Saturated Space

We write to find out what we think. We read to find out who we are. We teach because we want others to do the same.

[kreinbring65]

What we did under a tree today: empathy, audience, feedback, ideate, define,write, write, write…

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Habit: Writers spend part of each day trying to be a writer. This means writing every day! It means watching the world, noticing it, wondering and the writing about it. #writing #teaching

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Habit: Writers in a community seek feedback and response to their writing. They take risks and feel comfortable sharing their stories and themselves.#teaching #writing

[kreinbring65]

Habit: Writers study the work of others. They borrow techniques and use them to develop a personal way of writing about the world.

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Don't test what you don't value: We value thinking, close reading, and arguments in our English classes--not memorization. This quiz asks students to explicate a passage from To Kill a Mockingbird and to make their thinking visible. This tells a teacher so much more about a student's understanding of the novel that typical reading quizzes.

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The power of the multi-draft read: This 9th grader discovers the twist–and makes her thinking visible with her marginalia– while reading the short story, “The Alchemist.”

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Using Of Mice and Men to teach grammar in context: 9th graders imitate Steinbeck’s style by writing about their bedrooms, starting most sentences with a preposition. Steinbeck does this when describing the bunkhouse at the start of chapter two. Here, a student takes us on a tour of her “bunkhouse.”

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Students voice opinions about the most and least effective methods of advertising. Quick polls and sticky notes are easy ways to include all voices in the classroom.

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Chalk talks get everyone "talking" and thinking about the question, "Are we free?"

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Pics of some cool visible thinking from a fifth grade classroom. Start them early!

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Ninth graders make their thinking visible by close reading articles that thematically connect to Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men."

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Honors ninth graders analyze Gene as a narrator in A Separate Peace by John Knowles. They were prompted with three questions: Do you trust Gene? What does he want? What does he fear?

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Ninth graders research and analyze marketing strategies/methods in advertisements. They make their thinking visible by reviewing their data and determining the most and least effective methods. They also write down the product ad that prompted the strongest impulse to buy. This research will eventually lead to an argument essay. Excuse my horrible handwriting!

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Ninth graders make their thinking visible by performing a "See, Think, Wonder" on the bookmarks they have collected throughout the unit. They make connections among bookmarks to form categories/groups that eventually lead to discovering the central ideas of a text.

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A student’s first few Gatsby close reads, followed by the next few. I thought the first attempts were good, but the latest ones show marked improvement!

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maps of our Harness conversations.

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Publishing Poetry