Newspapers are changing into varied text-based formats thriving on the net, and students need ways to engage these new incarnations of current events articles, ways to consider how events can impact their lives. The tools and challenges we give them must go beyond the “here are the facts, now summarize” methods many of us faced... Continue Reading →
Blog
Dissecting Microfiction
Dissecting a piece of microfiction during a short story session of the Philadelphia Writers’ Conference provided a revealing blueprint for tight, character-driven stories. Our facilitator, Carla Spataro, used author Bob Thurber’s writing exercise “Anatomy of a MicroFiction” to illustrate how focused character development and deliberate action can evoke emotional reactions. Spataro prompted us to use... Continue Reading →
The Writer Within Every Teacher
Teachers are writers. From unit plans to activity directions to parent emails, the words teachers choose and the order in which they assemble words are powerful decisions creating published works. If you are a teacher, you are published. Each activity you design goes to the readers on your class roster and to parents monitoring their... Continue Reading →
Walks, Shuffles, and Snow Ball Fights As Formative Assessments
My student teacher asked how often he should use a particular formative assessment. “Using any formative assessment activity frequently will make it boring, and students will hate it,” I responded. “They won’t be invested in the assessment. The results will not be meaningful.” Variety and activity are keys to keeping students’ attentions and to make... Continue Reading →
Teaching With Feeling: Reaching The Affective Domain
The Scourged Back, an 1863 photo of an escaped African American slave, his back covered by a thatch of thick scars, touches students more deeply and reveals more about this period of our nation's history than could any third-person text. My student teacher and I posted The Scourged Back, period illustrations of slave-catchers, sepia photos... Continue Reading →
Cormac McCarthy– Influences
My introduction to McCarthy’s work did not go well. Misunderstanding his style and my ignorance of literary fiction caused me to consider The Road a book to finish simply because I had begun it. Run-on sentence structures and the lack of dialogue punctuation switched-on the teacher portions of my brain, and each unconventional writing feature... Continue Reading →
The Things They Carried– Review
Tim O’Brien weaves a collection of character-driven vignettes related thematically by the Vietnam War yet more powerfully through characters’ sentimental items, emotional baggage, and trauma. These “things” help create powerful character profiles evolving into stories within themselves, and the connections between stories at first seem rigid and chronological until O’Brien ties suddenly several story threads... Continue Reading →
Beach Path Prompt
Sometimes you are at just the right spot, at the right time, and with the right light to capture an image with enough detail, character, and emotion to inspire your writing. I hope these photos and their brief descriptions help to spark your creativity and can serve as writing exercises or seeds for much greater... Continue Reading →
Seawall And Boat Photo Prompt
Sometimes you are at just the right spot, at the right time, and with the right light to capture an image with enough detail, character, and emotion to inspire your writing. I hope these photos and their brief descriptions help to spark your creativity and can serve as writing exercises or seeds for much greater... Continue Reading →
The Business of Writing
Success as a writer, even if defined as simply "getting my words out there," often requires a business mindset and strategy. A Word document entitled “Published Works” consisting of nothing more than contact information began my slow acceptance of a business mentality 10 years ago. “Published Works” remained blank for what seemed an eternity, but,... Continue Reading →
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