Tag: education
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My Favorite Pre-Break Lesson
Yesterday I got the question for the first time: We aren’t going to do anything today, are we? The question gave me a good laugh. It was Tuesday morning and the break the student referenced as a reason to kick back and do nothing didn’t start until Friday afternoon. Even still, I think the question…
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Better, Faster Feedback Part 1: Feedback Literacy Revisited
One of the funny things about writing educational books is that, once published, each book stays a snapshot in time. The same is not true for the author though; the author continues to experiment and evolve, to try new things and grow in philosophy and practice. That is why over the next few weeks I…
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Let’s Talk About How to Give Better, Faster Feedback
I was at the National Council of Teachers of English conference* a couple weeks ago, and as I walked through the showroom I heard the pitch from edu-AI companies, over and over and over again: “Save time by providing instant feedback to your students.” As a full-time teacher with nearly 150 students, it isn’t too…
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All That Glitters Is Not Good Teaching
Keys to Engaging Lesson Design and a New Lesson Plan Drop! In their wonderful book 100% Engagement, Susan Barber and Brian Sztabnik begin by saying the following: There is a myth that says engagement is the purview of young, fun, and modern teachers. They draw students in by building rapport around fashion, music, or sports.…
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Teaching the Why: A Quick, Effective Strategy for Increasing Student Engagement
I have a rule that I tell students on the first week: If you don’t know why we are studying something, why we are studying something in the way we are, or why I’m assessing you in a certain way, please ask. I will always answer, and I will never answer (as I sometimes did…
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More Than a Name: Four Quick Tools to Increase Student Engagement by Helping Them to Feel Seen
My topic for the last few posts, Gen AI, may be the large, loud, and ostentatious elephant sitting in the corner of teachers’ rooms across the world right now, but I’ve found that many teachers’ rooms also have a second elephant these days, equally large but a bit more subtle: Student engagement, or more accurately…
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How I Plan to Cut Down on Student AI Misuse This Year
During our first departmental meeting of the year, a teacher offhandedly bemoaned the new paywall for Draftback, a tool for investigating the revision histories of students suspected of using AI. Another teacher responded by bringing up a new tool she is using instead for tracking revision history, and it was like a record scratched to…
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AI Post #1: One Way I Plan to Use AI to Improve My Writing Instruction This Year
I remember sitting down to read a student paper last year and instantly feeling the beginnings of that whispered question that many teachers have come to know so well: Hmm, I wonder if this was written by AI? Sadly, this was not a novel experience for me, but what made this experience different was that…
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Year 10 of the Re-Write Newsletter Begins and Exciting News!
A few weeks back I was scrolling through photos, and I stumbled upon a photo I’d long forgotten. It was from a class trip late in 2019, and in it my entire advisory class is piled together on a small merry-go-round—an action that, while normal at the time, would have been inconceivable by the socially-distanced…
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Thoughts on Ending the Year Strong
Three weeks ago I discussed how conclusions are often an afterthought in writing instruction. The unwritten rule I’ve observed—and often followed—is that the conclusion is a sort of cherry on top of an essay sundae. Like with the cherry, instruction concerning conclusions is a nice touch if you happen to have the time and space,…
Matthew M. Johnson 