07 April

The Vertical Vision: Hitting on All Cylinders (PART IV OF IV – Writing)

Posted by Dr. Deborah E. Louis
Categories Blog, Commentary, Concrete Details, Core Literature, Embedding Quotations, Grammar, JSWP Methodology, Modes, Ratios, The Chunk, Vocabulary

Dear Teachers, Today is the fourth blog in a four-part series called “Hitting on All-Cylinders” (HOAC). The series began with one of my colleagues asking me how to get everything done in a given year. In other words, her Scope and Sequence (S&S) …

08 May

“There Are Years That Ask Questions and Years That Answer”: How to Improve Commentary Through the WOW Sheets

Posted by Dr. Deborah E. Louis
Categories AP®/IB, Blog, Commentary, JSWP Advanced, Style, Tone
Comments 0 comment

Dear Dr. D’, The confusion I’m having now that you might be able to help me with has to do with how deep to have [my students] go on the WOW sheet in the bubbles. Some students seem to write …

13 March

The “What” and the “Why” of Writing

Posted by Dr. Deborah E. Louis
Categories Blog, Commentary, Concrete Details, Formulaic Writing, Ratios
Comments 0 comment

Dear Dr. Louis, I recently gave my students the following prompt: “Write an essay explaining why hard work is necessary to be successful.” My District Coordinator told me that [the students’ responses] were not showing the “hard work” required in the …

29 March

Teaching Expository/Informational Writing: Summarizing and Analyzing Non-Fiction Text, including the Research Paper

Posted by Deborah Louis
Categories Commentary, Concrete Details, Expository, JSWP Methodology, Planning and Preparation, Ratios, The Chunk, Workshop Descriptions
Comments 0 comment

This workshop is two days, 5 hours each day (not including lunch). Day 1 is a prerequisite to Day 2. The morning of Day 1 covers part of the same content as Teaching the Paragraph in ELA and Content-Area Classes; …