What would a teacher say about that writing posture? That pencil grip? The other day I read these words in a comment from Amy: “…So many of your suggestions for working with little (pre) writers and readers have wisely echoed in my brain right as I am about to pull the panic trigger and rap [...]

Hiya! Welcome to my remodeled digs! Grab yourself a cup of tea and come snoop around! This here Wonder Farm has been begging for redecorating for a while now. Things have looked pretty much the same since I first hung my header at the top of my home page, more than three years ago. Everything [...]

What do you do when your kid saves his money to buy a month-long subscription to the Lego Universe online game, and wants to talk of nothing else? You go with it. You look through some almanacs together (another recent obsession) and talk about graphs and charts and brainstorm how Lego Universe might lend itself [...]

Mr. T conducts research for a Lego-themed writing project. (Really!) * * * “90% of teens enjoy the writing they do outside of school, a figure that is consistent between boys and girls as well as older and younger teens.” Writing, Technology and Teens, Pew Internet & American Life Project Ninety percent. That’s a pretty [...]

“Today, students are doing an immense amount of writing—they’re blogging; they’re text messaging; they’re e-mailing; they’re updating their status messages, profile information, and live feeds on social networking and other sites; and others are “tweeting”… Perhaps most interesting in the midst of all this writing students are doing is that they don’t often call it ‘writing’. [...]

This makes me happy. I don’t often write about food in this spot. Sometimes in an atwitter post. Mostly, I try to concentrate on learning and creativity–but I love how this poster reminds me that food is part of a basic education. That’s a belief that I hold so deeply that I’m going to have this [...]