Month: January 2020
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Why Poetry Should Be a Daily Part of All Writing Classrooms
As a middle and high schooler, I felt that poetry was something akin to a doily: a frilly, ornamental, and somewhat useless thing that was cool for people who were into that kind of thing (aka, not me). Whenever a teacher said it was time for poetry, I sighed internally, held my nose, and got…
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How to Make Student Goal Setting Actually Work
This post is adapted from my upcoming book Flash Feedback: Responding to Student Writing Better and Faster – Without Burning Out from Corwin Literacy. I’ve discussed the power of student goal setting before—how having students set regular writing goals comes in at or near the top of a number of meta-studies focused on effective teaching…
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Using the Fresh Start Effect to Improve Student Motivation, Habits, and Beliefs
I was lucky enough to recently read an advance copy of Troy Hicks and Andy Schoenborn’s upcoming book, Creating Confident Writers, and while I will undoubtedly be posting about it again once it comes out (it is wonderfully smart and practical), they reference a concept that I’d somehow never heard before that felt both timely…
Matthew M. Johnson 