Author: Matt
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Targeted Response: How To Give More Meaningful Feedback Without Staying Up All Night
As someone who focuses on writing instruction, the question I am asked most often is probably What are the most important things I can do to improve student writing? I used to give a far more complex answer, full of discussion of thoughtful models and carefully targeted reflection, providing lots of autonomy, building relationships through…
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Why We Should Engage in Less Kill-And-Drill and More Play Around Standardized Testing Time
Spring in Michigan means many things. Piles of snow get traded for buckets of rain, the sound of birds suddenly comes from every window, the sun leaves the horizon it has barely perched on all winter to reclaim its space high in the sky, and, if one teaches mainly juniors (as I do), there is…
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Why You Should Probably Be Doing More Choice Writing (And How to Make It Happen)
Whether it is the Nerdy Book Club, whose book lists and reviews are essential resources for the busy teacher to keep up with the newest books; Penny Kittle’s Book Love Foundation, which funds class libraries across the country (you should seriously consider this if you want to expand your library); or Donalyn Miller, The Book Whisperer herself, choice reading…
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The Best Way to Encourage Reluctant Writers
In 2009, Chris Hulleman of The University of Virginia and the Motivate Lab ran a study in which reluctant and developing ninth-graders were put into two groups in their science classes. One group (the control) supplemented their work in class with a 1-2 paragraph response each month that summarized what they’d learned while the other…
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Four Ways to Build Relationships with Students Through Their Writing
In recent years, research has begun to support what good teachers have known all along: Strong student/teacher relationships generally lead to strong learning outcomes. For example, John Hattie in Visible Learning argues that establishing a positive teacher/student relationship is one of the most impactful things a teacher can do to speed student learning. His effect…
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How to Make Writing Less Scary for Students
Writing is scary for pretty much everyone. For example, I as I write this sentence, I can’t help but worry that… The bulk of our students likely face these same fears, and a great many of them also likely face other fears, ranging from worries that they don’t measure up to their classmates, to anxiety…
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Want to Significantly Improve Your Feedback to Students? Stop Giving It in Isolation
The lecture long dominated the classroom. The concept behind it was simple. Teachers have information and students don’t. So the teachers give information to the students, who have the choice to absorb the information or not. These days we understand that there are often better approaches than to just throw information at students. We know…
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Why We Should Separate Grades and Feedback
Grading and feedback are often conflated. For nearly a decade I used the term “grading” as a synonym for nearly any type of response to writing without so much as flinching, but I know now that they are actually very different and in some ways opposing activities. Grades are where we rank students by placing…
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Why We Should Let Students In On Our Pedagogy
This last semester I unwittingly began what has turned out to be a rather surprising pedagogical experiment. In short, over my career I have generally tried to keep my teaching and my writing about teaching lives separate. The reasoning behind this was pretty simple. I assumed that my students would have little interest in learning…
Matthew M. Johnson 