All Blog Posts (190)

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…

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…