Summer Olympics: Keeping Students Engaged in the Waning Days of School
I hadn’t stopped speaking before the glares began. Angry face after angry face greeted my words. I was thrilled. Why was I so happy that…
Category: Writing Wednesdays
Posts connected to the incorporation of Writing Wednesday lessons into Core ELA instruction.
Encapsulate Your Learning: Time Capsules in the ELA Classroom
In December 2021, historians in Richmond, Virginia, uncovered not one, but two, time capsules that had been embedded in the base of a Confederate statue.…
Strong Writers Make Strong Readers
One of the central premises of the upcoming Writing Wednesday series is that by engaging students in meaningful creative writing tasks, we can improve not…
Being Wrong in all the Right Ways
When I began my journey towards Writing Wednesdays, my educational goal seemed fairly simple: to develop a year’s worth of standards-aligned creative writing lessons that…
Writing Revelations: Why Writing Wednesdays are Good for Everyone
In my school district, November is affectionately known as “No School November.” Between election day, a teacher workday, and three recognized holidays, we end up…
Writing Into Winter Break
With only a few weeks to go before Winter Break begins, student engagement often starts to wane. Rather than lament their lack of focus, try…
Celebrating Celebration Days
This week marked the first “Celebration Day” – a quarterly Writing Expo – of the school year. Across all of my classes, students came together…
Writing Wednesdays: Why We Write
Dedicating every Wednesday to creative writing instruction takes commitment. Rearranging the schedule in order to maintain weekly writing when unexpected events chip away at instructional…
Who Gets to be a Writer?
Do you consider yourself a Writer? ___ Yes  ___No Let’s play a game. Grab a scratch piece of paper and a pen or pencil. Go…
Write Out Loud
The sound of students’ voices fills my ears as I wander around the room. Fragments of stories here. An interesting line of text there. The…