All Blog Posts (201)

This month's lesson -- THEMED RESTAURANT MENUS -- can be used for creative writing that impacts both narrative or expository writing skills and processes.

To access all past monthly lessons you…

January's Writing Lesson--First-Class School Bus Seats--is a descriptive and creative writing lesson that is ready for you to adapt and use with your own students!

Here's a direct link to the lesson:  …

I've been developing a new type of acrostic-based writing.  This month's lesson is Vocabulary-Inspired Acrostic Riddles.  

If you're using our Vocabulary Workshop materials, this month's lesson is a revision to…

For November 2018, we invented a new type of poetry: Prepositional Phrase Poetry.

They're simple.  They teach both grammar and descriptive writing.  And the writing they inspired from my students was pretty amazing.  

Enjoy the…

We posted it!  Expository Monster Sketches!  This is one that your kids will love doing in the week(s) before Halloween.  Expository writing and creativity come together for this…

Frog Hooks--this month's lesson--is an adaptation of Dena's "Little Red Hiding Hooks," and her new version explores expository over narrative writing.

Enjoy!

--Corbett & Dena Harrison (…

Launching a Sacred Writing Routine is the topic of our August lesson.  If you haven't tried SWT with your own students, you should consider it, as it develops 1) fluency, 2) stamina, 3) and creativity in your young writers. It is also essential if you…

Launching a Vocabulary Workshop is our lesson of the month for July.  It shares an entire month's worth of mini-lessons and resources that I use to help each student understand his/her role and responsibility for the Vocabulary Workshop they will be…

Our brand new The Movie Got It Wrong interactive notebook page assignment is ready to go!  A great way to have…

Text Battles! -- our latest Interactive Non-fiction Notebook/writing assignment has been posted at our website.  It's free to use, and it's designed to help your students…

What's in Your Bucket -- our latest Interactive Non-fiction Notebook writing task has been posted.  This lesson focuses on teaching your students to summarize and paraphrase research before they use the information in more formal types of…

And we have a writing lesson ready to go at Always Write!  Click here or on the book cover to access our free…

Our February Lesson of the Month focuses on Non-Linguistic Representations as a catalyst for creating an interactive element on a notebook page in class.  Your students will have fun with…

This month's lesson -- Report with Technology -- will serve as part one of a six-part series we'll publish this spring on using Interactive Non-Fiction Notebooks with your…

This month's lesson focuses on creating a special type of Tribute Page to a person, place, or thing in one's writer's notebook.  The lesson comes with an overview, samples, handouts, mentor text suggestions, and ideas for adaptation.  Click the picture of the…

November marks our 11th straight month of sharing writer's notebook strategies that encourage contagious creativity and develop new types of voice to your community of writers. November's Lesson -- Edge Postcards -- is now posted at the …

Our Language Comics lesson shows students four different ways to combine language cleverness with visual originality in a student's writer's notebooks.  Enjoy!

--Corbett & Dena…

September's Lesson of the Month --  Sensational News!  --  teaches basic journalism writing techniques so that students can create real, fictional, or tabloid-like newspaper articles in their writer's notebooks!

Enjoy!

--Corbett…

Visit Always Write to download a complementary copy of the special slide we made for tomorrow!

August's Lesson of the Month has been posted.  It's called Dialogue BAUBLES, and it focuses on MANY ways to use dialogue bubbles and memes as a means to generate personal interest in one's own writer's notebook.

Thanks for sharing adaptations back with us, if any occur to…