365-Day Writing Challenge–A Year of Writing Prompts

Looking for a way to keep your creativity flowing every day of the year?

TAKE THE 365-DAY WRITING CHALLENGE

With 365 writing prompts, one for each day of the year, you’ll never be short on inspiration. Use this book to jumpstart your writing routine, break through writer’s block, or simply explore new ideas, genres, settings, and characters. With a year’s worth of prompts at your fingertips, you’ll be well on your way to becoming a more prolific and confident writer.

365 DAYS, 365 WRITING PROMPTS

 Are you ready to take the challenge?

Get ready to explore new ideas and develop your writing skills with this amazing resource.

Start your writing journey today and see where these prompts take you!

Available at Amazon.

Using Film As Text in College-Level Courses

If a student has difficulty meeting some of the expectations for a course, it doesn’t mean they cannot meet any of the other expectations. In this case, as a teacher, your goal is to pivot to differentiate your instruction while figuring out how else you might get students to demonstrate achievement of as many of the remaining expectations as they can.

The goal of this book is to illustrate methods of differentiated instruction, demonstrating how teachers might pivot their practice and change their approaches to allow their students to shine.

Longtime teacher Elise Abram’s eureka moment happened while teaching grade 11 college-level students when she noticed that students had difficulty recalling and analyzing fiction when presented with the text but not after watching the film version of the text. Using the concept of differentiated instruction (changing the efforts of the teacher to accommodate the students in front of them), Abram switched out film versions of texts for the remainder of the semester and saw a marked improvement in student performance.

The purpose of this book is to share this unit with you should you ever find yourself in a similar situation. Inside, you will find:

• Organizers you can photocopy and use in your practice.
• How to use choice boards to differentiate your assignments.
• Tips for creating groups, techniques, and student seating during collaborative activities
• Suggestions for writing effective paragraphs and summaries.
• How to get students to make meaningful text-to-world connections.
• Ways for students to discuss theme in a text no matter the format.
• Checklist rubrics and other ways to evaluate student work, be it diagnostic, formative, or summative

Whether you use this book as a unit plan or break it up into a series of individual lessons you can employ in your practice, this book is sure to give you a better understanding of how college-level students work and learn.

Available at Amazon and Teachers Pay Teachers.

Composing Five-Paragraph Essays: A Comprehensive Guide to Writing Persuasive Essays

Author Elise Abram is a twenty-five-year seasoned professional when it comes to teaching English language arts and writing. This book is a compilation of her techniques and lessons that are sure to help you write a perfectly structured persuasive essay.

Whether you are a high school student, postsecondary student, new teacher, or homeschooling teacher, Writing Five-Paragraph Essays: A Comprehensive Guide to Writing Persuasive Essays is your definitive guide to planning, researching, outlining, writing, and editing a five-paragraph essay. Each lesson includes a number of organizers, templates, exemplars, and self-assessment checklists to help readers assess their progress as they complete the assigned tasks, building upon tasks in previous chapters as they write a five-paragraph essay on a topic of their choosing.

• Model writing after an abundance of mentor texts and exemplars
• Complete practice tasks to scaffold student learning
• Learn the ins and outs of critical inquiry as it relates to essay planning
• Read about the secrets of outlining that will help students write their essays with ease
• Benefit from tips and tricks from a seasoned English teacher
• Cite references and create works cited lists to avoid accusations of plagiarism
• Use checklist rubrics to evaluate and self-edit student work

Used as a workbook or series of lesson plans, this book is sure to help you and/or your students write like pros using tried and true writing techniques.

Available at Amazon and Teachers Pay Teachers.

The Shape of Stories: A Comprehensive Guide for Fiction Writers

In the magnum opus of her teaching career, seasoned English teachers , author, editor, and publisher Elise Abram curates a collection of lesson plans and techniques related to the craft of writing.

Abram’s method uses mentor texts to demonstrate elements of the art of storytelling, including crafting believable characters, gripping plots, and finding your author’s voice. Each lesson includes a number of writing exercises, exemplars, and self-assessment checklists to help you assess your progress as you complete the assigned tasks, building upon previous lessons as you hone your writing chaps. 

• Use mentor texts to read like a writer
• Practice showing and not telling
• Construct believable characters
• Pen plots that keep the reader turning pages
• Experiment with different points of view
• Blog and journal about your experience
• Self-edit your work

Learn about the elements of storytelling from past and present masters of fiction as you study their techniques and apply what you learn to your own writing. Discover your writing style as you complete the activities in this course as you learn how to shape stories worthy of publication.

Available at Amazon and Teachers Pay Teachers.

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15 Practical Ideas for Teaching Context in Literature

15 Practical Ideas for Teaching Context in Literature contains 15 creative lesson plans for introducing the context of literature to give students a better understanding of what might have influenced an author when writing. This is no standard author study! Rather, it is a way for students to make text-to-text, text-to-self, and text-to-text connections in a unique way, grounded in critical inquiry. Teaching context in literature is a way to show students that authors are just ordinary people who have found their voices, and it encourages them to do the same, voicing their opinions as they complete a close read of the text.

Available at Amazon and Teachers Pay Teachers. Free sample lesson available at Teachers Pay Teachers.

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22 Practical Ideas: Web 2.0 Teacher’s Toolkit

22 Practical Ideas: Web 2.0 Teacher’s Toolkit contains 22 tried and true ideas and lesson plans for integrating online interactive and creativity tools for high school and middle school. By implementing these ideas as a part of your lesson, teachers will see an uptick in student engagement, interaction, communication, accountability, and most importantly, creativity. Integrating a variety of Web 2.0 apps in the classroom enriches students’ learning experiences and encourages them to be contributors to the Internet, shaping the media that is so ingrained in their day-to-day experiences.

Available at Amazon and Teachers Pay Teachers.