To be better writers and thinkers – students must learn how to generate ideas. This often takes patience and focus. For this activity, students need to put their phones away, sit, and write. That’s it. The focus of this activity is ideas. Ideas, ideas, ideas. When student are finished, they pass their papers around class, …
The following activity is aimed to get students involved in their reading decisions. Students needs to think of a book that they and their classmates should read. Then each student needs to write 150 words or more explaining why that book would make a good choice.
Think-Pair-Share is a great classroom strategy to get students generating ideas and collaborating. Here is a quick practice lesson to familiarize students with this process.
Many teachers dislike giving extra credit. I get it. I don’t have a strong opinion on the matter. However, extra credit has worked well with my current students. I think this is because I use extra credit as an opportunity for students to “show off” their knowledge and passions. My goal is to make extra …
Students need space to generate ideas. In fact, It is only when students learn how to uncover their unique and personal perspectives that I can begin to develop them as writers. The following task I plan on using randomly (yes, you heard that right). Not all of my lessons perfectly glide into each other. Sometimes …
I want my students to “take risks” with their writing. I want them to experiment with new words, concepts, punctuation, and more. Here is the video and worksheet I use to explain this idea.