best practices — 6-12th- ADD ARTICLES HERE

9 Ways to Get Secondary Students to Enjoy Writing

How can teachers help older students enjoy writing? Negativity and reluctance is a mindset that is established early on. However, in middle and high school, certain teaching approaches and strategies can help to change the way students view themselves as writers. Create a positive writing culture and maintain it through the year. These nine approaches can help.

The Best First Writing Lesson of the Year: Email Etiquette 101

When planning for the beginning of the year, teachers need to choose writing assignments that allow for collection of pre-assessment data while also engaging students and building a positive writing community.

Best Practices, Assessing Writing, Technology & Writing, Writing Assignments, Writing Mini-lessons, Writing WorkshopMelissa KruseJuly 18, 2017writer's workshop, lesson, back-to-school, email, real-world writing, best practices, career writing, mini-lessons, pre-assessmentComment

14 Strategies to Support Struggling Writers: Build Confidence & Increase Success

Teaching and assessing writing can be challenging, and even more so when you're trying to identify effective ways to scaffold writing instruction for struggling students. Set teenagers up for success by incorporating these teacher-tested, student-approved strategies.

Assessing Writing, Philosophies on Writing, Best Practices, Differentiating Writing, Writing Workshop, Writing AssignmentsMelissa KruseJune 10, 2017The Reading & Writing Havenwriting, scaffolding writing, best practices, teaching writing, struggling writers, how to teach writing Comment

Poetry for Writing Workshop in Grades 6-12: 10+ Devices & Poems to Model Them all!

"To be a poet is a condition, not a profession." -- Robert Frost

You may find yourself in agreement with Frost's famous quote when it comes to teaching poetry in the secondary classroom. However, love it or hate it, poetry can play a helpful role in teaching students how to write! Famous poems can serve as mentor texts for students and showcase key literary and rhetorical devices in action.

Best Practices, Mentor Texts, Writing Mini-lessons, Writing WorkshopMeredith DobbsApril 4, 2017poetry, national poetry month, poem, explication, literary devices, poetic devices, stylistic devices, rhetorical devices, simile, metaphor, personification, anaphora, parallel structure, parallelism, rhetorical question, antithesis, alliteration, consonance, assonance, epistrophe, literary analysis, mentor text, mentor poem, mentor sentence, mentor, writing workshop, writing process, secondary, English, Language Arts, language and composition, language arts, middle school, high school, teachers pay teachers, teacher, teaching writing, Writing Instruction, writer's notebook, writer's workshop, writing, the writing process, essay writing, essay, best practices, best practice, writing assessment, assessing writing Comment

A Philosophy for Assessing Writing: Aim for Improvement, not Perfection

Over the past 10+ years of teaching high school, my philosophy for writing instruction has changed greatly. It has been a decade of experimentation and adaptation; a decade dedicated to finding what works and trying out new methodologies...