Expanding Sentences Anchor Chart and Mini-Lesson

This blog post explores innovative and engaging lesson plans for any novel unit... ranging from task cards to book instagram pages to a novel podcast project. Student choice is key here, and students can find something they would like to complete in order to convey their reading, comprehension, and

This is a culmination of my own anchor charts, plus the best anchor charts that I could find online. This is a great place to find effective charts that get to the heart of what you are teaching in workshop. If you have a favorite chart that you'd like to add, please contact me! Also, if I have not properly given credit for an anchor chart, let me know so that I can fix it.

Filler Activities for ELA (blog post) What can you do with five extra minutes in secondary ELA? Here are a few ideas to engage students until the bell.

The Best Anchor Charts for your ELA classroom all together in one place! You will find outlines to utilize in Reading Literature, Reading Informational, Writing and Language. Explained in this blog post is about the purpose of utilizing anchor charts in your daily instruction. Along with tips to organize your charts. Below is a collection […]

1. Attach an image (photo, magazine, etc.) to a notebook page and write about it. 2. What things will people in the future say about how we live now? (Examples: They ate that? They believed that?) 3. Pick one from each list to make a creature and animal combination. Now write a short story or scene in which this creature appears. List 1 List 2 Vampire porcupine Ninja armadillo Zombie pig Pirate goat Mummy lobster Clown possum Banshee shark Wraith moray eel 4. Imagine a future in which we each have a personalized robot servant. What would yours be like? What would it do? What features would it have? 5. What does your name mean? Free write about names: names you like, names you don’t, how a name can affect a person’s life, how you feel about your own name, why your parents chose your name, etc. 6. Create a brand new holiday with its own traditions, rituals, foods, and activities. 7. What road-trip would you take if you suddenly could? Write about it. 8. List six true sentences that begin with the words “I'll never forget…” 9. Imagine that we lost all electricity, water, and gas for a month without any time to prepare. Write about how your life would change and how you would survive. 10. Make your bucket list for the next 5 years, the next 10 years, and for life. 11. Tell this story: “Well, I thought it was going to be a regular summer doing all our regular things…” 12. List 10 places in the world that you would most like to visit, 10 places you’ve been, and 10 places you would never want to go. 13. Think about hospitality in your family. What’s it like to have guests in your house? Do you prefer to have friends to your house or to go to a friend’s house? 14. Pick a family member of two and write about his or her reputation in your family, or tell a family legend. 15. A guitar pick, a red balloon, and a wicker basket. Write a scene or a poem that includes these three objects. 16. What animal would judge us the most? Write a scene (based on truth or fiction) where two or more people are doing something silly, and they're being observed and criticized by animals. 17. Write about your own worst family vacation memory. 18. Write about your best family vacation memory. 19. Imagine that someone says to you, “Because that's how we've always done it!” Write this out as a scene. (Think: Who said it, what were the circumstances, how did you respond, etc.) 20. What do you think about when you can't sleep? Turn it into a piece of writing. 21. What traditions does your family have? List all of them or just pick one and write about it. 22. Think about your strongest emotion right now (irritation, boredom, happiness, contentment, etc.) and find five quotes about this emotion. 23. What do you struggle with the most? Write about it. 24. Write a self-portrait. 25. What can we learn from contrast? Write a description of something very dark (like a crow) in a very light place (like a field of snow). Make the dark thing seem innocent and the light thing seem ominous. 26. Write about someone who has no enemies. Is it even possible? 27. Think of a person from your past who really deserved a good scolding but never got one. Write a fictional piece where you tell that person off intelligently. 28. Can honesty honestly be bad? Write about someone, fact or fiction, who gets in trouble for being too truthful. 29. The word “fat” carries a negative connotation. Write a story or observation where something fat is celebrated. 30. What animal lives beneath your human skin? A mouse? A cougar? Or what? Explain with writing. 31. Write about the best piece of advice you ever received. 32. Remember a favorite book from your childhood. Write a scene that includes you and an old copy of that book you find somewhere. --> 33. “I was so mortified, I wanted to crawl in a hole!” Write a short narrative (fiction or nonfiction) where this is your first sentence. Illustrate it if you want. 34. Should books ever be banned? Discuss. If no, explain why. You might want to look at a least of commonly banned books. If yes, explain under what circumstances. 35. Ernest Hemingway said to “write hard and clear about what hurts.” Write about something that hurts, whether it’s an emotional, physical, or phantom pain. 36. What if everyone had to wear a shirt with his or her Myers-Briggs personality type on it? What would this change? How would this affect the way people interact with each other? Would you like this or hate it? (If you don’t know your “type,” try this site. 37. William Shakespeare wrote that: “Conversation should be pleasant without scurrility, witty without affectation, free without indecency, learned without conceitedness, novel without falsehood.” Write your thoughts about conversation, or make up dialogue between two characters who are meeting each other for the first time in an unexpected place. 38. Tell this story: “There it was, finally. Our island. Our very own island. It looked beautiful above the waves of fog, but there was still one question to be answered: why had they sold it to us for only five dollars?” 39. Maya Angelou said “I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way s/he handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.” Tell a story in which a character has to deal with one, two, or all three of these scenarios. How does your character respond? 40. You have a chance to go back and completely re-do an event in your life. What is it, and how to you change it? What is the outcome? This can be a real or fictional event. 41. Pick two characters from different books you’ve read this year and have them get in an argument about something (e.g., who has suffered more, who has had a happier life, etc.). 42. The one shoe in the road: why is it there? Write a story about the circumstances that led to one shoe in the middle of the road. 43. You get to guest star on a TV show. What show is it? What happens in this particular episode? 44. What would you pack in your suitcase if you could not go home again? 45. You can only use 20 words for the rest of your life. You can repeat them as often as you wish, but you can only use these words. What are they? 46. What current fashion in clothing do you particularly like or dislike? Why? 47. Choose five symbols or objects that represent you. Why did you choose these things? 48. "When I stepped outside, the whole world smelled like…" Write a scene that starts with that line. 49. Write a poem entitled "Hitchhiking on a Saturday Afternoon." 50. Use these two lines of dialogue in a story: "What's in your hand?" "It's mine. I found it." 51. Write a scene that happens in a parking lot between a teenager and a man in a convertible. 52. If you only had one window to look out of for the next six months, what would you want to see on the other side? Describe the view. How would it change? 53. Write a story for children. Start with “Once upon a time” or “Long ago in a land far away.” Include a dragon, a deadly flower, and a mask. 54. "Did she actually just say that?" Write a scene that includes this line. 55. “Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family. Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one.” — Jane Howard. Write what comes to mind when you read this quote. 56. List five things you want in a relationship. 57. List ten favorite lines from movies. 58. Write about the biggest mistake you made this week. Now write about the best thing you did this week. 59. What is the very first memory that you have? Write about it. 60. What if your pet could only talk to you at midnight for an hour? 61. Write an acrostic poem using your full name and three words that describe you—good and bad— for each letter. For example, S: sensitive, stubborn, smiling. A: artistic, argumentative, agoraphobic M: melodramatic, moody, magical 62. What if you could create your own TV show with all your friends and loved ones as the cast? What kind of show would it be and who would play which parts? 63. Take a photo or draw a picture of every place you go in a day. Put the pictures or drawings in your journal. 64. A to Z: Make an alphabetical list of advice for someone who is about to become a teenager. For example: A: ask forgiveness, not permission. B.: bake cookies. C.: cook something delicious once a month. D: don't compare yourself to others. 65. Find 10 quotes about happiness. 66. Write about 5 things you'd rather be doing right now. 67. Write out the lyrics to your favorite song. Find some pictures to illustrate the song. 68. Who do you spend the most time talking to? Siblings, parents, friends? Make a list of who you actually talk to during the day and estimate the amount of time invested in each individual. Does the list reveal your priorities? Is it proportional to what is important to you? Make notes of what you talk about in your daily conversations. 69. Find a quote for each month of the year. 70. Animals can sometimes seem remarkably human. Describe an experience with an animal that acted in a very human way. 71. Imagine you opted to have yourself frozen for 50 years. Describe your first days unfrozen, 50 years in the future. 72. Imagine that you are an astronaut who has been doing research on the moon for three years. You are do to go back to earth in a week when nuclear war breaks out on earth. You watch the earth explode. Then what? 73. Create a menu from a fictitious restaurant. Make sure the restaurant has a theme, such as Classic Books, and the food should all be given appropriate names (e.g., “Mockingbird Pie”). 74. Preconceived notions are often false. Describe a time when you discovered that a preconceived notion of yours (about a person, place, or thing) turned out to be wrong. 75. Create a story using words of one-syllable only, beginning with a phrase such as: “The last time I saw her, she...” “From the back of the truck...” “On the night of the full moon...” “The one thing I know for sure…” 76. Describe a significant person (teacher, neighbor, mentor, coach, parent, sibling, sweetheart) with as many physical details as possible and as many similes as possible. (E.g., “Her hair was as golden as straw.”) 77. Write about your first name—why you were given it, what associations or stories are attached to it, what you think or know it means. Do the same for your last name. What name would you give yourself other than the one you actually have? 78. Parents are our first and most important teachers. Describe a valuable lesson you learned from one of your parents. 79. Imagine a moral dilemma (for example, you see someone shoplift or a friend tells a blatant lie to her parents about where she was last night) and explain what you would do and why you would do it. 80. Review an obituary, birth, or a section from the police record or classified ads section of a local newspaper. Choose one and tell the story behind it. 81. List the most attractive things about your current hometown. Now list the most unattractive things. 82. Come up with a list of nouns and a second list of verbs, all of one syllable each. Describe a scene or situation, using a minimum of ten words from each list. 83. Where is your happy place? Write about it and include a picture or drawing. 84. Create a how-to manual for something you can do well (make a craft, bake cookies, restring a guitar, apply make up, etc.). Describe the process so that someone else could complete the task based on your directions. Use present tense verbs. 85. Free write on this quote by Samuel Johnson: “Ignorance, when voluntary, is criminal.” 86. Find a favorite quote and work it into an illustration. (Inspiration here.) 87. Make a soundtrack for your life so far. List songs that describe you or different times of your life. (Make the actual soundtrack on Spotify, etc. too!) 88. Sometimes we find ourselves in situations that force us to face our deepest fears. Tell about a time when you had to face one of your greatest fears—or make up the story. 89. You’re a talk show host. Pick two guests. Why did you choose them? Are they people who get along, or people with vastly different viewpoints? Write about the episode. 90. What three books do you think should be required reading for everyone? Why? 91. “What you don’t know what hurt you.” Write a story that begins with this statement. 92. Free write on this quote by Woodrow Wilson: “Friendship is the only cement that will hold the world together.” 93. According to a Czechoslovakian proverb, “Better a lie that soothes than a truth that hurts.” Agree or disagree? Explain. 94. Rewrite “The Tale of the Three Little Pigs” by using people that you know as the pigs and the wolf. 95. There is a saying that you should be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it. Describe a time when you wished for something and got it—and then wished you hadn’t—or make up a story in which this happens to the character. 96. As the saying goes, “rules are meant to be broken.” Tell about a time when you broke the rules and what happened as a result. 97. "That's not what I meant!" Write a story that has this line in it somewhere. 98. A blue trash can, a red picture frame, a teddy bear with the stuffing falling out, and a padlock. Put these four items somewhere in a story, scene, or poem. 99. Write your name in outline letters on a whole sheet of paper. Now fill in each letter with words you like that begin with that letter. For example: 100. Make a word collage of who YOU are. Use pictures too, if desired. **HURRAH! You can now purchase this as a digital PDF ($2) at Teachers Pay Teachers. For more creative writing ideas, check out my free WordSmithery creative writing lessons and my popular Ultimate Guide to Creative Writing Resources! Check out 100 other 100 Things posts from the bloggers at iHomeschool Network! Do you have it yet? The Big Book of Homeschooling Ideas—a collaboration of over 50 authors with 103 chapters— is now available! Don't miss this amazing resource!

Hello darlings! Do you teach vocabulary to your students? I think this is one thing we are missing in the upper grades and we are doing a disservice to our students. As they move up levels in reading, the thing that I notice that holds my students back the most is the challenging vocabulary they ... Read More about Adding Vocabulary to your ELA Block

A poetry analysis graphic organizer designed to be paired with any poem. Created using Google Slides so it can be printed or assigned digitally. Structure:  How many stanzas/verses? What words/phrases emphasize the images or themes? Are there words and/or lines repeated? What is the line length/rhyme scheme? Meaning:  What is this poem about? What is the poet’s main message? Does the message change? What are the main ideas in this poem? Imagery:  What pictures do you get in your mind when you read the poem? Does the poem contain similes, metaphors or personification? Why do you think the poet has included these images? Language:  What words have been used to create images? Are there any complicated words? Is the language simple to understand? Which words and phrases create the images? What adjectives are included? Color, size, comparison?  Effect:  What is the effect of the poem? What does the poem make you think or feel about? What is the poet trying to say about their subject?

Hello Everyone! I love helping first graders express themselves through writing. For me, the first semester of first grade is all about cre...

Metaphor, simile, onomatopoeia, alliteration, hyperbole, personification, and more!

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We use this chart to help students with revising and editing.

simple explanations and an example to help teach students subject and predicate...

Boggle! I love this. This is so easy and fun for the kids. Boggle Upper and lower case letters match This is a simple activity that can be put together to create a center. You will need to print laminate and cut out the wheels. You will then create a set of clothes pins with each letter of the alphabet on them. One set upper case and one set lower. The students will match the pin to the correct spot on the wheel. Upper and Lower case letters Beginning and ending sounds This activity is the same concept as the upper and lower case letters. You can reuse your clothes pins!!!! This time students will find the clothes pin with the correct ending or beginning sound. Beginning and ending sounds Sight words are a very important part of grades k-2. A great way to use them in your ABC station is to have students build them with cookie sheets and magnetic letters. In your station you can have a variety of list so the students can pick the list that is just right for them. Then they begin to build. You can do this very easy to put together activity with sight words, math, science, or vocabulary from different books in class. The attachment I have on here is blank and an open file so you can save a blank document and then add the words you wish. In the Very Hungry Caterpillar unit there are vocab cards made and ready to use. Blank sight word cards At the start of the year another activity you can do in the ABC station is working with the students names. Each student will get an apple card ad write their name on it. Then you can take a picture of each student and put it on another apple. Picture taking is a great thing to come and let parents do and often they will even take the pictures and have them printed. Once the names and pictures are on the apples I would laminate them. Put the apples in center and have the students match the names to the pictures. If you are going to let students help pass out papers this is a great way for them to start learning each others names. Once they master this they can begin to put the apples in ABC order. Apples Here is a cute upper and lower case letter matching activity. I am working on a basketball match and it is coming soon! Upper and Lower case letter match Here's basketball! upper and lower case match

When teaching narrative writing in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade, there are so many writing skills to cover. They range from creating a sequence of events (beginning, middle, and end) to more difficult

With distance learning in full swing, here’s a closer look at ten resources that English teachers can digitally assign their students. All of my SMARTePlans

A few years ago, my son opened a Google Document and started typing. I asked him about it and his eyes lit up as he described the shared story he was writing with classmates. This

Are you looking for ways to make ESL writing activities more encompassing of all language domains and more engaging?

When it comes to teaching, one of the most beneficial things I try to do for all of my students in every lesson is provide layers of differentiation and scaffolding so that I reach as many kids as I can. When it comes to teaching writing, one way I scaffold instruction comes in the form of sentence frames. But first, an anecdote. I’ll never forget my first teaching job. It was a long-term substitute position teaching ninth grade English to students who were severely behind grade-level. I was still in my pre-service teaching days, and I was completely unprepared. The first couple of weeks were awful. My classroom management skills were abysmal, the kids were not cooperating, and I was beginning to second-guess my career choice as an educator. Yes, it was THAT bad. It wasn’t until one day when I had, at the time what I perceived to be, a crazy idea. I was going to get those kids to work whether they wanted to or not….and like I said, my classroom management wasn’t something to brag about. After reading a short passage with the students, I wanted them to write a brief paragraph responding to the text. I was desperate. All earlier attempts of assigning a writing prompt in the class failed. And it failed because of me. These students were not at the level, both language wise and ability wise, for what I was assigning earlier. However, at the time, I didn't realize this. So, in response to this situation, I wrote a fill-in-the-blank paragraph on the board before class started. After reading the selection, I slowly read the fill-in-the-blank paragraph aloud to the kids and modeled different types of responses that were appropriate for the blanks. Then I asked my students to copy the example from the board onto their papers and fill in the blanks with their thoughts. And let me tell you something: it worked! Not only did it work, but the students ALL sat quietly and wrote their responses. They were working. They were engaged. They were demonstrating their understanding, and they were trying their best. Afterward, I had them take turns reading their responses aloud in the classroom. Again, I had 100% participation. However, this strategy only worked because I experienced a complete failure before this victory. I wasn’t meeting my students’ needs, and I wasn’t giving them appropriately differentiated material that matched their ability levels. I just expected these ninth graders to be able to sit in their seats and write because after all, that is what I was able to do when I was in the ninth grade. That failure is one-hundred percent on me, and I own it. I was expecting work that did not match their capabilities. And, as a direct result of that, I created an environment in which the students didn’t feel comfortable. They weren’t comfortable with the work, nor were they comfortable with me. And that was a big problem! This was one of the most significant learning experiences of my teaching career. And I am very thankful that it’s a lesson I learned early on. We can’t just teach and expect grade-level, common core work from high school students if they aren’t there. There are so many outside factors that we must take into consideration when it comes to students’ learning equations, and as teachers, we have to acknowledge and accept that sometimes things are out of both our hands and our students’ hands. So, this is where sentence frames come into play. A student won’t know how to properly craft an argumentative claim about a piece of nonfiction text if he or she doesn’t understand how the parts of speech work together. Students can’t learn, and study, and work on mastering nouns and verbs and prepositions if outside forces, forces in which they have absolutely no control of, are working against them. There are students who are hungry, anxious, homeless, victims of neglect and abuse, responsible for the care of their siblings, and doubting their existence. We owe it to our all of our students to understand this. We have to go back to the basics and build our middle school and high school students up, even if that means teaching concepts and skills at the beginning of the year that are five grade-levels below what we teach. By teaching to our students’ needs rather than to what the grade-level standards dictate, we can then begin to move toward grade-level skills as the year progresses. Afterall, we can't teach the quadratic equation to kids who don't understand simple multiplication. One of the biggest reasons why I use sentence frames in my classroom is because they help every student. Sentence frames are not just for our EL and below-grade-level students; they benefit every single learner in the classroom. And yes, I even use them with my college-bound juniors and seniors because sentence frames model concise writing and help reinforce academic writing. As educators, we are more well-read than our students. We’ve read works by many different authors of varying abilities and have seen how authors craft their stories and arguments. Our students, not so much. It is our job to teach them how to engage with, understand, and respond to a text. Some teachers may shy away from providing students with sentence frames because they may believe that in doing so, the work is becoming “too easy” or “too watered down.” However, if it is what our students need, shouldn’t we be doing it? Giving our students structure and sentence frames isn’t diluting the work. It’s not watering it down, and it certainly isn’t making it too easy. It is teaching them how to respond. A sentence frame provides our students with the structure they need to help them get their thoughts from their brain onto their paper. Sentence frames don’t tell students what or how to think, they show them how to structure their ideas logically. As time goes on and students utilize sentence frames in class, you’ll begin to notice that students stop using the frames verbatim and start adding their own style to the frame. This is progress. As even more time goes on, you’ll notice that some of your students won’t use the frames you provided them with, but that they were able to write loosely within the structure entirely on their own. This is learning! FREE WRITING DOWNLOAD As a result of this learning experience, I created my differentiated writing responses for literature. For each writing topic, I created two handouts -each with a different level of differentiation. The level with less scaffolding guides students through the response and helps students organize their thoughts. The handout with more scaffolding provides a series of sentence frames to help students learn how to write academically about the literature they read. These organizers were game-changers in my classroom. Not only did I create generic scaffolded writing prompts for every piece of literature, but I also created some for specific works of literature: Romeo and Juliet, Of Mice and Men, and Lord of the Flies. I believe so much in sentence frames and providing students with differentiated writing scaffolds that I am sharing this differentiated writing task with you. Click HERE to download a sample writing assignment that you can use in your classroom with any piece of fiction. This is a direct excerpt from my Differentiated Writing Tasks for Any Text resource, and I know it will help all of your writers, not just the struggling ones. Here are some of my favorite sentence frames to use in the classroom. These can be used menu style where students create their paragraphs by selecting which frames to use, or you can use them for specific responses. Sentence Frames to Talk about a Text: According to _________, one reason why _____________. Furthermore, __________ argues that ___________ because ___________. As stated in the text, _________________. Sentence Frames to Talk about Literature: In the short story, the author describes ____________. After ____________, the main character then _______________ which ____________. The theme of the story is fully developed when __________________. Sentence Frames to Agree with Evidence: Confirming with ______________, further evidence shows ________________. Similar to _____________, __________ also suggests _______________. Likewise, ____________ also states ______________. Sentence Frames to Argue or Disagree: Even though __________________, there is evidence to believe that _____________. While __________ states that ____________, contradicting evidence from __________ proves that _______________. Despite ____________, _____________ argues that ________________. Additional Resources for Scaffolding Writing Sentence Fluency by Stacey Lloyd Narrative Writing by Addie Williams Back to School Creative Writing Video by Presto Plans Literary Quote Analysis by Nouvelle ELA

By The Daring English Teacher Whether you are teaching 100 percent remotely, teaching in a hybrid setting, or teaching in a socially-distanced classroom, this school year is unlike any other. Because of all of the unique challenges that this school year brings, teachers must take a moment, step back, and reconsider every instructional decision. One area of secondary ELA instruction that teachers should reconsider this school year is how to distantly teach writing, the writing process, and essay writing. At the time of publication, I’ve been remotely teaching my high school English students for seven weeks, and I’ve also assigned, taught, graded, and provided feedback for a full essay assignment. Through that process of teaching students how to write an essay remotely, I learned some things. Above all, I learned reconsideration. Teaching Writing Remotely: Reconsidering the Assignment Any way you cut it, distance teaching and distance learning are challenging for both teachers and students alike. Because of all of these unique challenges, we must reconsider assignments and only assign essential work. With the essay that I recently assigned to my juniors, my grade-level team and I significantly modified the essay to suit our students’ needs better. We looked at our objective for the assignment, evaluated which skill and standard we wanted to assess, and pared the assignment down. Featured in the picture: SMARTePlans Digital Controversial Essay Assignment. Considerations for Modifying Remote Learning Writing Assignments What essential skills do you want to focus on? What standard are you assessing? Can the assignment be modified in terms of length requirements? Can the assignment be adjusted in terms of how many sources you are requiring? Can you provide the sources to the student in advance? For our most recent essay, we shortened a multi-page, synthesis essay to just three paragraphs: an intro, body, and conclusion. Also, since teaching writing can be an overwhelming task, to begin with, try to focus only on one or two essential skills at a time and build from there. For this essay, I really wanted my students to understand how to embed quotes in their writing and write strong commentary. Why assign a three-page essay when you can assess the skills in just three paragraphs? During this time, we have to keep our most vulnerable students in mind. If an assignment is more accessible, students will be more likely to attempt the work and less likely to shut down completely. By focusing on just a couple of essential writing skills at a time, your writing instruction becomes more focused. It provides students with more time to practice learning how to write academically. My digital Writing Spotlight series takes this instructional approach. Each unit focuses on a different writing skill, such as writing about the quote, writing in the third person, writing in the literary present, and focusing on including a quote in writing. Teaching Writing Remotely: Reconsidering How to Present the Assignment Once you’ve modified your writing assignment to fit the needs and challenges of remote teaching, it is time to present the assignment to students. I had a lot of success presenting my students with their writing assignment toward the beginning of the unit before reading some of the sources together. One of the main reasons I did this was because I wanted my students to see the end game. I wanted them to understand where our classwork during the prior weeks was leading. I reviewed the assignment project in chunks. We talked about and discussed the prompt. To check for understanding, my students sent me a private chat message in Zoom telling me what the prompt was asking using their own words. From there, I went over the requirements slowly and paused several times to check for understanding using the chat feature. I had my students type one requirement for the essay in the chat. With teaching 100 percent remotely, it is so difficult to gauge student reactions. It is tough to see if they are getting it. That is why I made sure that I had frequent checks of understanding in the chatbox. Another benefit of assigning the essay early is that it provides you with ample time to revisit parts of the essay as you work toward it. Since our essay was a synthesis essay, we would take a couple of moments to discuss how the article related to the prompt after we read an article together. Teaching Writing Remotely: Reconsidering the Pre-writing Process Writing is a process, and when we introduce large writing assignments to our students, we should always teach it as such -a process. Brainstorming and pre-writing is such a big part of teaching students how to write essays, and with remote teaching, I encountered another unique challenge. How was I going to complete group brainstorming exercises with my students? Usually, with in-person instruction, I include various group brainstorming activities in my essay writing units. Some of the best in-person group brainstorming activities include a shared piece of large paper, a group of kids, and some markers. Easy peasy! However, this group essay brainstorming method just isn’t an option during the pandemic. I used two different group brainstorming strategies to help my students prepare for their first remote essay. We used the discussion feature in Canvas, and I also went back to the basics and used my document camera to record students’ live ideas as they shared them aloud in our Zoom call. Remote Teaching Group Brainstorming Part 1First, to prepare students for the group brainstorming session, I provided them with a graded Canvas discussion assignment. I made the settings so that students had to answer before they could see their peers’ responses. For the graded Canvas discussion, students had to answer a question that was essentially the essay prompt and provide one piece of cited evidence. I gave them about 5-7 minutes to complete the discussion question in class. And, since our work leading up to this included a quote organizer, students should have had quotes ready to go. If you don’t have Canvas or don’t utilize the discussion feature, here is a list of other tech options for this type of group brainstorming activities. Google Classroom questions Padlet A Collaborative Google Doc or Slide Jamboard Flipgrid Remote Teaching Group Brainstorming Part 2Then, once my students completed this task, we moved onto another form of group brainstorming. For their essays, students needed two reasons to support their claim. Since the Canvas discussion board question only included one reason, I wanted to provide students with a list of potential supporting reasons from which to choose. To introduce this exercise, I explained that we would be brainstorming reasons for our essays. Then, I showed students the Canvas discussion board assignment that they completed and pointed out that they could use any of the reasons in the discussion thread for this assignment. Then, I switched to my document camera, asked my students to unmute themselves when they wanted to participate, and told them to shout out the answers. We would typically do something like this in class on the whiteboard, but I had to modify it since we are remote. Students participated and shared. Together, we had a list of supporting reasons. It was awesome. At the end of our group brainstorming session, I had the students select two reasons for their essay. Also, through the group brainstorming activities, students had quite a few different quotes to choose from for each supporting reason. Teaching Writing Remotely: Reconsidering Writing Instruction When teaching students how to write an essay, I like to focus on specific sections of the essay at a time and then provide students with dedicated class time right after direct instruction. For example, once students select their reasons and quotes, I begin with focused instruction on the thesis statement and introduction. Using various writing instructional strategies via Zoom and the doc cam, I try to provide students with as much detailing and scaffolding as possible. Instructional strategies for remotely teaching essay writing: Color-coding: Color code different parts of the paragraph or color-code corresponding reasons and evidence. Mentor sentences: Provide students with exemplary mentor sentences to show students exactly what topic sentences, evidence sentences, and thesis statements should look like. Scaffolding: Provide students with sentence frames and sentence starters to help them organize and write their thoughts. Here is how I breakdown the multi-paragraph essay for instruction. Thesis and Introduction Topic Sentences and Body Paragraphs Conclusion Each of my digital essay writing units breaks down essay writing instruction into manageable chunks for students and teachers. Teaching Writing Remotely: Reconsidering Use of Class Time Whenever I assign essays, I always try to give students as much in-class time to work on the assignment as possible. Providing students with a chance to work on their essays in class is a great way to walk around and monitor student progress. It’s a great way to see how students are doing and provide much needed one-on-one support. With remote teaching, I still provided my students with dedicated class time to work on their essays, and I attempted to have an online writer’s workshop. To do this, I sent every student to their own Zoom Breakout Room. I hopped from room to room, checking on on students, asking how they were doing, and reviewing their essays with them. Students shared their Google Docs with me, and I went over what they did well and how they could improve. With remote instruction, positive student affirmation is so important. Students need to know what they did well and why it was so great specifically. It will help them continue to try, make an effort, and be involved in your classroom. One of the best ways to streamline feedback is to keep it short and only focus on a couple of things. For each student, I pointed out one area of excellence and one area of growth. For the area of growth, I focused on an actionable step the student could take to make an immediate improvement in their essay. Teaching Writing Remotely: Reconsidering Peer Editing Just because we are teaching remotely doesn’t mean that we have to forgo peer editing completely. Peer editing is a critical part of the writing process because it allows students to see other students’ writing and read student writing in a different light. For my peer editing activity, I assigned a digital Peer Editing station assignment and grouped students into breakout groups in Zoom of 4-5 students. In their breakout groups, students shared their essays and worked on finalizing them. Teaching Writing Remotely: Reconsidering Grading Essays Finally, the element of essay writing to reconsider when it comes to remote teaching is how you grade each essay. Since I can’t sit next to my students, since I can’t see if they are struggling or not, since I can’t help them in real-time at the moment they get stuck, I am grading with grace this year. I have EL students and SPED students and students struggling in other areas, and the last thing I want to do is bring them down with strict grading. Teachers can still have high expectations in the remote classroom without having unrealistic expectations. More Distance Writing Instruction Resources: Digital Creative Writing Video Bundle by Presto Plans Writing - Narrative, Persuasive, and Descriptive Writing Bundle - Digital by Addie Williams Writing Mini-Lessons and Activities Bundle by Room 213 Argument Essay Writing Bundle by Tracee Orman

Teaching writing to fifth graders doesn't have to be intimidating. This post details exactly how I teach writing in 5th grade.

Read about 16 high-interest writing assignments that middle school and high school students actually enjoy! #WritingActivities #MiddleSchoolELA #HighSchoolELA

This complete argumentative writing kit is all you will ever need to thoroughly teach a high quality argument unit. What makes this bundle special? Each resource was designed and honed over the course of my 14 year career as a writing teacher. Grading thousands of student essays has allowed me to see the common mistakes […]

The next stop on my formula for successful writing instruction is the easy-peasy RACE formula. (You can see Part 1 here and Part 2 here.) Stay with me now… you’ve probably seen the RACE strategy done before. You may even have something similar to it. Whatever works for you and your students is awesome. I, […]

Poor writing stamina is a common struggle among reluctant writers. Yet many teachers struggle with how to build writing stamina and keep students engaged. These daily writing activities are designed to get students excited about writing and build writing stamina at the same time.

Developing Writing Fluency: Do your students have great ideas, but struggle to write down those ideas? A writing warm up might help!

Teaching essay writing is no simple task: The pressure is on: this is a skill that students need , are tested on, and will need to harness for the next grade level all the way into college. Students somehow forget what they’ve learned in between assignments. I m

Every teacher on the planet knows that the first weeks of school are all about routines, routines, routines and more routines. There are the super obvious routines to discuss like what to do when you have to go to the bathroom or get water, what to do when you want to speak, how to turn work in and

Fun and creative invitations to write.

Teaching writing to fifth graders doesn't have to be intimidating. This post details exactly how I teach writing in 5th grade.

For teaching the writing process, I write papers with my students. Model the writing process and change your class' writing attidues.

your curly comrade,Suzanne I haven't determined the rightness or wrongness of using part of a hymn for a blog post title, but I went for it. If you remember how this whole thing started, we are on a quest to make secondary instruction colorful and engaging because even big kids want and deserve to have a little fun. With that being said, something that I stole from elementary education this year is anchor charts. I wanted my walls to be a valuable, changing part of instruction. So here is a little look around my walls and a brief description of the skill. In the first few weeks of school, I had this overwhelming notion that what I was doing wasn't working. (Gosh! I hate when that happens!) So, I pulled out college textbooks and other resources I've acquired and researched workshop classroom models. My students are not responding to traditional instruction and need something different. Now for some of them, I'm on my fourth batch of different. Hello rock! Hello hard place! They needed accountability. They needed instruction to be writing intensive. So, we switched. Mondays are our reading day. Tuesday through Friday is writing intensive. We're on a block schedule, so that means that some weeks I lead with my 'A' day (ah, comfort) and some with the 'B'. It hasn't driven me crazy...yet! For one of our first reading lessons, I focused on what is supposed to happen in your head before you read. It's more than just staring at words on a paper. Imagine that! Students brainstormed what happened in their head as they read and shared with the class. We talked about how writing down brief responses also helped us understand what we were reading. Students practiced reading and responding. I asked them to go back and and notice what their notes were mostly about. They identified the strategy and explained how it helped them on a post-it note and placed it on the corresponding poster. We talked about how a combination of these thinking strategies would best help us understand what we read. This lesson idea and a chart of the thinking strategies are found in Harvey "Smokey" Daniels's book, Texts and Lessons for Teaching Literature. I also have his book of non-fiction texts, and both are excellent! They provide brief texts and skill-based lessons for each. The first six weeks was spent teaching the structure and guiding questions for the Short Answer Questions. Some students had been taught and feel most comfortable with a different graphic organizer. Fine by me, but I still wanted them to see how the questions work with both structures. Find more about how we teach the SAQ here. I kind love my Ba-Da-Bing anchor chart! A Ba-Da-Bing is a descriptive strategy for the literary essay. In theory, it could work for expository and persuasive writing, but I haven't quite figured out how. We added the notes above to our Writer's Tools, and they practiced the still to start their story. It could be used throughout the story because it's just that great! In fact, I presented it as English teacher chocolate- we crave it and sometimes have to have it! I'm going to let the graphic speak for itself, but feel free to email me for more Ba-Da-Bing details. Pitchforks are easy and effective. They can be used in any type of writing to add detail. Since I was taught this strategy in Gretchen's training (Pitchforks and Ba-Da-Bings are both hers), I use them more often in my own writing. For students, it is a great way to force encourage them to vary their sentence structure. Remember, that AAAWWWUUBBIS word means we can wear it two ways (reversible jacket). So there you have it! Again, I want these to change out as our instruction changes. New learning- on the wall. Old learning- in your head (or saved as a picture in your phone- all about teaching the real world skills y'all). I would love to see or hear about what's hanging on your wall!