Author: Matt
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One of the Most Powerful, Least-Covered Grammar and Language Topics
In 2007 writing-instruction legends Steve Graham and Dolores Perin did a meta-analysis on a massive scale to get to the bottom of what works when it comes to writing instruction. The result, a report called Writing Next, offered eleven recommendations for better writing instruction that is still considered the gold standard by many. Most of…
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Where My Grammar and Language Lessons Begin: Tools for Emphasis
In my last post I discussed the first of five lessons I’m sharing this spring from my new book Good Grammar: Joyful and Affirming Language Lessons That Work for More Students (due out this summer). The concept I shared, while simple, has been powerful in my classes: I’ve found students learn language lessons (encompassing grammar,…
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Five Lessons I Learned While Writing a Book on Grammar, Language, Mechanics, and Writing Instruction: Part 1
Happy Belated New Year! I’m delighted to announce that I’m properly back to the newsletter, and for those wondering where I’ve been, I spent the fall and early winter finishing up my now-completed manuscript for my third book: Good Grammar: Joyful and Affirming Language Lessons That Work for More Students (due out in July). I…
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Smile Before Winter Break (and Thanksgiving and Halloween)
As a young teacher I was advised by multiple veteran teachers not to smile before Winter Break. The notion was that because I was new (and in my case looked fifteen), I needed to show that I meant business. That my class was business. This advice was nearly universal for new teachers when I came…
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My ChatGPT and Generative AI Policy This Year
Like many teachers, I spent a lot of time this summer thinking about how I would handle AI in my classes. That journey was often an all-seasons-in-a-day experience. I would go from excitement over its possibilities to existential fear concerning AI’s potential implications to concerns about whether allowing students to farm out planning or proofreading…
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A New Year and a New Approach
Today’s post marks the beginning of the seventh year of my Rewrite Newsletter, and over the last couple weeks I’ve found myself reflecting a lot on why I started it in the first place. While I have always been a writer, for much of the first five years of my teaching career, I took a…
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One More Favorite Language Lesson: Repetition and Style
The most important change I have ever made to my grammar and language lessons was one that I originally shared on here a few years ago: Reorganizing grammar and language lessons by what they do, not by what they are. For example, instead of breaking grammar and language into traditional categories like parts of speech,…
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Another Favorite Language Lesson: Parallel Structure
This is the second entry in a series I’m doing on some favorite spring grammar/language lessons. Here is a link to the first one. My grammar and language lessons as a new teacher generally didn’t go well. I would be up at the board diagramming a sentence or coaxing the difference between an adjective or…
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It’s Testing Season: Here are Some Best Practices for Providing Better Language Instruction
In two weeks my Michigan students will be taking the SAT or PSAT as a part of their state testing. Wherever your school is, I would wager that, if it is a k-12 school, you likely have a test on the horizon as well. Further, I would wager again that whatever your test is, a…
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Pausing for Poetry with Brett Vogelsinger
I have talked before about how Brett Vogelsinger’s work with finding ways to bring more poetry in the language arts classroom and use poetry beyond the classic poetry explications or once-or-twice-a-year freewrites has been transformational to my practice. This last week, Vogelsinger’s long-anticipated (at least for me) book Poetry Pauses was released, and I am…
Matthew M. Johnson 