Latest Lesson Plans
Superheroic Delight Songs: A Poetry-Inspired Mural at Lea Elementary in West Philly
I started this “poetry-mural” initiative back in the spring of 2017 while working as a writer-in-residence at PS 51 in…
Jayne Cortez and The Joyful Anti-Ode
Jayne Cortez's poem "These New York City Pigeons" inspires student poems in this lesson plan from Joanna Fuhrman.
The Moment When…
In this lesson plan, photographs are used to explore point of view in fiction writing.
Writing a contrapuntal poem: tools gathered from even-odd project elevators
Poet and teaching artist Trace DePass riffs on the contrapuntal as a poetic form and a way of looking at…
The Moment When…
In this lesson plan, photographs are used to explore point of view in fiction writing.
QuaranTeen
In the summers of 2020 and 2021, Teachers & Writers Collaborative offered a poetry writing workshop to teachers with the goal of providing them with an immersive creative experience while modeling lessons they could take into their ELA classrooms. The QuaranTeen video was a project of one of the participants in the 2020 workshop. By…
A Hunger for Stories: An Interview with Quiara Alegría Hudes
by Carla Ching The following article was originally published in print by Teachers & Writers Magazine, Spring 2010 . Quiara Alegría Hudes is an award-winning author of plays, musicals, screenplays, and other literary works; in her work, she combines intellectual curiosity with a humanistic vision to tell new American stories. She won the Tony Award…
Embracing Silliness: 826NYC’s Transition to Online Learning
by Azka Anwar These new directions, born of a sudden plunge into uncertainty, are now something the organization plans to retain as the world slowly reopens. At the start of the pandemic, “we just didn’t know who was experiencing loss and who was experiencing stress,” says Joshua. “We just wanted to make sure that whatever…
Writing a contrapuntal poem: tools gathered from even-odd project elevators
Poet and teaching artist Trace DePass riffs on the contrapuntal as a poetic form and a way of looking at the world.
The Backward Prompt: Using Great First Lines from Literature to Invent Your Own Way Forward
The following article was originally published in the lesson plan archive. by Kim Stafford As Donald Graves once said, if you want students to write literature, read them beautiful things and simply ask them to write. They will make the connections and write under the spell of what they have heard. Once upon a time,…
The Stories We Save May Include Our Own
Content warning: this article contains references to suicide, death and depression. An earlier version of this essay originally appeared in Iron City Magazine. photo credit for the featured image: Alvin Shim by Matt Malyon I. BirdwatchingLate night on Watson Bridge—a span across the Skagit River in Northern Washington—a trumpeter swan flies into a light pole….
T&W CHATSPACE: An Interview with Glynn Pogue
T&W CHATSPACE with MATTMATT RAYBEAM and guest Glynn Pogue Where can teachers discuss the ins-and-outs of their daily classroom adventures? Do you know a watercooler surrounded by teachers that also write? How about some place where teacher-writers can share tactics without tones hushed considering student ears? T&W ChatSpace is for us. This discussion series is…
My Self-portrait / My Secret Self-portrait
lesson by Sheila Maldonado as told to Azka Anwar There are some lessons that I rely on as a teacher for their success with students at many different levels, usually with minimal adaptation required. The lesson below is one of them; students take to the prompt quickly and with little resistance, possibly because the prompt…
The Parent Poem Project: Using Photographs to Take a Closer Look at Our Parents and Ourselves
By Vince Puzick One of my favorite writing exercises is to have students create poems inspired by photographs. I find that working with these images allows them to observe a moment in time, focusing on small details while also exploring the broader context of the photo, extending and speculating beyond what the camera captures. For…