All Blog Posts (183)

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…

July's new lesson at our website for teachers and writers is called NOTEBOOK POETRY TILES.  It challenges students to find "Found Poems" on our newest product from our website: Poetry Tiles for Writer's Notebooks.

Click the lesson name or this direct link to access this new lesson…

June's new lesson at our website for teachers and writers is called CAMERA PHONE PIX.  It's a new template and a unique way to think about using photos from your electronic device as writing prompts.

Click the lesson name or this direct link to access this new lesson from ALWAYS WRITE: …

May's new lesson at our free-to-use resource website is called HUMAN NATURE HAIKUS.  It's a variation of regular haikus, and it teaches brevity in words as well as observation skills.

Click the lesson name or this direct link to access this new lesson from ALWAYS WRITE: …

I just posted April's writing lesson of the month--Vocabulary Friends, Enemies, and Frenemies--, and once again, it's intended…

March's "Lesson of the Month" is a notebook prompt inspired by Oxymorons.  It's called Oxymorons that lead to Nightmarish…

Establish a Fake Campaign/Election in your writer's notebook is the idea behind this month's lesson.  In 2017, all our lessons aim…

January's lesson of the month-- Fortune Cookie Fortunes --focuses on different ways to use fortune cookie fortunes as a catalyst for writer's…

I'm late in getting this done, but we finally have three top turkeys in our Rhe-Turk-ical Triangle Lesson from Thanksgiving.  Below are the finalists.  You can access larger versions of the images at the online lesson.  

You can also "vote" for your favorite by…

I finally had a chance to publish 2016's Four Metaphor Poem about Writer's Notebooks.  My four poetic metaphors were inspired by four students' metaphors that were sent to our website in September.

Click on the image, or click …

Thanks to all the teachers who submitted entries in our annual Notebook Metaphor Contest this year!  It was tough narrowing it down to four winners, but we did it.  Over October, I will be using these students' entries to inspire another Four-Metaphor Poem about Writer's Notebooks to post at the website.

To make sure these four great metaphors get seen by lots…

This month's writing lesson of the month--WORD ART--is a vocabulary-based writing strategy that is one of my students' weekly options for showing me they can think about tier-2 vocabulary words in new contexts.  

My past students proposed this idea a few years back, and this is the first…

September's Lesson of the Month is called The Worst School Picture Day Ever... and it's inspired by three different mentor texts.

This lesson is 100% adaptable.  You can use just one or two of the mentor texts, or you can have your kids only have two or three things happen to them before…

New for the 2016-17 school year, we establish Mondays as Pun-Days (or Language Fun-Days!).  It's 5-10 minutes to start the week enjoying the language!

At our Teachers Pay Teachers site, we offer a month's worth of teacher-built slides, and then--after they are shown--students are invited to submit their best puns, riddles, and funny language-inspired observations through email so teachers can…

The August Lesson of the Month--Writing Like an Artist Paints--is now posted, and I think you'll enjoy the philosophy and the student samples.

At the top of the lesson, you will find previews of the two new products we are releasing this summer.  Enjoy the free…

In preparation for my visit to Texas in two weeks, I decided it was time to update my "Mentor Text Classification Document," which I give permission to anyone to share among teaching colleagues.  Click here to download just the revised classification document, or if you visit…

You have to have a few lessons that you LOVE to teach in order to love teaching writing.  This month I revised one of my favorite lessons--it's called Transitioning through a Machine--and I invite you to let it become one of the lessons you love to teach...in case…

I was pleased to see how many of…

Amazon is generously giving the Always Write and WritingFix websites $5.00 for every free Audible.com trial that our members launch using…