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, and underline “interesting ideas” they read. Then they leave a quick explanation on why they found that idea interesting.

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.

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 credit enticing. I want students to watch a football game and think – “Bruh, I could be getting extra credit

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 my students walk into my class and I say, “Today we are going to work on ideas–so bring me fresh,

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.