. So, how do you combat this dilemma?    read more...

Speaking punctuation

If you're still struggling to get students to utilize punctuation marks, then you'll love Thomas Jefferson Middle School (Valparaiso, IN) teacher Jane Strayer's idea!    read more...

Recognizing footnotes

Don’t assume students know what a footnote is. Struggling readers may wonder why there is an asterisk or a tiny little number after a word, but they often don’t ask what it’s for.    read more...

Find poems in previous writings

Poems often tell stories. So why not utilize previous writings your students have generated when teaching your next poetry unit?    read more...

Improving students’ self-assessment after writing

When teachers announce a new writing assignment, or a specific writing project, or even a single writing prompt, there are often multiple tasks for students to juggle. The teacher carefully and explicitly goes over every single required component and verifies that students understand the expectations. And yet, when the assignments are turned in, invariably, there are numerous writings that lack all the required components. Ugh!    read more...