And do you ever notice that every time an essay is assigned, students look at you as if they are deer caught in headlights? It’s as if they’ve never written an essay before. It’s their first time and they are so utterly lost and confused that they don’t even know where to begin the process.
There is a way you can change this!
The bane of the ELA teacher’s existence is two-fold: first, most teachers do not witness enough growth and maturation in their student writers no matter how many comments they manage to squeeze into the margins of their papers; and secondly, the sheer volume of essays you “need” to grade is soul crushing.
But get this … there’s one solution to address both of these issues – templates.
Current research overwhelmingly suggests that students need the scaffolds of workable and meaningful templates in order to flourish as writers.
Over the course of my twenty-year career, I have developed and honed a few templates to guarantee that students get anchored in a thesis in their introductory paragraphs – the declarative and inverted methods.
And as far as the body paragraphs go, students can employ the syllogistic method every single time they write.
All too often, students simply do not know how to think on paper.
Some great ideas are floating around in their heads, but they are stymied when it comes time to compose an essay.
This should not be happening, and it won’t if you provide students with my templates that can be used across the expository modes.
That’s the thing – no matter the expository mode – whether it’s literary analysis, rhetorical analysis, synthesis, argument, persuasion, or research – students can construct their essays with my three templates.
The process of getting thoughts down on paper is completely demystified once you equip students with an accessible set of templates.
Whether you are teaching struggling and emerging 9th graders or AP powerhouses, these templates are a good fit.
While you provide students with my templates, I will teach you how to best implement them through the Teach It “Write” 5-Week Mastermind.
The Teach It “Write” Program will teach teachers how to take a “Bob Ross” approach to the teaching of composition – a writing workshop method that is based on extensive teacher modeling.
All too often, the source of our frustrations comes from the fact that there is a fundamentally seismic difference between the “assigning” of writing and the direct “teaching” of it.
The Teach It “Write” 5-Week Mastermind will set you up to become a phenomenal teacher of composition who is actually teaching versus merely assigning.
Let’s consider what this looks like by way of the following example …
Imagine that Bob Ross comes onto the screen and says – “Hello happy little people! Today we are going to paint a beautiful New England autumnal landscape with beautiful fall foliage. And in the center of our canvas, we are going to include a New England wood-covered bridge going over a little babbling brook.”
What if we taught composition like Bob Ross teaches composition?
That’s right – you’d be at the proverbial canvas “painting” with your students as they worked their way through an essay.
That’s what the teaching of writing looks like.
In the Teach It “Write” Mastermind, this paradigm of composition instruction will be at the core of your training
But let’s also talk about that endless heap of essays begging to be graded.
Over the span of my twenty years in the classroom, I have developed forty alternatives to traditional grading that will be showcased over the course of our five weeks together.
Grading essays within the traditional paradigm is one of the most futile and time-wasting things that we do. Not only is it ineffective in helping students develop as writers, but it consumes your evenings and weekends needlessly. Learning these forty alternative methods are a guaranteed way for you to reclaim your personal time.
The Teach It “Write” Mastermind is a five-week program. We meet every Sunday night at 7 p.m. EST live in Zoom. During our time together, you will learn how to implement my compositional templates into your instructional practices while also becoming familiar with the 40 alternatives to traditional grading. Further, you will have ample time to construct your own writing workshops with the help of a collaborative team and my guidance.
As an ELA teacher, your life feels like you spend all your time on lesson planning. Rest easy – there is also the Mastermind Library which contains over 150 writing workshop videos and editable PowerPoints ready made for your classroom instruction. Of these workshops, 65 of them contain the most commonly taught novels and plays in the American high school curriculum.
There are also workshops for AP Language and AP Literature test prep. The workshops date back to the 2015 exams and proceed to the most recent year. Each video and PowerPoint walk you and your students through the process of constructing individual essays with my templates.
So, let’s say that you are teaching Hamlet.
As far as the essay writing portion of the unit, everything is taken care of.
The video walks your students through the process of writing the essay while incorporating my templates.
But if you wish to run the writing workshop yourself, there is an editable PowerPoint that contains my exemplars and models, but you can also include your samples if you choose.
This is true of all 165 writing workshops – workshops that include material for each of the expository modes and literary genres.
Invest in your professional development and in the success of your student writers.