Can you believe there’s a day named Pluto Demoted Day? It is August 24, when in 2006, Pluto was demoted from a planet to a dwarf planet.
Recent photos of Pluto by NASA’s spacecraft New Horizons have been fascinating. Here’s one of them, with a lighter shape informally named “the heart”: (more…)
Are you encountering resistance when you ask your students to write?
Is there crying involved?
It is intimidating for students to stare down a blank piece of paper or an empty computer screen. Middle and high school students have revealed to me why they are negative about writing. Here’s what they have to say: (more…)
There are twelve months in a year. How many months have you lived through?
By now, anywhere from 120 to 168 months.
January is named after the Roman god Janus. He had two faces and could look forward and backward.
March is named after the god Mars. July is named for the famous emperor Julius Caesar. September, October, November, and December are derived from the Latin numbers for seven, eight, nine, and ten.
I think it’s time to (more…)
It was a common practice long ago that travelers in inns slept in the same bed, even if they didn’t know one another. This seems strange to us and, yes, a little creepy now.
Here is a passage from Moby-Dick by Herman Melville in which the narrator Ishmael is telling us about how he decided not to sleep in the same bed with a harpooneer because Ishmael didn’t know how dirty the guy’s clothes would be (“his linen or woolen”) or even if he could trust him: (more…)
I have a secret to tell you.
I’m not really sure I should. After all, it feels a little like a chef revealing the secret ingredient to a closely guarded family recipe, but I’m going to share it with you anyway.
As you may know, I create many writing prompts and wrote the daily writing prompts for SchoolhouseTeachers.com for over two years. That’s a lot of writing and a lot of prompts.
Where do I get my ideas? Here’s my secret: (more…)
Writing tools for all ages!
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