Empower Students Now

Have you ever gone through a paradigm shift before? A paradigm is a set of patterns. Stephen Covey, author of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, says paradigms are just beliefs. But, what if those patterns, beliefs or paradigms shift? What if the beliefs you've held for so long begin to change? In this episode I discuss 5 paradigm shifts I've had recently when it comes to best teaching...

Are you often feeling overwhelmed with all you have to do? Maybe you feel scattered and aren’t sure what to focus your energy on. Mindfulness in your personal and professional life can most definitely help alleviate these anxieties. In this blog post I’ll share ten ways you can begin to bring more mindfulness into both your personal and professional life. You’ll learn what mindfulness is and how y...

Have you ever felt you weren’t supporting a group of students with writing? Maybe these students had IEPs, maybe they didn’t, maybe they were the students who turned in writing that was all over the place, spelling mistakes, run-on sentences, no paragraphs...you know what I’m talking about. And you just didn’t know how to support these students or even where to start!?!You are not alone. I’ve felt...

https://amandawritenow.com/15-ways-to-engage-students-in-meaningful-discussions-in-person-and-online/There are so many discussion tech tools available to teachers these days! Parlay, Jamboard, Back Channel, Voxer and even Google Slides and Docs can be used to facilitate discussions among students virtually. But, what always gets me thinking is…these tools are great, but how do we get students to a...

Every human who wants to better themselves goes through this cycle...They set a goal or a resolution and may even accomplish the goal but eventually things seem to situate themselves back to the way they were before. This can be such a frustrating experience! It’s so frustrating in fact that I have read hundreds of books about goal setting, habit formation and the brain to solve this annoying prob...

Our classrooms are microcosms of the society we live in. The sad reality (that many have a hard time admitting) is race matters in our society and it matters in our classrooms. A person’s race impacts so many aspects of their day to day experiences. When we ignore this fact or pretend to be colorblind, we are perpetuating the problems of stereotyping, prejudice and systemic racism. The majority of...

https://amandawritenow.com/how-to-quit-grading-so-much/So, you want to know how to quit grading so much? Or maybe you just want your grading process to be more systematic and meaningful for students. Well, listening to this episode is the first step to making both of these things happen! My mission is to make teachers’ lives easier. I resigned from teaching because of COVID-19. After making this h...

Students in our class need to feel that their unique voices, opinions, and experiences matter. In this article, you’ll get inspiration and ideas for distance learning community building activities for middle school and high school students.https://amandawritenow.com/distance-learning-community-building-activities-for-middle-and-high-school/

https://amandawritenow.com/how-to-teach-reading-and-writing-workshop-from-a-distance/Many teachers are wondering, can I still teach reading and writing workshop from a distance? The quick answer is... absolutely! Whether you want to admit it or not, the current state of the world requires we simplify what we normally do. This is exactly why we should continue doing workshop...I've been arguin...

This week Amanda discusses where she has been and shares major life events that have occurred since the last podcast. This episode will dive into some heavier topics such as the unexpected loss of a friend, Black Lives Matter protests, and not being able to see students in the same capacity. Join Amanda in the conversation, how have recent events shaped your life moving forward? Liz's Go Fund...

In this episode, I delve into my very best tips to manage book clubs in a meaningful way so that teachers don't have to stress during a unit like this. You might be shocked at some of my methods!

Does this sound like you? You learn a new idea, a new way of teaching, a new strategy and you're all in. You become so convinced THIS is the way to go about things from now on! But, this energy to change everything all at once eventually wears off and you're left with a lot of overwhelming feelings. We have a lot in common if this sounds like you. I love trying new things but sometimes t...

I cut my grading time by over 10 hours and you can too! In this podcast, learn exactly what I did to cut my grading time tremendously! This episode is brought to you by Workshop Teacher Membership: https://www.workshopteacherschool.com/workshop-teacher-membership-sign%20up-page

Teachers are SUPER busy during the school year and need to be efficient when planning new writing units. It is absolutely necessary to find ways to save time. You are probably missing one huge step before you even begin planning your lessons to save time. Find out the ONE thing you need to start doing in order to save time when planning but more importantly, to teach students what they actually ne...

We all have resistant writers in our classrooms. This is a fact of teaching life. In the video below learn 13 different ways that you can help resistant writers become much more motivated. Not all of these ways will work. You need to try different combinations with different students until you’ve found the key to unlock your students’ motivation! Here are more resources related to this topic:https...

I've followed and quit so many programs in my life! Diets, work out routines, parenting guides, teaching curriculum. Programs are everywhere we turn. Dictionary.com defines "program" as: a plan of action to accomplish a specified end. In this blog post I want to focus on that term "end".All programs must come to an end. Quitting programs is the natural progression of growt...

I get a lot of emails every week asking a wide range of questions. One question that seems to come up over and over again is, what does workshop actually look like in a secondary classroom? Here’s the simple answer: workshop can look however you want it to look. You could choose to do workshop every day, once a week, for a month or for six months and then quit! It’s really up to you! It can look h...

I let students socialize the first day of school. Read on to find out why…After reading this important article by Write On with Miss G (which I highly recommend you read), I thought back to my first day of school, last year. https://writeonwithmissg.com/Here’s what’s written in my plan book 8/14/2017: introduce self, read My Name by Sandra Cisneros, go over routines/procedures and record names. Th...

Ever spend hours looking for YouTube videos to teach writing? Youtube channels for writing teachers are hard to find! YouTube is an incredible resource bank for writing teachers…but sometimes it can be annoying to sift through all the junk to get to the good stuff. Believe me, this post took hours and hours of sifting! I’ve separated out the channels based on if they are best to show students (stu...

There are so many things we need to accomplish the first week of school. We need to get to the content but we also need to teach students about how our class will run and build relationships and community too. Now you may feel a bit overwhelmed at this point. Not to worry…in this episode you’ll find the tools you need to do all of these things in one class period and with one mini lesson! You will...

Teaching writing is tough and differentiating writing instruction is tougher! Student writers have so many varying needs. What do you do when Steven can crank out a well organized, thoughtful literary essay in twenty minutes and John can barely write a paragraph? What do you do when Cindy says she is confused about how to develop a claim and Sarah says she needs help organizing her essay? This sit...

Most writing workshop teachers know what a mentor text is (examples of writing in books, short stories, articles, poems etc.). But, what about how to use a mentor text? When I scoured the internet for the answer to this pressing question I found very little. Thus...this post. I came up with a five step process for using any mentor text. I hope it inspires you to try the process yourself! https://a...

Every writing unit should start with mentor texts. Students need many examples of the type of writing we expect them to do. In this article, I’ve compiled my favorite middle school mentor texts. Each mentor text includes grade levels, a summary of the text and skills you could teach. https://amandawritenow.com/mentor-texts-for-middle-school/

Teaching writing is so hard! There are many reasons why, but one of the main reasons is distracting student behavior! With a plan in place, your ability to handle the distracting student behavior can improve. No matter what though, it is important to realize that students are people who don’t necessarily value what you, the teacher, values. For most students, writing is just not a priority. So, it...

Kids love to talk to each other, they are human and humans are social! In a classroom of thirty plus secondary students how can we balance allowing that innate need to talk with maintaining a quiet, productive atmosphere? The answer: noise levels. https://amandawritenow.com/noise-levels-in-the-workshop-classroom/