Imitation exercises are one of my favorite ways to teach students sophisticated writing. In honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s powerful rhetoric, I pulled five incredible quotes from his speeches and writings and created sentence frames that students could use with their own content. If you'd like this in handout form, I included this … Continue reading Five Sentence Structures Every Student Should Adapt From Martin Luther King, Jr.
How Assertion Journals Can Inspire and Challenge Your Students
They're analytical. They're argumentative. They're intriguing. They're bite-sized. Assertion journals are hands-down my favorite way to teach and assess writing. Here's how they work: Students are given an assertion, usually in the form of a pithy quotation. How much context you want to give your students is totally up to you. I just project the assertion … Continue reading How Assertion Journals Can Inspire and Challenge Your Students
How to Teach Analysis Like a Boss
In my last post, I made a case against the five paragraph essay as an appropriate analytical structure for high school students. The closed thesis, redundancy, and built-in limitations to critical thinking ultimately hold students back from their best work. If not the five-paragraph essay, then what? I'm going to take you on a tour … Continue reading How to Teach Analysis Like a Boss
Please Stop Teaching the Five-Paragraph Essay for Analysis
Please stop teaching the five-paragraph essay for analysis. Please, pretty please with a cherry on top! Let's talk for a moment about the purpose of the five-paragraph essay. Many scholars trace its origins centuries back. Its parallel structure was favored over more meandering approaches. Today, teachers and students value the five-paragraph essay because it's both … Continue reading Please Stop Teaching the Five-Paragraph Essay for Analysis