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Challenging students to push past their safe zones of writing has been a challenge all year. We all reaped some great rewards as the year came to a close.

A recovering hater of information writing, this post is my first step towards bringing information writing to life for my third graders! It is a vision and collection of possibliities for infusing information writing across the curriculum through the day.

To be an effective democratic citizen, the ability to engage in debate is crucial. For anyone remotely interested in politics (don’t worry, I won’t stay on this topic long, I promise!), debate is… Continue reading →

Want to inspire kids to do more information writing? Teach them to write well about science.

Want to inspire kids to do more information writing? Teach them to write well about science.

When I first began teaching using a workshop model, I spent forever planning my minilessons. I wanted to make sure that my language was exactly right, and that I got to each part… Read More →

My students are embarking on their final unit of study of the school year. We’re doing research-based essays, which I’m attempting to tie-into the “This I Believe” Style. I have my teaching points and some of my charts (well, the ones for this week at least!) ready-to-go, but I’m still trying to write [...]

Someone once told me that an experienced teacher asks, “How are the kids doing?” rather than asking “How am I doing?” I’ve found that to be more and more true of myself as each year passes. I’m not as worried about how I’m doing… I think I know what I’m doing. I’m [...]

My students are going to be drafting while I’m out of the room doing reading assessments this-coming Thursday. Hence, I’m a little bit panicked since I don’t like being out of the room on days when kids are selecting a seed idea or when they start drafting. (I have an amazing guest teacher… [...]

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the thesis statements my students are going to start crafting for their literary essays lately. Therefore, in addition to the graphic organizer I produced for tomorrow’s lesson, I also put together a thesis revision template/writer’s plans worksheet for my students to use on Tuesday that looks [...]

Kate mentioned that some of our students might need assistance with developing their thesis statements. Therefore, I created a graphic organizer for students to use to help them develop a meaty thesis statement. Click on the link below if you’d like to take a look. Literary Essay Thesis Statement Starters [...]

I’ll begin immersing my students in the literary essay genre tomorrow. I’m fortunate to have had some wonderful students last year who graciously allowed me to share their essays with future students to-come. Hence, I have quite a few literary essays copied, ready-to-go for my students to possibly use as mentor texts tomorrow. [...]

This year's shortlist for The Bookseller/Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year were:
- How Green Were the Nazis?
- Delicious Ice Cream: D. Di Mascio of Coventry: An Ice Cream Company of Repute, with an Interesting and Varied Fleet of Ice Cream Vans
- The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification
- Tattooed Mountain Women and Spoon Boxes of Daghestan,
- Proceedings of the Eighteenth International Seaweed Symposium
- Better Never To Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence

The shopping cart book won.

Past winners [Full disclosure: the secret to winning seems to involve using either the word "horse" or the word "buttocks," pu them together and you're a shoo-in]:
2005 People Who Don't Know They Are Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It [I believe this describes some of my coworkers]
2004 Bombproof Your Horse
2003 The Big Book of Lesbian Horse Stories
2002 Living With Crazy Buttocks
1997 The Joy of Sex, pocket edition
1995 Reusing Old Graves
1993 American Bottom Archaeology
1992 How to Avoid Huge Ships
1990 Lesbian Sadomasochism Safety Manual
1988 Versailles: The View From Sweden
1986 Oral Sadism and the Vegetarian Personality
1984 The Book of Marmalade: Its Antecedents, Its History and Its Role in the World Today
1982 Population and Other Problems
1981 Last Chance At Love - Terminal Romances
1980 The Joy of Chickens
1978 Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Nude Mice





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