How to Help Students with Writer’s Block
When writer’s block hits, it can feel impossible to escape. Even published authors experience writer’s block all the time. Therefore, students of all ages are bound to fall into the writer’s block rut at some point or another, too. As paralyzing as writer’s block can be, there are strategies we can teach students to help […]
The Magic (and Dangers) of Spellcheck
These days, just about everyone relies on spellcheck. With the technology to have all of our errors fixed for us, we save so much time. We no longer have to worry about whether our spelling is correct, or whether we have commas in the right place. But just how reliable are spellcheck programs? The Benefits […]
The Connection Between Reading and Writing
For a long time, reading and writing were taught as two separate subjects. In some classrooms, they still are. And although they are generally considered different skill sets, one cannot exist without the other. After all, everything we read has an author, right? Research shows that when we teach reading and writing interdependently, students’ skills […]
Brainstorming for Writing
For some students, coming up with ideas for writing feels impossible. And it can be just as challenging to teach the process effectively. For students who don’t know how to read, there are explicit strategies that they can work on repeatedly. With practice, these strategies will help them build their decoding and comprehension skills. But […]
Amazing Resources to Support Reading and Writing
There are endless websites, apps, and programs out there for helping students learn to read, develop comprehension skills, and improve their grammar and the structure of their compositions. Because of that, it can be hard to sort through the noise to find a solution that works – a resource that you can consistently use with a given age […]
The Link Between Reading and Writing
As students develop and hone their writing skills, they become more competent readers. Their ability to think critically about text and interact with it in rich and meaningful ways improves. The opposite is also true. The more we read, the better our writing becomes. That’s because the processes of reading and writing are undeniably connected. […]
Taking Quotes out of Context
Learning how to use quotes strategically is a skill that takes students years to master. It can take even longer for students to learn how to keep quotes they find in their original context. This means keeping the original author’s meaning intact, and not manipulating it to meet one’s needs. This type of word manipulation […]
What is Morphology?
Morphology is a branch of linguistics, and refers to the study of the structure of words. Along with many other languages, English words are made up of letters, sounds, syllables, root words, and affixes. One letter can make a significant difference not only in the meaning of a word, but in its pronunciation. When children […]
What is the Writing Rope?
You’ve likely heard all of the buzz around Hollis Scarborough’s famous “reading rope.” The visual compares the processes involved in successful reading to the strands in a rope. Because reading and writing are so intertwined, it would make sense that in addition to a reading rope, there would be a writing rope, too. The reading […]
Vocabulary Fundamentals
Vocabulary sometimes gets a bad rap—and with good reason. Historically, students learned vocabulary by memorizing the spelling and definitions of long lists of words. Their teacher would quiz them on it, then they would usually never use those words again. But when a teacher does it right, vocabulary instruction can be an instrumental part of […]
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