Most of the popular teaching techniques for teaching of writing are predicated on delightful optimism and rose-colored glasses. Don...

  Writing passage-based essays and other synthesis tasks are important for students. However, these tasks can be very frustrating for tea...

At the end of the year, fourth graders are confident writers who long for independence. They no longer come up to brainstorm every sentenc...

The Common Core expectations are high for student writing. Students in third, fourth, and fifth grades are expected to write formal informat...

Now that we are well into the month of May, students are working on persuasive writing. My fourth graders are writing to third graders who a...

    When I taught seventh grade, I couldn't believe how many students used this phrase as a topic sentence. Was someone teaching this? ...

I am not a huge fan of acrostic poems. In my experience, they often lead to young writers valuing form over ideas --trying to cram words int...

Every fall, I spend time teaching my writers about the writing process. They've experienced it before, of course, but I like for all stu...