After ten years of public school teaching and countless student teaching observations, the author knows firsthand that English language arts (ELA) teachers are committed to teaching researched argumentative writing and, further, they often frame their assignments as questions. In this article, the author proposes that ELA teachers accelerate…

In this article, Kate Collins begins by explaining how she discovered that "Hamilton: An American Musical," a Broadway show that incorporates a mix of musical genres: hip-hop, jazz, classic show tunes, and show-stopper numbers based on the life of Alexander Hamilton, could be brought into her teaching as a rich resource for her high…

To combat the inevitable intellectual fatigue that autobiographical essay assignments often engender and, more importantly, to provide students with an authentic audience and purpose for their writing, the author designed an autobiographical assignment that liberates students from the traditional essay format while empowering them to envision…

Thomas Nunnally equates five-paragraph format essays with square cucumbers found at farmer's markets: they have an established structure but no argument. The real square cucumbers are students who need a formula to write competently. By providing students with a real audience, a teacher can show that he or she takes students' desires -- and…

The author, who teaches the English Methods class in the credential program, knew from entries in students' Writer's Reader's Notebooks (Rief) that they were struggling with the articles assigned about a five-paragraph essay. Following a discussion of form-first instruction and CCSS assessments, this article provides concrete suggestions for…

Educational simulations provide students authentic contexts. These authentic contexts require situated and complex real-world arguments. Such writing scenarios help students recognize why there are often multiple interpretations of evidence, who their audience is, what they want, and what kind of genre is needed. Playable Case Studies help…

This article argues that the goal of an educator is to help students realize they can be effective writers by giving them the ability to demonstrate their skills. Scene writing can make writing seem less like a chore and more like an opportunity to express ideas. As students write scenes that include both dialogue and action, they gain a deeper…

Teachers search for ways to make classroom writing relevant and "real world." This article makes a case for using radio as a framework for the teaching of writing. Using this framework enables students to write strong, specific, and effective pieces and draws the real world into the classroom with the use of smartphones and Web-based…

Whether novice or experienced, writers must come to terms with the daunting task of filling up a blank page, or screen, in an effort to produce writing. Student writers are no different. They enter teachers' classes having confronted similar difficulties with discovering what it is they want to say. In seeking to help students, they devote…

The author finds using software to make audio comments on students' writing improves students' understanding of her responses and increases their willingness to take her suggestions for revision more seriously. In the process of recording audio comments, she came to a new understanding of her students' writing needs and her responsibilities as…

Early in the fall of 2007, one of the author's students asked whether she could pass around a petition during class protesting the "moment of silence." The Illinois legislature had recently passed a law requiring all schools to observe a moment of silence at the start of each school day. A number of students who heard the conversation…

Using examples from college and high school students, the author describes how asking students to respond to literature using a variety of graphic media can enhance their interpretive skills. Some students who don't like to write essays or who seemingly aren't good at writing essays enjoy making graphic response to literature and are good at it.…

In this article, the author shares how she envisioned and created a writing assignment for a ninth-grade English course. The writing project is a class novel comprised of short stories, one written by each student. In the writing assignment, seniors compile their favorite writings from any class in any year of high school and write reflections…

When the author first started teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) students, she was incredibly naive about the second language acquisition process. One of the first moves she made was to look at the Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) goals, and she began to think about the purposes and situations in which her…

Stacey Brown energizes high school students with "brain-twisting" writing prompts, word games to hone vocabulary and spelling skills, and art to show complex ideas. Additionally, reading aloud to her class models fluent reading, expands students' vocabularies, builds community, and stimulates student-led discussions about the novel. (Contains 1…