Category: Writing Instruction
Make a Metaphor Task Cards
When teaching students about metaphor, simile, and personification, I try to encourage them to incorporate these descriptive tools into their own writing, not just to identify them in a poem. This t... Read More
Using Participles to Describe
When teaching students to write descriptively, I make sure to model for them different grammatical constructions for them to implement in their own writing. I try to limit the amount of grammar jar... Read More
Combing Sentences With Present Participles
Always encouraging my students to write in more concise sentences, I find it helpful to show them various ways to combine sentences while maintaining clarity. One way to do this is by using particip... Read More
How to Use Mentor Sentences in a Secondary ELA Classroom
When teaching grammar, I have often been guilty of teaching concepts in isolation and then drilling students with worksheets and the occasional game. Or I will have students do a quick warm up or ex... Read More
Expanding Sentences with Semicolons, Commas, Parentheses, and Dashes
If your students are anything like mine, they overuse parentheses (where they learned this, I have no idea!) and they view semi-colons to be as about as foreign as hieroglyphics. Although punctuation ... Read More
Simple, Compound, Complex Sentences
I probably don’t teach as much grammatical jargon as some other ELA teachers; however, I have found that most of my students have a shaky understanding of how to use commas, and sentence types a... Read More
Creative Writing Workshop Unit
Below are some the resources that I use when assigning creative writing projects. I put some of them together in a kind of general, one-size-fits-all group of handouts that can help students organiz... Read More