The Sunrise Story

On this rainy Saturday morning, I celebrate my student writers who have found their voices and share them with the world. They inspire me. They make me smile. They are worth celebrating! Here is a "rant" written by Jenna. Some of my sixth graders love to write rants about things that are frustrating to them. They LOVE sharing their rants! Adhithi is new to our classroom and she wrote this beautiful poem about scars. This is one that's stayed with me. Powerful! Sophie's notebook pages always make me smile! It's like I can see the evidence of her thinking ON the page! Remember those rants? Laurie is the student who started writing and sharing rants. I asked her to write a "How To" about ranting and this is what she shared with me yesterday. I offer it to you here. She has found her voice and I love how she encourages others to find their own!    We love watching "Kid President" videos. The genius b...

Join us at Margaret's blog to share posts about digital literacy.  Writing instruction for me this year is challenging. I feel like I'm waging a battle against short attention spans and technology and a serious dread of writing. It's taken me awhile to feel like I'm in my groove this school year, in terms of writing. I desperately needed inspiration. Beautiful Words. Two years ago the amazing Penny Kittle shared this practice from her teaching at the Language and Learning Conference (presented by the Northern Virginia Writing Project ). She shares poetry with her students. They annotate and write all around and over and on the poem. We do that, but now we do that digitally on Google Docs. It's different. As an avid notebooker, I miss the physical interaction with paper and pen but as I watch my students work with these poems, I realize that everyone has their own process. After we read and interact with the poem, we use the beautiful words  of the poet ...

Slice of Life Challenge Please join the challenge over at  Two Writing Teachers ! Today I start camp. Yes, I said camp. Four days of laughing and learning together. I am a counselor. We've been planning this for weeks and it all starts today! Camp is the theme for our four days of curriculum development for middle school English.  Twenty five teachers will gather together for four days of planning, collaborating, questioning, writing, reading and learning. Each day is lead by amazing teachers in the county who are experts at their task!  I am the constant...the counselor. I begin and end each day with activities to get the participants to open up, have fun, and reflect! We are going to share Beautiful Words everyday. Teachers will write and share their writing. The inspiration for our writing today will be an uplifting and powerful poem from Anis Mojgani called Shake the Dust. Here's my introduction to Beautiful Words...Take his ...