The Educator's Notebook

featured articles

TextFX: A Writer/Poet/Rapper’s A.I. Companion
TextFX - 9/7/23

“TextFX is an AI experiment designed to help rappers, writers, and wordsmiths expand their process. It was created in collaboration with Lupe Fiasco, drawing inspiration from the lyrical and linguistic techniques he has developed throughout his career. TextFX consists of 10 tools, each is designed to explore creative possibilities with text and language.”
“The Homework Apocalypse:” The Essay, Reading, And The Problem Set
One Useful Thing - 7/1/23

“Students will cheat with AI. But they also will begin to integrate AI into everything they do, raising new questions for educators. Students will want to understand why they are doing assignments that seem obsolete thanks to AI. They will want to use AI as a learning companion, a co-author, or a teammate. They will want to accomplish more than they did before, and also want answers about what AI means for their future learning paths. Schools will need to decide how to respond to this flood of questions. The challenge of AI in education can feel abstract, so to understand a bit more about what is going to happen, I wanted to examine some common assignment types… There is light at the end of the AI tunnel for educators, but it will require experiments and adjustment. In the meantime, we need to be realistic about how many things are about to change in the near future, and start to plan now for what we will do in response to the Homework Apocalypse. Fall is coming.”
ChatGPT Is An Example Machine For Teachers. This Is Excellent.
Cult of Pedagogy - 2/19/23

“Our goal was to help students learn the underlying principles of kinetic and potential energy. We used ChatGPT to generate a range of different examples of kinetic and potential energy. Kids could sort these examples into categories and then explain their choices. In the screenshots below, the text next to the yellow icon is our prompt, and the text next to the green icon is ChatGPT’s response.”
A.I. Writing Policy Suggests “Coauthorship” With A.I.
Inside Higher Ed - 1/31/23

“In fact, OpenAI expects a collaborative disclaimer, one in which the published content is “attributed” to a human author (or company) at the same time that the “role of AI in formulating the content is clearly disclosed in a way that no reader could possibly miss.” …The company insists that we should not view the content generated by the human-AI interaction as entirely AI or “wholly” human. At the same time OpenAI insists that “it is a human who must take ultimate responsibility for the content being published.””
On ChatGPT: “AI Is The End Of Writing”
The Spectator - 1/10/23

“It’s at this point that the usual essay on ChatGPT points towards something consoling. Something like ‘Ah, but do not despair, humans will always yada yada’. I’m afraid I am not here to offer any such solace. I’ve done writing of all kinds for several decades, from travel journalism to art journalism to political journalism, from literary fiction to youthful memoirs to notorious-letters-to-No-10 to Fifty Shades porn (a pseudonym) to, lately, religious or domestic thrillers. And I have to say: we are screwed. By which I mean: we, the writers. We’re screwed. Writing is over. That’s it. It’s time to pack away your quill, your biro, and your shiny iPad: the computers will soon be here to do it better.”

View remaining articles (43)

Quiz: Did A 4th Grader Write This, Or The New Chatbot?
New York Times - 12/26/22

“Most of us have never seen anything like it outside of science fiction. To better understand what ChatGPT can do, we decided to see if people could tell the difference between the bot’s writing and a child’s. We used real essay prompts from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (the standardized test from the Department of Education, known as the nation’s report card). We asked the bot to produce essays based on those prompts — sometimes with a little coaching, and always telling it to write like a student of the appropriate age. We put what it wrote side by side with sample answers written by real children. We asked some experts on children’s writing to take our variation on the Turing test, live on a call with us. They were a fourth-grade teacher; a professional writing tutor; a Stanford education professor; and Judy Blume, the beloved children’s author. None of them could tell every time whether a child or a bot wrote the essay. See how you do.”
A.I. Machines Can Write Essays. How Do We Teach Writing Now?
Inside Higher Ed - 10/26/22

““The essays that students turn in are about to get a lot better,” Ethan Mollick, associate professor of management at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, tweeted recently. “I just tried Moonbeam and it produced an outline & credible undergraduate essay with just the prompt ‘Legitimation and startups.’ And that is without human intervention, which would help.” In fact, Mollick misspelled the title as “legimation,” and the system corrected the error in the essay.”
Meet The Writers Using A.I. To Help Them Write Their Novels
The Verge - 7/20/22

“She’s a little embarrassed to say she’s become reliant on it. Not that she couldn’t write without it, but she thinks her writing wouldn’t be as rich, and she would certainly be more burnt out. “There’s something different about working with the AI and editing those words, and then coming up with my own and then editing it, that’s much easier. It’s less emotionally taxing. It’s less tiresome; it’s less fatiguing. I need to pay attention much less closely. I don’t get as deeply into the writing as I did before, and yet, I found a balance where I still feel very connected to the story, and I still feel it’s wholly mine.””
“168 Writing Prompts To Spark Discussion And Reflection”
New York Times - 7/13/22

“Each day of the school year we publish a Student Opinion question: an invitation for students to share their own opinions and experiences in response to New York Times stories on the news of the day. Each of these prompts is introduced with an article, interactive feature or video produced by The Times… The prompts are organized into two sections: questions that lend themselves well to persuasive writing, and questions that encourage narrative writing. We have also published a short, visual post highlighting five of the most popular questions we asked this school year.”
26 Astonishing Poems Written By A.I.
New Yorker - 6/21/22

“Dan pressed a button, and in less than a second the computer produced a poem in the style of Philip Larkin that was so much like a Philip Larkin poem, we thought it was a poem by Philip Larkin. We Googled the first line, expecting it to be an existing Philip Larkin poem, but we couldn’t find it on the Internet. It was an original work, composed by the A.I. in less time than it takes a man to sneeze.”
5 Concepts For Helping Develop Better Writers
Inside Higher Ed - 10/22/21

“Much as effective teaching benefits from an understanding of certain principles drawn from cognitive science – for example, those involving active engagement, retrieval and transfer, mental modeling, cognitive load, and metacognition – so writing, too, profits from an understanding of cognitive theory. Here are a few lessons that I draw out of my own engagement with cognitive theory and how these lessons can help us improve student writing at scale.”
"Why Students Should Write In All Subjects”
Edutopia - 7/1/21

“Writing improves learning by consolidating information in long-term memory, researchers explain. Plus, five engaging writing activities to use in all subjects.”
“How To Edit Your Own Writing”
New York Times - 4/7/20

“The secret to good writing is good editing. It’s what separates hastily written, randomly punctuated, incoherent rants from learned polemics and op-eds, and cringe-worthy fan fiction from a critically acclaimed novel. By the time this article is done, I’ll have edited and rewritten each line at least a few times. Here’s how to start editing your own work”
Writing Instruction And The Danger Of Helicopter Teaching
ASCD - 3/1/20

“When students haven't been required to wrestle with difficult writing decisions—and when much of that decision making has been done by the teacher—they lose their sense of agency and their confidence as writers. Bryant and Jillian have ended up frustrated because they've had years of the same kind of writing practice. Their good grades in previous classes represent acts of compliance, not decision making. Suddenly, they have their first understanding of just how unprepared they are.”
“Is Plagiarism Wrong?” - A Provocative Essay by Agnes Collard
The Point - 11/20/19

“Academia has confused a convention with a moral rule, and this confusion is not unmotivated. We academics cannot make much money off the papers and books in which we express our ideas, and ideas cannot be copyrighted, so we have invented a moral law that offers us the “property rights” the legal system denies us.”
More Suggestions For Nurturing A Love Of Reading In Kids
KQED - 11/11/19

“She recommends starting a reading routine with infants, even though it may seem like they aren’t getting much out of books at that age… And there’s no reason this protected time has to stop as children grow older.”
How A Short Writing Intervention Helped Middle School Students Thrive
Time - 8/2/19

“As in a prior study of Wisconsin 6th graders, the 7th graders who participated in the writing exercise had fewer failing grades and better overall GPAs at the end of the school year than their peers who had not participated. The researchers found no changes in attendance or discipline, but did find that students who had participated in the writing test valued “doing well in school” more at the end of the year than their peers.”
McSweeney’s Calls For Stories From Young Immigrants (Any Country)
McSweeney’s - 6/1/19

“What You Need to Know About Me is a new anthology (published by The Hawkins Project, co-founded by Dave Eggers) that highlights the experiences of young people (ages 11-24) who have immigrated from one country to another… Of our contributors, we want to know: How has the experience of migration impacted your life? What have been the gifts and challenges of such a life-changing move? But most of all: What do we need to know about you?”
Plagiarism: Even The Former Editor In Chief Of The New York Times
Rolling Stone - 2/13/19

“In her new book Merchants of Truth, Abramson, the former executive editor of the New York Times, had apparently plagiarized from several sources… The irony was thick. Here was a veteran of the industry, a Harvard journalism lecturer no less, getting facts wrong in a book about “the fight for facts” in contemporary news.”
More On The Science Of Learning To Read
KQED - 1/2/19

"In 2015, before the new training began, more than half of the kindergartners in the district tested below the benchmark score, meaning most of them were heading into first grade at risk of reading failure. At the end of the 2018 school year, after the science-based training, 84 percent of kindergartners met or exceeded the benchmark score. At three schools, it was 100 percent.”
Here Are The Books Colleges Are Assigning To Incoming Freshmen
NPR - 11/22/18

“Every year since 2010, the National Association of Scholars surveys the schools that pick books. This year, throughout 481 colleges and universities, they found schools were more likely to pick new books over classics. 67 percent of common reading books assigned were published after 2011, according to NAS.”
We Teach Argument. Today, Is Teaching Understanding More Important?
EdWeek - 10/1/18

“If we are to survive as a nation, then our students must learn that the goal is not to win an argument. The goal is not to define reality according to the terms of one's beliefs. The goal is to see what is around us and respond wisely.”
A Conversation With John McPhee About Writing
EdSurge - 9/18/18

“An English teacher has the writing component to teach and also literature, and the ratio is kind of up to the teacher. This teacher, to a phenomenal extent, put emphasis on writing. Of course we read things, but I was in her class for three years, and we were assigned most weeks three pieces of writing. Each piece of writing had to be accompanied by a structural outline of some sort. It could be Roman numeral i, ii, iii, it could be doodles, but it had to show that you were thinking about how you were going to put your piece together before you wrote it.”
"Skim Reading Is The New Normal. The Effect On Society Is Profound.”
Guardian - 8/25/18

“Many readers now use an F or Z pattern when reading in which they sample the first line and then word-spot through the rest of the text. When the reading brain skims like this, it reduces time allocated to deep reading processes. In other words, we don’t have time to grasp complexity, to understand another’s feelings, to perceive beauty, and to create thoughts of the reader’s own.”
Five Reasons To Read Aloud To Students (At All Grade Levels)
Hechinger Report - 3/8/18

“The benefits of reading aloud to students have been known for decades. A landmark report called ‘Becoming a Nation of Readers’ identified listening as ‘the single most important activity for building the knowledge required for eventual success in reading.’”
"How To Write A Blog Post” Or Just: How To Write
Rands In Repose - 1/23/18

“Randomly think of a thing. Let it bump around your head a bit. If the bumping gets too loud, start writing the words with the nearest writing device. See how far you get. The more words usually mean a higher degree of personal interest. Stop when it suits you. Wait for time to pass and see if the bumping sound returns. Reread what you’ve written so far and find if it inspires you. Yes? Write as much as you can. No? Stop writing and wait for more bumping.”
Why Teaching Content Is Essential (Via The Mechanics Of Reading)
New York Times - 11/25/17

"Current education practices show that reading comprehension is misunderstood. It’s treated like a general skill that can be applied with equal success to all texts. Rather, comprehension is intimately intertwined with knowledge. That suggests three significant changes in schooling… Third, the systematic building of knowledge must be a priority in curriculum design.”
First Translation Of The Odyssey Into English By A Woman
New York Times - 11/2/17

"I’d never read an “Odyssey” that sounded like this. It had such directness, the lines feeling not as if they were being fed into iambic pentameter because of some strategic decision but because the meter was a natural mode for its speaker.”
“Memorize That Poem!”
New York Times - 8/26/17

"The truth is that memorizing and reciting poetry can be a highly expressive act. And we need not return to the Victorians’ narrow idea of the canon to reclaim poetry as one of the cheapest, most durable tools of moral and emotional education — whether you go in for Virgil, Li Po, Rumi or Gwendolyn Brooks (ideally, all four).”
A Good Look At Writing Instruction: Different Modes For Diff Students
New York Times - 8/2/17

"At every level, students benefit from clear feedback on their writing, and from seeing and trying to imitate what successful writing looks like, the so-called text models. Some of the touchy-feel stuff matters, too. Students with higher confidence in their writing ability perform better. All of this points toward a synthesis of the two approaches. In classrooms where practices like freewriting are used without any focus on transcription or punctuation, “the students who struggled didn’t make any progress,” Dr. Troia, the Michigan State professor, said. But when grammar instruction is divorced from the writing process and from rich ideas in literature or science, it becomes “superficial,” he warned.”
Clear Thinking And Clear Writing: The Purpose Of The Humanities
New York Times - 6/23/17

"Writing well used to be a fundamental principle of the humanities, as essential as the knowledge of mathematics and statistics in the sciences. But writing well isn’t merely a utilitarian skill. It is about developing a rational grace and energy in your conversation with the world around you. No one has found a way to put a dollar sign on this kind of literacy, and I doubt anyone ever will.”
We Need To Be Well Read. (About Journalists, But For Everyone)
Columbia Journalism Review - 6/14/17

“Being well-read is a transcendent achievement similar to training to run 26.2 miles, then showing up for a marathon in New York City and finding 50,000 people there. It is at once superhuman and pedestrian… There are only so many hours in a day, but the most common workaround for devoted readers is surprisingly uninventive. “I have yet to meet a great journalist who is not well and widely read,” Tom Lutz, editor of the Los Angeles Review of Books, told me. “In my life, the only way that happens is if one carries a book at all times, and uses the odd moments life provides to read.””
Shakespeare, Text Analysis, And The End Of Sole Authorship?
Literary Hub - 4/5/17

"The author is sacred, singular, reified. There is something monotheistic about this idea of the single author-creator; there is something of the primacy of the individual one may see in Caspar David Friedrich’s paintings. We write our own work, of course, but writing, and art more broadly, is often collaborative at some level: our all-too-often-unacknowledged editors, our readers who make substantial suggestions, the writers we channel or even borrow from.”
Garrison Keillor Shares How To Write Poetry [Humor-ish]
Washington Post - 3/28/17

“Love is never easy to express… But you can do it. The first step is: Imitate. Google “great love poems” and find one you like a lot and copy and paste it onto a blank page — Burns’s “My love is like a red, red rose” or Stevenson’s “I will make you brooches and toys for your delight” or Yeats’s “Wine comes in at the mouth and love comes in at the eye” — and simply change the nouns, e.g. “My love is like a double bed” or “a trip to town,” “a vision pure,” “a red T-shirt”; “I will make you coffee and serve by candlelight”; “I come in the front door and love comes down from upstairs” — and then go on to plug in new verbs and adverbs, prepositions. It’s like remodeling an old house.”
How Do Different Disciplines Read, Write, And Think?
ASCD - 2/23/17

"The following lists for each of the major content areas, although not comprehensive, can act as starting points through which communities of teachers can begin to think in terms of disciplinary literacy.”
Maybe Knowledge Is More Important Than Skill After All (Via Reading)
ASCD - 2/1/17

"Recent research shows that reading comprehension, deep thinking, and even creativity all rely heavily on prior knowledge. Although you can find a thousand articles claiming that knowledge is essentially irrelevant nowadays—that mere facts are not worth teaching in the age of Google, when anyone can look up anything at any time—in fact, cognitive scientists now mostly believe that this apparently tidy logic is wrong”
We're Finally Getting A Closer Picture Of The Science Of Reading
New York Times - 12/28/16

"How many more studies will it take? We know that readers vote more and volunteer more, and that reading literature deepens empathy. And — as finally, categorically demonstrated in a landmark Yale study last year — that readers live longer. Control for any variable, for income, for ZIP code, for anything you please, and proficient reading still makes all the difference in life.”
Greater Empathy? Literary Fiction Readers Read Emotion Better
Guardian - 8/23/16

"What we are saying is that there are different ways of telling a story, and they have different impacts on the way we perceive social reality. Literary fiction, we say, tends to challenge social categories – the characters are category-resistant … Popular fiction, on the other hand, uses types of characters which help us immediately understand what is going on. That’s how we learn about the social world – how we build our national and cultural identities.”
Analyze and Visualize Rhyme and Assonance (via “Hamilton”)
Wall Street Journal - 6/6/16

"Let's start with the first verse of the musical's opening number. Our algorithm breaks words into their component sounds and then groups similar-sounding syllables into rhyme families, which are color-coded… Now it's your turn. Paste in English lyrics, poetry or text and our algorithm will try to highlight similar-sounding syllables to reveal rhymes and repetitions.”
Meditation On Handwriting In The Age Of the Stylus
Penguin Random House - 7/6/15

"Maybe handwriting is neither an obsolete art nor a fundamentally human mode, now lost; in the symbol of a hybrid digital writing, perhaps there is some useful alchemy left in the way language, the body, and our sense of identity are so intimately intertwined.”
An Ode to Writing
New Yorker - 3/11/15

"Despite every advancement, language remains the defining nexus of our humanity; it is where our knowledge and hope lie. It is the precondition of human tenderness, mightier than the sword but also infinitely more subtle and ultimately more urgent. Remember that writing things down makes them real; that it is nearly impossible to hate anyone whose story you know; and, most of all, that even in our post-postmodern era, writing has a moral purpose.”
Journaling: Good For Your Brain, And For Your Health
Fast Company - 1/29/15

"The practice has very real physical health benefits for the people who do it. According to Dr. James Pennebaker, a psychologist and leading expert in the field of Expressive Writing… journaling strengthens immune cells called T-lymphocytes and has been shown to be associated with drops in depression, anxiety, and increases in positive mood, social engagement, and quality of close relationships.”
How Young Americans Use the Library Today
Pew Research - 9/10/14

“This report pulls together several years of research into the role of libraries in the lives of Americans and their communities with a special focus on Millennials, a key stakeholder group affecting the future of communities, libraries, book publishers and media makers of all kinds, as well as the tone of the broader culture.”
Even the CIA Has a Style Guide
Quartz - 7/8/14

“Good intelligence depends in large measure on clear, concise writing. The information CIA gathers and the analysis it produces mean little if we cannot convey them effectively... This guide is designed to be helpful and convenient, sensible in organization, and logical in content. It contains, among other changes, a revised list of accepted acronyms and new tips on word usage. The world is not static. Nor is the language we employ to assess it.”
A Writer Handwrote Every Email and Tweet For a Week. Lessons?
Seattle Times - 7/5/14

“Every email and every tweet, every text, status update and comment I scribbled on one of our neglected small notebooks, photographed with my phone and shipped off as an image to its intended audience. ... I did it to hack my brain. To make it slow down and notice the flurry of digital mutterings it writes and sends so easily, they barely register as mutterings at all.”
Books at Home = Smarter Kids: Now the Research is Global
Pacific Standard - 5/27/14

“They enhance the academic performance of children from families at all educational and occupation levels.”
Research Finds Screen-Reading Diminishes Comprehension
Washington Post - 4/6/14

"With so much information, hyperlinked text, videos alongside words and interactivity everywhere, our brains form shortcuts to deal with it all — scanning, searching for key words, scrolling up and down quickly. This is nonlinear reading, and it has been documented in academic studies. Some researchers believe that for many people, this style of reading is beginning to invade when dealing with other mediums as well."
A Tribute To Reading: Finding the Time, Why We Read, And More
Farnam Street - 9/2/13

“Odds are that no matter what you’re working on, someone somewhere, who is smarter than you, has probably thought about your problem and put it into a book.”

reading/writing

These Journalists Read Their Writing Aloud To Themselves
New York Times - 12/11/23
The Lyric Essay: A Poetic Form Beyond Personal Or Research Essays
Literary Hub - 9/6/23
How Freewriting Has Helped Inmates
New York Times - 9/6/23
“How To Write Effectively For Busy Readers”
District Management Group - 9/1/23
Which Is Better: Nonsense Word Tests Or Word ID Tests?
Shanahan On Literacy - 8/26/23

View remaining articles (582)

“Common Proverbs As Video Game Tutorials”
McSweeney’s - 8/23/23

“Distant grass will always have a greener hue. You can fine-tune the appearance of distant grass in Settings > Graphics.”
Jennifer Gonzalez Debriefs The Reading Instruction Debate
Cult of Pedagogy - 8/20/23
“10 Maxims: What We’ve Learned So Far About How Children Learn To Read”
Reading Universe - 8/19/23

“Over the last 50 years, there's been a vast outpouring of research about reading development, drawing on insights from neuroscientists, psychologists, linguists, speech pathologists, educators and other experts. I'm sometimes asked to summarize, in plain language, what we've learned so far. These ten maxims represent my best attempt at doing that.”
Is Reading Better On Digital Devices Or Paper?
Shanahan On Literacy - 8/5/23
Paris Sets Up 1,700 Desks On Champs Elysees For Dictation Contest.
NPR - 8/3/23
“A ‘Teen Council’ At The Brooklyn Public Library Combats Book Bans”
Gothamist - 8/2/23
On The Origins Of The Letter X
The Conversation - 8/2/23
AI Won't “Disrupt” Books. We’ll All Still Read.
Wired - 7/20/23
New Yorker Writer Confronts An A.I. Modeled On His Own Writing
New Yorker - 7/11/23

“The generative text evokes a feeling in me not unlike the revulsion of hearing one’s own speaking voice in a recording. Do I really sound like that? The robot has made me acutely self-conscious. I recognize my A.I. doppelgänger, and I don’t like it.”
Having Students Read Their Writing Aloud Helps Catch Errors
Twitter/Edutopia - 7/5/23
As Cursive Returns, Some Teachers Need To Learn It
CBC - 7/1/23
Using Simpler Words Makes People Sound Smarter (Surprise!)
Big Think - 5/21/23

“Readers evaluate the intelligence of an author not only by the quality of their arguments but also by how well they understand what the author is trying to say. Using simple words and sentences makes the point clear. Big words don’t make writing sound intelligent; they make it hard to understand.”
How The NYT Uses Enhanced Bylines To Show Deep Reporting
Nieman Lab - 5/18/23
Practical Reading: “How To Read A Business Book”
Harvard Business Review - 5/17/23

“But first, step back and consider the anatomy of a typical business book. The components are almost always the same: Concepts (key ideas); Numbers (data and statistics); Tools (frameworks and diagnostics); Examples (stories and case studies to illustrate application). The job to be done is to extract insights to increase judgment and skills to increase performance.”
How Are Audiobooks Made?
LA Review of Books - 5/16/23
On Ghostwriting: Notes From Prince Harry’s Ghostwriter
New Yorker - 5/8/23
Handwriting Or Computers: Which Is Better For Learning To Write?
Fordham Institute - 4/25/23

“All in all, the researchers suggest that the data represent an even outcome, with both learning modalities proving successful at increasing student growth and achievement in writing.”
Reading Instruction Continues To Evolve Rapidly
New York Times - 4/16/23
The Art Of The Blurb
Sydney Review Of Books - 3/20/23
How To Use A.I. To Get Unstuck When Writing
Ethan Mollick - 3/14/23
How Generative A.I. Should Change The Writing Process
Middle Web - 3/12/23
On The Arrival Of Voice Tech — To Reading Instruction
EdSurge - 3/7/23
Academe Wrestles With ChatGPT Guidelines For Faculty
Chronicle of Higher Education - 2/22/23

“For example, the editors of Science have decided that authors should not use text generated by ChatGPT in a submitted manuscript. Fair enough. But can authors use ChatGPT to generate an early outline for a manuscript? …What feels most different about ChatGPT compared to other assistive technologies is the possible reduction of intellectual labor. For most professors, writing — even bad first drafts or outlines — requires our labor (and sometimes strain) to develop an original thought. If the goal is to write a paper that introduces boundary-breaking new ideas, AI tools might reduce some of the intellectual effort needed to make that happen.”
Teacher Makes Videos Annotating And Close Reading Macbeth
Julian Girdham - 2/20/23
“A Blog Post Is A Search Query To Find Your People”
Austin Kleon - 2/19/23
Should We Still Teach Writing In An Age Of Generative A.I.?
Larry Cuban - 2/18/23
We All Have Three Voices: Thinking, Speaking, Writing
Austin Kleon - 2/15/23
Kristof: A Summary On What We Know About Teaching Reading
New York Times - 2/11/23
"3 Ways To Build A Positive Reading Culture”
Edutopia - 2/2/23
On The Role Of Content Knowledge In Learning Literacy
EdWeek - 1/30/23
Long Read: Is Copyediting Biased?
Literary Hub - 1/26/23
“Five Touchstones For Parents For Teaching Kids To Read”
KQED - 1/18/23
Deep Dive On Writing Instruction For Young Students
EdWeek - 1/17/23
Encoding, The Equal And Opposite Side Of Decoding
EdWeek - 1/17/23
4 Interconnections Between Reading And Writing
EdWeek - 1/17/23
“Robert Caro… And The Art Of The Edit”
New York Times - 1/5/23
“How Children Are Taught To Read Faces A Reckoning”
WBUR - 12/5/22

“Colorado’s law - passed in 2019 - is pretty extensive. It requires school districts to completely overhaul their reading curriculum. As of this school year, all districts must use an “evidence and scientifically based” reading program, teachers all have to go through 45 hours of training on it, and they even banned curriculum rooted in balanced literacy.”
Twitter Thread On Teaching Writing In An Age Of A.I.
Twitter - 12/3/22
10 Years Of NPR’s Annual Reading Lists
NPR - 12/1/22
In Praise Of Libraries
The New European - 11/24/22
On The Long Life (And Relevance) Of The Long Poem
Psyche - 11/23/22
Tips For increasing Metacognition About Writing
Edutopia - 11/4/22
Literacy Instruction Belongs In All Content Areas
Edutopia - 10/28/22
Teaching Content Matters. More Knowledge Increases Reading Fluency.
Reading Research Quarterly - 10/22/22

“The results showed that the relation between domain knowledge and reading is bidirectional and positive throughout the elementary years, providing empirical evidence that domain knowledge and reading may mutually enhance with each other.”
“When Revising, Read Out Loud”
Learning Scientists - 10/20/22
On Letting Students Choose The Books They Read
Middle Web - 10/16/22
Schools Return To Phonics For Reading
New York Times - 10/6/22
Being Smart And Brief Sometimes Means Not Being Brief
New Republic - 9/15/22
“Teachers: AI Is Probably Writing Papers For Your Class.”
Curmudgication - 9/13/22
“The Enduring Allure of Choose Your Own Adventure Books”
New Yorker - 9/12/22
“Student Journalists Reveal A Changing World. Let Them.”
New York Times - 9/5/22
Switch From Reading Logs To Reading Communities
EdSurge - 8/29/22
“How To Fall Back In Love With Reading”
Vox - 7/21/22
What Is A Paragraph? Who Knew The Answer Could Be So Deep?
Hedgehog Review - 7/14/22
Why Some Writers Write
The Paris Review - 7/6/22

“Some writers write in the name of Art in general—James Salter for instance: “A great book may be an accident, but a good one is a possibility, and it is thinking of that that one writes. In short, to achieve.” Eudora Welty said she wrote “for it, for the pleasure of it.” Or as Joy Williams puts it, in a wonderfully strange essay called “Uncanny the Singing that Comes from Certain Husks,” “The writer doesn’t write for the reader. He doesn’t write for himself, either. He writes to serve … something. Somethingness. The somethingness that is sheltered by the wings of nothingness—those exquisite, enveloping, protecting wings.””
Viktor Shklovsky’s “On The Theory Of Prose”
LA Review of Books - 7/3/22

“Nearly a century old, it’s still avidly read and discussed in MFA circles, thanks to its author’s meticulous dissection of the devices of fiction, likely more valuable than any of the most recent craft books on the shelves. Unquestionably, it has been a kind of ur-text for many fledgling novelists because it discloses so clearly what one writer calls the “narrative math” that underpins all fiction.”
“Collegiate Punctuation Marks Trying to Be the Next Oxford Comma” [Humor]
New Yorker - 7/2/22
On Writers And Editors: A Film About Robert Caro And Richard Gottlieb
New Yorker - 6/30/22
“The Ultimate Summer 2022 Reading List”
Literary Hub - 6/17/22

“If you’re new here, here’s how it works: 1. I read all of the Most Anticipated and Best Summer Reading lists that flood the internet this time of year (or at least as many as I can find). 2. I count how many times each book is included. 3. I collate them for you in this handy list.”
A Scalable Assessment For Spotting Struggling Readers
Stanford - 6/9/22
“The Organization Of Your Bookshelves Tells Its Own Story”
Atlantic - 6/1/22
Some Gritty, Practical Advice “Creative Endurance” For Writers
Literary Hub - 5/31/22
“20 Books For Your Summer Reading List”
NAIS - 5/31/22
On Writing With A Voice Like “The New Yorker”
Public Books - 5/26/22

“The New Yorker sort of voice—or rather, the New Yorker voice I was using—is one that sounds on top, or ahead, of the material under discussion. It is a voice of intelligent curiosity; it implies that the writer has synthesized a great deal of information; it confidently takes readers by the hand, introduces them to surprising characters, recounts dramatic scenes, and leads them through key ideas and issues. The voice narrates the material in the first-person and describes the researcher conducting the research, encountering people, reacting to situations, thinking thoughts. The voice is smart-sounding. It is an effective voice for a lot of long-form journalism (including many virtuosic monographs), but it was not for the book I was trying to write.”
Gopnik: “The Rules Of Rhyme”
New Yorker - 5/23/22

“True rhymes are marvels; a slant rhyme’s a sin. Or is it vice versa? Let the battle begin.”
“Black Twitter Is Not A Place. It’s A Practice”
New York Times - 5/3/22
Students Read Better When They Know More About What They’re Reading
Kappan - 5/2/22
"How To Raise A Reader”
New York Times - 10/24/21
“The Teacher Who Changed How We Teach Writing”
New Yorker - 10/14/21

“He saw the damage done by a teaching model that focussed on error and that proposed simplistic, mechanical “fixes” to student writing. This was an ostensibly scientific approach to writing composition that equated students with their “deficits”—and implicitly encouraged students to identify with them… Mike, on the other hand, provided writing studies with a heart: he modelled a deep compassion that asked teachers to understand students as whole people, with very mixed feelings about academic writing, who are nonetheless trying to do a very difficult thing. He had a keen gift for uncovering, through intensive one-on-one work with writers, the deep (and often poignant) logic behind surface errors. His work heralded a paradigm shift in the way that writing is taught in our educational system, from elementary school through college. A former classmate wrote to me that Mike had taught him that “every piece of writing, from freshman comp to Samuel Beckett . . . represents a complex, fascinating, almost miraculous set of intellectual and imaginative processes.””
Reading Is About Decoding Phonics; Curricula Are Changing
EdWeek - 10/13/21
Reading Aloud, Bonding WIth Kids, And Making Better Readers
KQED - 10/4/21
3 Perspectives On Reading Physical Books With Toddlers
KQED - 9/16/21
Salman Rushdie Joins Substack, Serializes His Next Novel
Guardian - 9/1/21
Fight Short Attention Spans: Read The Same Poem Every Day
New York Times - 8/17/21
“What The Data Says About How Kids Learn To Read”
Literary Hub - 8/4/21
Philip Lopate: “The Silver Age Of Essays”
Paris Review - 8/3/21
How Long Should Students Read At Each Age? Unclear, But Stamina And Focus Matter.
Shanahan On Literacy - 7/10/21
“A Framework For Writing Rubrics To Support Linguistically Diverse Students”
NCTE - 7/1/21
What Is “Internet Literature”?
Literary Hub - 6/17/21
“At A Small Maine School, Cursive Endures And Wins National Awards”
New York Times - 5/24/21
What To Know When Learning To Write Starts Online
KQED - 5/17/21
Visualizing Stories In English Class To Promote Computational Thinking
Edutopia - 5/13/21
“The Computers Are Getting Better At Writing”
New Yorker - 4/30/21

“When I pressed the button asking Sudowrite to continue “Kubla Khan” in an “ominous” style, it generated the following… I find this beautiful, memorable. If you told me that Coleridge wrote it, I would believe you. The machine even put in the indents.”
40 Figures Of Speech To Improve Writing, Illustrated In A Periodic Table
Visual Capitalist - 4/30/21
Reading, And Writing, And Stepping Through The “Portal” Of Learning
Austin Kleon - 4/12/21
NC Elementary Teachers Find Relief In The Science Of Reading
EdNC - 4/7/21
How To Grow As A Storyteller, Without Books
Literary Hub - 4/1/21

“Aspiring writers should, by all means, read books, but those that grow up deprived of literature, in the absence of books due to wars, exile, and poverty, should not lose heart. They can find other ways to garner ideas and build their storytelling techniques. They could learn to read—with the same curiosity and intensity given to books— images and photographs, rivers, music, seas, and trees, read the history in facades of buildings and the flower arrangements in cemeteries… The street is a library, people are books.”
“Reading Around A Subject” As Different From Reading About A Subject
Essaying - 3/9/21
“3 Ways To Build Better Student Writers”
SmartBrief - 12/10/20
Verbal Smileys To Indicate Tone Of Voice When Typing
New York Times - 12/9/20
Word Exercises With Nouns And Verbs
Austin Kleon - 12/9/20
On Building Discussion Into Read Alouds For Beginners
ASCD - 11/25/20
How To Use Mentor/Model Texts For Writing Instruction
Edutopia - 11/23/20
How Libraries Can Change Mindsets About Reading
KQED - 10/29/20
A Call For Precision In Using The Phrase “The Science Of Reading”
NCTE - 10/24/20
A Tribute To Louise Gluck, And To What Makes Good Writing
The Paris Review - 10/9/20

“I once asked what made her pick my manuscript all those years ago. “I didn’t like your book,” she said, without hesitation. I started laughing—her famous candor often had this effect on me, even if it was at my expense. “Why did you pick it, then?” I replied, incredulous. Her eyes widened: “Because I couldn’t quit thinking about it.””
“The Art Of Teaching Writing”
Atlantic - 9/9/20
Another Brief History Of Punctuation
Aeon - 9/3/20
Jill Lepore: On Reading Habits
New York Times - 8/28/20

“Reading for teaching is a little like eating a meal and trying, afterward, to write up a recipe for each dish.”
“The Problem With ‘Show Me The Research’ In Teaching Reading”
Radical Scholarship - 8/17/20
Jeff Bezos' Testimony At Congress Is 4,500 Words Of Storytelling
Inc. - 7/29/20
Reflections on More Reflections on “Why Writing Matters”
Times Literary Supplement - 7/24/20
Lin-Manuel Miranda On Writing “My Shot”
Twitter - 7/8/20
NYT Nonfiction Bestsellers Are All About Race
New York Times - 6/21/20
14 Ways To Read A Sonnet
Folger Shakespeare Library - 5/19/20
"Science Fiction Builds Mental Resiliency In Young Readers”
THE Conversation - 5/11/20
“11 Meaningful Writing Assignments Connected To The Pandemic”
Edutopia - 5/8/20
“Now Is The Perfect Time To Memorize A Poem”
The Cut - 4/30/20

“Right now, a machine is breathing for my father, buying time in a ward I can neither visit nor see. The doctors talk a lot about time: How fast or slow he breathes — COVID comes for your breath — and how quick or sluggish his blood pressure, the beat of his heart. There is almost nothing I can do but call his carers, wait, and hope. In that morass of powerlessness, I’ve found myself reciting the snippets of poems I’ve picked up along the way. If nothing else, their meter overtakes the racing of mine.”
A Conversation About How To Teach Writing Online
Atlantic - 4/6/20
“The Erosion Of Deep Literacy”
National Affairs - 4/1/20
Has The Book Lost The Battle Against The Computer?
Claremont Review of Books - 4/1/20

“It won’t be long before all living memory of a time before the personal computer is gone. People will no longer address the meaning of screens from the remembered background of a computer-free life.”
“Penguin Classics and Others Work to Diversify Offerings From the Canon”
New York Times - 3/30/20
Four Things Parents Should Know About Helping Kids Learn To Read
Hechinger Report - 3/30/20
Four Things Teachers Should Know About Helping Kids Learn To Read
Hechinger Report - 3/30/20
What K-12 Kids Are Reading, By Grade: 2020
Renaissance Learning - 3/29/20
"Writing To Persuade” - New Book By New York Times Op-Ed Editor
Behavioral Scientist - 3/16/20
"The Case For Reading Fiction”
Harvard Business Review - 3/6/20
“The Core Vocabulary: The Foundation Of Proficient Comprehension”
Wiley Online - 2/19/20
“How More Teachers Are Being Trained In The Science Of Reading”
KQED - 2/14/20
“Grab A Pen. It’s Time To Revive The Love Letter”
The Lily - 2/13/20

“Let us collectively weep for the dying art of letter writing. Then, let’s dry our tears and bring it back to life. Below, you’ll find snippets from historical love letters — some of which are centuries old — pulled from “Love Letters” and “A Love No Less.” You’ll also see tips for crafting your own letters, derived from reading hundreds of romantic epistles.”
Students Can Push A Button, And A.I. Will Write Their Essays.
EdSurge - 2/12/20

“After subscribing to a service called EssaySoft, you can tell its essay generator to write a paper on, say, “symbolism in the great Gatsby” (or whatever you need for class). Then you enter how many words you want the final paper to be, select other specs from drop-down menus (set research depth to “low” if you want the machine to return an answer as fast as possible), and click “Generate Essay.””
Is The Novel A Dying Form?
Spectator - 2/11/20
One Person's Formula For What Makes A Great Essay
Paul Graham - 2/1/20

“I believe the formula I've given you, importance + novelty + correctness + strength, is the recipe for a good essay. But I should warn you that it's also a recipe for making people mad.”
George Packer: On Writing And Taking A Stance In 21st Century
Atlantic - 1/23/20

“My students have come of age during a decade when public discourse means taking a position and sticking with it. The most influential writers are those who create a dazzling moral clarity. Its light is meant to overpower subjects, not illuminate them… The imperative to take a position can be stunting. It makes writers less likely to test their ideas against others who disagree, against personal experience, and against facts… Between my generation and that of my students is an entire cohort of writers in their 30s and 40s. I think they’ve suffered most from the climate I’m describing.”
Phonics Is Only One Of Four Foundational Reading Concepts
EdWeek - 1/23/20
"Writing To Learn In Your Science Classes” (Via Middle School)
Middle Web - 1/15/20
“The 10 Most Checked Out Books In N.Y Public Library History”
New York Times - 1/13/20
“For Linguists, It Was The Decade Of The Pronoun”
THE Conversation - 1/8/20
How Writing And Reading Stories Help Us Understand Ourselves And Others
LinkedIn Blog - 12/18/19

“In a study we conducted with Yale University, we found that students are able to maintain writing tasks for longer and their writing and speaking fluency dramatically improve when they learn how to tell stories from their own lived experience.”
Reflection On What Makes A Good Writing Assignment
Inside Higher Ed - 12/16/19
“How To Talk About Climate Change Like Greta Thunberg”
Quartz - 12/12/19

“Keeping the argument on track, and keeping it both civil and productive, is a key skill in critical thinking. It is helped by: making sure everyone is clear about what the point at issue actually is; bringing the conversation back to the point when it strays, or at least acknowledging that we are now talking about something else; calling out any misrepresentation of the point.”
“How Reading Has Changed In The 2010s”
BBC - 12/10/19
How One State Has Used Science-Backed Reading Instruction
New York Times - 12/5/19

“The simple view is an equation that looks like this: decoding ability x language comprehension = reading comprehension. Notice that reading comprehension is the product of decoding ability and language comprehension; it’s not the sum. In other words, if you have good language comprehension skills but zero decoding skills, your reading comprehension will be zero, because zero times anything is zero… The simple view model was proposed more than 30 years ago and has been confirmed over and over again by research.”
Against The Rubric In Writing Instruction
EdWeek - 12/4/19

“In effect, narrative feedback is a personalized message giving individualized feedback for the student regarding his or her writing. That is a human interaction, not a bureaucratized one, as with a rubric.”
How A Number Of Schools Revamped Their Reading Instruction
Seattle Times - 12/1/19
Some Schools Still Teach Cursive. Should They?
Wisconsin Public Radio - 11/14/19
Research On Writing Instruction Is Slim, But Yields Some Lessons
Hechinger Report - 11/4/19

“Motivation seems to be the key… If students love to write, because their peers as well as their teachers are eager to see what they have to say, then they will write with energy and pleasure. Perhaps more than any other subject, writing demands a supportive environment, in which students want to become better writers because they love the opportunity to express themselves, and to interact in writing with valued peers and teachers.”
A Short History Of Fact-Checking
Columbia Journalism Review - 11/1/19
On When To Teach Certain Decoding Skills To Young Readers
Shanahan On Literacy - 10/19/19
On Skimming, And How People Read
Times Literary Supplement - 10/15/19
Deep Look At How A.I. Is Learning To Write… Like The New Yorker
New Yorker - 10/14/19
On Letting Students Drive Their Own Writing
EdSurge - 10/3/19
Summaries Of The Science Of Learning To Read
EdWeek - 10/2/19

“That’s why we’ve put together this overview of the research on early reading, in grades K-2. It covers what’s known about how we should teach letter-sound patterns, and what we don’t know for sure yet. It touches on what else should be part of early reading programs. And it explains why we know that most children can’t learn to read through osmosis or guessing.”
Automated Dictation And Transcribing Are Getting Better And Better
New York Times - 10/2/19
Fan Fiction As Writing Tool
Atlantic - 10/1/19
On The Oxford Comma
Quartz - 10/1/19
On How To Make A Point: Composition Teacher Reviews The Whistle-Blower
New York Times - 9/27/19
Is Instagram (A Part Of) The Future Of Reading?
Fast Company - 9/25/19

“Last year, the New York Public Library released an experiment to put the full text of novels in its Instagram Stories. Today, an estimated 300,000 people are reading books this way.”
Three Tips For Raising A Reader
Atlantic - 9/19/19
"Books Won’t Die”
Paris Review - 9/17/19

“In hindsight, we can see how rarely one technology supersedes another: the rise of the podcast makes clear that video didn’t doom audio any more than radio ended reading.”
Reading Before Bed Correlates with Happiness, Wealth, and Health
Real Simple - 9/6/19

“Whether they crack open a book three times a month or every night without fail, all respondents said doing so promotes relaxation, reduces stress, induces sleep, centers the mind, and improves sleep quality.”
How A Librarian Helped A Student Secretly Become A Reader [Video]
StoryCorps - 9/3/19
Elizabeth Gilbert On How To Write
Swiss-Miss - 9/3/19
Blurring The Lines Between Digital And Print Reading
New Yorker - 9/2/19

“Far from embodying an arc of unbroken concentration, books have always mapped their readers’ agitation—not unlike the way a person’s browsing history might reveal a single day’s struggle, for example, to focus on writing a book review.”
Barbara Kingsolver Rediscovers Love Of Language Through Writing Poetry
Washington Post - 8/27/19
A Deep And Fascinating Analysis Of Novel Reviews
Literary Hub - 8/27/19
“In Praise Of Pretty Books”
Washington Post - 8/14/19
“Evidence Increases For Reading On Paper Instead Of Screens”
Hechinger Report - 8/12/19
Foster A Love Of Reading By Giving Away Free Books
WILX - 8/9/19
4 Tips For Building A Classroom Library
ASCD - 7/25/19

“Most kids agree their favorite books are the ones that they have picked out themselves. While we should be talking with students about books, we also have to let them advise how we can better help them find books on their passions and interests.”
5 More Tips For Building The Best Classroom Library
ASCD - 7/25/19
A Lovely Meditation on How Reading Skills Wax And Wane Through Life
Longreads - 7/22/19

“You never stop learning how to read — probably because you also never stop forgetting how to read.”
Should Books Have Credits Lists, Like Movies?
Guardian - 7/19/19
What Science Writing Reveals About Science
Literary Hub - 7/17/19
Writing Very Long Essays Returns To The High School Curriculum
Washington Post - 6/27/19
The Printing Press Was In China Long Before It Was In Germany
Literary Hub - 6/19/19
Knowing Content Is Essential For Strong Reading Skills
EdWeek - 5/28/19
On Sociological Vs Psychological Storytelling In Game Of Thrones
Scientific American - 5/17/19

“This is an important shift to dissect because whether we tell our stories primarily from a sociological or psychological point of view has great consequences for how we deal with our world and the problems we encounter.”
More On The Effect Of Having Books At Home During Childhood
Scientific American - 5/16/19

“In fact, teens who only made it through high school but were raised in a bookish environment fared as well in adulthood as college grads who grew up in a house bereft of books.”
In Praise Of Reading Aloud (via Middle School)
Edutopia - 5/14/19
Reading Helps The Brain Develop Theory Of Mind
Medium - 5/2/19
Print Books (Vs. E-Books) Continue To Have Advantage
EdSurge - 4/26/19
Maybe Storytelling Is Actually Inhibiting Cultural Progress?
Medium - 4/24/19

“The progression from a (nearly) innate theory of mind to a fixation on stories — narrative — was made in only a few short steps. We went from explaining how and why we did things in the present, to explaining how and why we did things in the past, to explaining how and why others did things in the present, then the past, and finally to explaining how others did things with, to, against, and for still others.”
Textio: Type An Outline; It Turns It Into Paragraphs. Enter The Age Of Augmented Writing
Geekwire - 4/23/19

“The new feature is a bit like Google’s Smart Compose, which suggests email responses or phrases as you type. But instead of a few words, Textio Flow thinks up whole paragraphs.”
Ritual: A Reflection On Reading Print Newspapers
Atlantic - 4/10/19
A Short Reflection On/By Robert Caro, About Writing
Time - 4/4/19
Short Story Vending Machines Now Appearing Around The World
Guardian - 4/2/19

“Dispensing one, three and five-minute stories free to passersby at the touch of a button, the vending machines… already feature in locations across France, in Hong Kong and the US.”
Print Books Better Than Digital And Multimedia For Reading To Toddlers
New York Times - 3/25/19
Teaching Others Teaches The Self (via Remedial Reading)
NPR - 3/15/19
Instapoetry (Poetry On Instagram) Continues To Grow — And Spark Debate
New Statesman - 3/6/19

“The quality varies, but there is plenty of comically or offensively banal work to be found on Instagram: genuinely insightful or distinctive work is the exception, not the rule. The same tropes and themes appear again and again: lower-case platitudes in typewriter fonts; earnest insistence of the importance of self-love; writing in the second person; petals, rainbows and coffee stains sneaking on to pages. Most monetise their output by selling merchandise (from Atticus’s wine and Rupi Kaur canvas prints to r.h. Sin’s clothing range) and tour tickets.”
Early Writing Systems Around The World Share Some Common Elements
Kottke - 3/4/19
Werner Herzog On School, Reading, And Writing
Austin Kleon - 2/20/19

“Read, read, read, read, read. Those who read own the world; those who immerse themselves in the Internet or watch too much television lose it… Our civilization is suffering profound wounds because of the wholesale abandonment of reading by contemporary society.”
New York Times: Student Write-An-Editorial Contest, By April 2
New York Times - 2/20/19

"Because editorial writing at newspapers is a collaborative process, you can write your entry as a team or by yourself — though, please, only one submission per student. When you’re done, submit it using the contest form below by Tuesday, April 2, at 11:59 p.m. Eastern. Be sure to read the rules — also below — before posting. Our judges will then use this rubric for selecting winners to publish on The Learning Network.”
The Essay I’ve Always Wanted About Moving From Pen To Computer
New Yorker - 2/19/19

“Then e-mail arrived and changed everything. First, you would only hook the computer up through your landline phone a couple of times a day, as if there were a special moment to send and receive mail. Then came the permanent connection. Finally, the wireless, and, of course, the Internet. In the space of perhaps ten years, you passed from waiting literally months for a decision on something that you’d written, or simply for a reaction from a friend or an agent, to expecting a reaction immediately. Whereas in the past you checked your in-box once a day, now you checked every five minutes.”
A Research And Writing Exercise To Help Students Broaden Their Perspective
New York Times - 2/19/19
How Science Writing Made Science Popular
Smithsonian - 2/13/19
On Compounding Knowledge And Choosing What To Read (Via Warren Buffett)
Farnam Street - 2/1/19
Cognitive Journaling: How Writing Can Support Mental Health
Better Humans - 1/25/19
"If You Want To Be A Writer, You Have To Be A Reader”
Austin Kleon - 1/22/19
Poetry Sales Are Soaring… Led By… Young People!
Guardian - 1/21/19

“A passion for politics, particularly among teenagers and young millennials, is fueling a dramatic growth in the popularity of poetry, with sales of poetry books hitting an all-time high in 2018.”
How iOS Notes Is Shaping Writing (Of Public Apologies)
New York Times - 1/12/19
Reflections On The Essay
Public Books - 1/8/19
Reflections On The Writing Workshop
Literary Hub - 1/7/19
J. K. Rowling’s Five Tips For Writers
J K Rowling - 1/6/19
Reading From Paper Vs. Screens: Small Benefit To Paper For Expository Prose
Research Gate - 1/1/19
Reading Habits From Around the World
Global English Editing - 12/28/18
Robert Caro To Release A Book About Writing
AP - 12/18/18
Reading Literary Fiction Leads To Greater Empathy
Quartz - 12/12/18

“Literary fiction, which tends to focus on the psychology of individuals, provides a window into the inner lives of strangers in other times and places. It’s this preoccupation with sensation and thought that makes the form a powerful tool for developing empathy. Stories that transport us also transform us, according to the study. Reading literary fiction, though a solitary pursuit, increases social understanding.”
An Homage To Long Sentences
Literary Hub - 12/12/18
Willingham: How Is Listening To An Audiobook Different From Reading?
New York Times - 12/8/18
BBC’s R&D Team Reflects On Writing For Young Audiences
Medium - 12/6/18

"We made under-26s and women aged 28 to 45 the focus of our innovation process. Over a year, we interviewed 85 people face-to-face. As well as giving their feedback on our prototypes, they told us about their news behaviours: where they find value, as well as their pain points. Based on these conversations, we developed a set of writing principles.”
Exploring The Science Of Learning To Read
Kappan - 11/26/18
Vertical Books: A Hit In The EU, Now Coming To The US.
New York Times - 10/29/18

“The tiny editions are the size of a cellphone and no thicker than your thumb, with paper as thin as onion skin. They can be read with one hand — the text flows horizontally, and you can flip the pages upward, like swiping a smartphone.”
Willingham Summarizes What We Know About Reading (2018)
Daniel Willingham - 10/29/18
Willingham Chimes In On The Polarizing Debate About Reading Instruction
Daniel Willingham - 10/29/18
Are We Teaching Reading Wrong? Phonics Or No-Phonics?
New York Times - 10/26/18
More On The Health Benefits Of Journaling
New York Times - 10/25/18

“There are the obvious benefits, like a boost in mindfulness, memory and communication skills. But studies have also found that writing in a journal can lead to better sleep, a stronger immune system, more self-confidence and a higher I.Q."
More Data On Why Having Books At Home Helps Learning
World Economic Forum - 10/17/18

“The paper's authors studied 160,000 adults between 2011 and 2015 and found that just having 80 or more books in a home results in adults with significantly higher levels of literacy, numeracy, and information communication technology (ICT) skills… Children from such homes who ended up attaining just a high-school-level education "become as literate, numerate and technologically apt in adulthood as university graduates who grew up with only a few books.”"
Pop-Up Books Were Science Books Before They Were Kids Books
Atlantic - 10/14/18

"Since antiquity, teachers had held that scientific subjects were best learned through pictures and working models. Beginners needed to see, touch, and manipulate the objects of study. Teachers of astronomy and mathematics, for example, had long employed three-dimensional models and instruments in their classrooms.”
"In Praise Of The Photocopy” For Reading Books
Paris Review - 10/10/18
Leveraging Dungeons And Dragons To Motivate And Teach Reading
KQED - 10/8/18

“Best-selling authors like Ta-Nehisi Coates and Cory Doctorow, comedian Stephen Colbert and… George R. R. Martin all played Dungeons & Dragons. It’s not surprising that burgeoning writers would be drawn to a storytelling game.”
Books At Home Correlate With Math, Language, And IT Skills
Pacific Standard - 10/8/18
Susan Orlean Writes An Essay On Libraries
New Yorker - 10/5/18
The Incas Could Write With Knots. How This Works Is Just Becoming Clear
New Scientist - 9/26/18

“There are all sorts of varying factors in khipus: the colour of the strings, the structure of the knots and the direction in which they were hitched. Having spent countless hours poring over them, Urton began to think that binary differences in these features might be encoding information. For example, a basic knot tied in one direction could mean “paid”, while in the other it would mean “unpaid”.”
Reflections On “How To Write A Great Sentence”
Guardian - 9/21/18
Audiobook Business Continues To Blossom
Vulture - 9/20/18
How To Teach Children To Read (And Why It Isn’t Always Taught Right)
APM Reports - 9/10/18

""There are thousands of studies," said Louisa Moats, an education consultant and researcher who has been teaching and studying reading since the 1970s. "This is the most studied aspect of human learning.”"
“Reading With A Pencil” - A Tribute To Marginalia
Austin Kleon - 8/30/18
Have We Passed Peak Reading?
The Paris Review - 8/27/18

“John Milton could still pride himself without exaggeration on having read every book then available, the entire history of written thought accessible to a single mind. When I was in college, a friend and I worked on a short film, never finished, in which Milton somehow found himself brought forward in time to lower Manhattan’s Strand bookstore, where the sheer volume of titles (“18 Miles of Books” is the store’s slogan) provoked a kind of mental overload, causing him to run screaming from the store out into Broadway, only to be struck down by a New York City bus.”
Tips For Encouraging Kids To Read
Quartz - 8/14/18

"Parents looking to encourage reading look out for environments that are “impoverished”—that, places where kids might be a bit bored—and fill those spaces up with books.”
Formatically: A Really, Really, Really Easy To Use Citation Tool
Larry Ferlazzo - 8/12/18
“Books Are The Only Form Of Physical Media Whose Sales Are Growing”
Strategy-Business - 8/9/18
On Reading, Perspective Taking, And Empathy
Literary Hub - 8/8/18
An Argument For Classroom Libraries
Education Dive - 8/8/18
Step-By-Step Guide For Teaching Narrative Writing
Cult of Pedagogy - 7/29/18
Should School Libraries Be Organized By Dewey Or By Genre?
KQED - 7/22/18
Maybe Writing Originates In Religion And Mysticism, Not In Accounting
Aeon - 7/6/18
Do Kids Like Dystopias Because… The World… Is… A Dystopia?
NPR - 7/5/18
In Order To Write Great Senior Theses, Students Need To Be Prepared Well
Inside Higher Ed - 7/5/18
Francine Prose: Writing A Clear Sentence Is Hard
Literary Hub - 7/3/18
“Raising Kids Who Want To Read”
KQED - 7/2/18
A Free Online Course On The Art Of Storytelling — By Pixar
Khan Academy - 6/30/18
Audiobooks Provoke More Emotion Than Movies, Apparently
Guardian - 6/21/18
Strunk & White At 100: Against “Elements Of Style”
Chronicle of Higher Education - 6/20/18
Audiobook Sales Were Up 22% in 2017
Publishing Perspectives - 6/20/18
On Why You Should Own More Books Than You Read
Medium - 6/20/18
Why We Read Less: A Longitudinal View
New Yorker - 6/14/18
Writer Wins Novel Award For One-Sentence Novel
Guardian - 6/13/18
On The Circulating Libraries Of Jane Austen’s Day
JStor - 6/8/18

“The libraries, which were found in fashionable watering holes like Jane Austen’s fabled Bath, began as offshoots of bookselling. They became social gathering places that people subscribed to as soon as they got to their vacation destination.”
Gwendolyn Brooks’ Short Poem On Why We Read
Brain Pickings - 6/7/18
Print Vs Digital Books: Ownership Is a Different Emotional Experience
Forbes - 5/28/18
“What’s Going On In Your Child’s Brain When You Read Them A Story?”
KQED - 5/24/18
What's Happening In Kids’ Brains When You Read Aloud To Them?
NPR - 5/24/18
"Writing In A Journal Is Good For You—And So Is Throwing It Out”
Quartz - 5/20/18
On Academic Writing Versus Journalistic Writing
Atlantic - 5/11/18
How To Write Well (Laden With F-Bombs, Interjections, And Shade)
Medium - 5/3/18

“You want credentials, I ain’t got em. If you want an MFA program or an editor or a publishing house, you’ll have to look elsewhere. But: I write. And, if I may be so bold, I do it halfway okay.”
"The Keys to Content-Area Writing: Short, Frequent, and Shared”
ASCD - 4/26/18
More On Bezos Banning Powerpoints, Requiring Narrative Essays
Inc. - 4/25/18
Bezos Requires Execs To Write Arguments, Not Use Powerpoints
CNBC - 4/23/18

"The reason writing a 'good' four page memo is harder than 'writing' a 20-page PowerPoint is because the narrative structure of a good memo forces better thought and better understanding of what's more important than what.”
Can We Encourage Students To Use “I” In Essays, At Last?
New York Times - 4/21/18

"Somewhere along the way, these young people were told by teachers that who they are in their writing ought to be divorced from who they are on their phones, or as the writer Grace Paley may have said, with their families and on their streets… But no matter who they are in private, when I first encounter their writing, they use only the public passive voice: The text was read. The test was taken.”
Amazon Requires Employees To Present Ideas In Writing, Not Slides
Quartz - 4/19/18

"The great memos are written and re-written, shared with colleagues who are asked to improve the work, set aside for a couple of days, and then edited again with a fresh mind. They simply can’t be done in a day or two.”
“6 Roadblocks To Writing Instruction—And… Alternate Routes”
ASCD - 4/1/18
Renaissance Learning Releases 2018 K-12 Reading Report [Login]
Renaissance Learning - 3/24/18
Meditation On Teaching Fiction Writing
The Millions - 3/19/18

“I sat in the dark staring at my laptop. I was well into my second hour of watching sword fights on YouTube. I switched between samurai movies, anime, medieval battle scenes, and pirate duels. Two of my students just kept writing about sword fights, and I was trying to be a better teacher. If I was going to critique the battle scenes in their novels-in-progress, I needed to understand what made a good sword fight.”
What Doing Math Teaches Us About Teaching Writing.
Quartz - 2/22/18

"A word problem, like an essay, is an argument. You start with the given information. You summarize it with symbols and expressions. You make a plan and follow some logical steps until you arrive at a conclusion. Along the way you’ll likely make mistakes. You might find you spent a disappointing amount of time on a bad approach, but that’s okay because the process is the whole point, as evidenced by the existence of partial credit.”
“How Facebook Revived The Epistolary Friendship”
JStor - 2/20/18
Three Reasons Why Austin Klein Keeps A Diary
Austin Kleon - 2/20/18
Against The 5-Paragraph Essay, And For More Critical Analysis
Aeon - 2/15/18
“Teaching The Art Of Reading In The Digital Era”
Pacific Standard - 2/12/18
“The Shortest Novels By 20 Authors You Should Have Read”
Literary Hub - 2/8/18
31 Authors Weigh In On Whether You Should “Write What You Know”
Literary Hub - 2/7/18
Scribd: A Netflix For Reading
Fast Company - 2/6/18
The New York Times Is Looking For Recent Graduates Who Can Write
New York Times - 1/29/18
A Comic Book Writer On The Writing Process (Twitter Thread)
Twitter - 1/25/18
NYT Book Industry Reporter Summarizes eReading History/Future
New York Times - 1/17/18
Rural School Requires Writing In Every Class, Sees Huge Change
EdSource - 1/4/18
On The Rise Of Social Reading: We Are What We Read
New York Times - 1/2/18
How Do You Make A List Of The 100 Best Nonfiction Books?
Guardian - 12/31/17
Apple’s iBooks Store Most Sold Books From 2017
Publishers Weekly - 12/29/17
The Kindle Remains Revolutionary, But It Doesn’t Change Books
New Republic - 12/28/17
Five Tips For Encouraging Students To Read More
School Library Journal - 12/27/17
A Ringing Tribute To Difficult Reading
Guardian - 12/23/17

"The difficulty is the point… We all want the same things now: phones, clothes, and food to photograph. We are all consumers. Teenagers don’t want to stick it to the man anymore. They are the man… I want them to find something difficult and do it anyway. Then, I want them to notice what a powerful tool literature is, to understand that without it we can’t know ourselves or the society we live in. I want them to discover that if they learn to handle language they’ll no longer be helpless, drowning in sugary gratification.”
A Meta-List Of The Top Ten Books Of 2017
Digg - 12/21/17
A Theory of Writing Instruction In The English Class
Medium - 12/11/17

"It is our mission as English teachers to teach writing as a method of thinking, to re-mediate their writing for current and future circumstances and technologies, and to help our students find a sense of agency and empowerment in the act of writing.”
State Is Sued For Failing To Teach Kids To Read
New York Times - 12/6/17
Why You Should Have Way More Books Than You Will Ever Read
Inc. - 12/5/17
Research: Imagery Is What Makes Poetry Compelling (Uh, Obviously?)
Pacific Standard - 11/30/17
Why Reading Is So Good For You, And A Bunch Of Lists Of Books
History Tech - 11/30/17
An Academic Treatise On Good And Bad Reading (Via Nabokov)
Boston Review - 11/27/17
“Dante’s Nine Circles Of Hell, Reimagined For Linguistic Transgressions”
McSweeney's - 11/20/17
Reflections On How Daily Blogging (Writing!) Leads To Learning
Austin Kleon - 11/20/17
Reading Used To Be Done Aloud, Silent Reading Changed Us.
Quartz - 11/19/17

"For centuries, Europeans who could read did so aloud. The ancient Greeks read their texts aloud. So did the monks of Europe’s dark ages. But by the 17th century, reading society in Europe had changed drastically. Text technologies, like moveable type, and the rise of vernacular writing helped usher in the practice we cherish today: taking in words without saying them aloud, letting them build a world in our heads.”
On How Writing Changed The Complexity Of Our Expression
Nautilus - 11/16/17

"This pattern raises the possibility that the invention of writing, a very recent innovation tagged on to the very last millennia of human evolution, can dramatically alter a language’s linguistic niche, spurring the development of elaborate sentence structure, and leading to the shedding of other features, on a timescale that cannot be achieved through biological evolution. If that’s so, then the languages that many of us have grown up with are very different from the languages that have been spoken throughout the vast majority of human existence.”
Literature and Cartography
MIT Press - 11/1/17
Start A “Family Tree Of Reading” About How Your Family Reads
Inside Higher Ed - 10/25/17
In Praise Of The Im-Personal Essay
Slate - 10/23/17
Professors, Teachers Discuss The Five-Paragraph Essay
EdSurge - 10/18/17
Lin Manuel Miranda Interviews Sondheim On Writing
New York Times - 10/16/17

"You shouldn’t feel safe. You should feel, “I don’t know if I can write this.” That’s what I mean by dangerous, and I think that’s a good thing to do. Sacrifice something safe.”
Why Journaling Is Great - And 11 Ways To Make It A Habit
Medium - 10/16/17
Slow Down When You Read On Digital Devices
Fast Company - 10/11/17
"Future Programmers Need Writing Skills, Too”
EdSurge - 10/9/17
Can A Poet Publish On Instagram And Be Taken Seriously?
New York Times - 10/5/17

"The underlying message of all this criticism is that Ms. Kaur’s work isn’t “real literature.” The literary world doesn’t have a great track record of embracing or even acknowledging artists like Ms. Kaur, who are different in some notable way, but who attract an enormous and fervent audience.”
On John McPhee And Writing
New York Times - 9/28/17
10 Rules For Writing (Publishable) Science Papers
PLOS - 9/28/17
“The Hobbit” Turns 80
Atlantic - 9/22/17
Jeff Bezos Starts Meetings With Silent Reading Of Each Others’ Writing
Inc. - 9/18/17
A History Of The “Soothing Promise Of Graph Paper”
Quartz - 9/14/17
John McPhee On How He Writes
New Republic - 9/13/17
On The New Republic, Digital Journalism, And The Tech Age
Atlantic - 9/1/17
Orhan Pamuk On Students Knowing His Work Better Than He Does
LA Times - 8/27/17

"The things [novelists] mean to describe and express when they write, the territory they wish to cover, may be very different from those elements that readers and students focus on. The author of a novel is not always the best placed to interpret it, and eventually others may become more familiar with the text than he is.”
Some Insight Into How People Used To Read: Aloud, Together
Spectator - 8/26/17

"It has long been thought, for instance, that the print revolution of the 18th century resulted in a shift from oral to silent reading, from shared reading to indulging in a book of one’s own, as books became more available to a wider range of people while leisure time also increased… On the contrary, reading aloud remained as popular as it had ever been because it was sociable and gave participants a glancing acquaintance with books that might otherwise take weeks to read.”
15 Tips On Writing Op-Eds… From A New York Times Editor
New York Times - 8/25/17
Personal Identity Vs. Stoicism In The Personal Essay
Boston Review - 8/22/17

"This brings us back to the personal essay. More than a fad and more than a form, we might think of the personal essay as a contract between reader and writer… This task is impossible, or at least impossible to derive pleasure from, without particularity and concreteness—a sense of reciprocity and respect… What we see in many personal essays today is not the shattering of language but the shattering of a pact.”
Editor Destroys Writer: Actually A Terrific Story About Revision
Atlantic - 8/22/17

"It was not that he disliked it. It was that he… hated it. I was taken aback—I had enjoyed the process of researching and writing the book. So, I had expected, a reader would too. No, Scott said, the way you’ve done this doesn’t work.”
Three Famous Poems, Written In Emojis
Paris Review - 8/18/17
What Happens When You Have No Clue What a Book Means?
New York Review of Books - 8/15/17
Surprise: Print Magazine Sales Are… Up!
BBC - 8/12/17
9 Writers Share Their Writing Routines
Spectator - 8/12/17
When Business Promotes Writing For The Purpose Of Understanding
Collaborative Fund - 8/9/17

"Writing crystallizes ideas in ways thinking on its own will never accomplish.”
"What Parents Can Do to Nurture Good Writers”
New York Times - 8/2/17
Some Tips On Writing A College Essay
New York Times - 8/2/17

"Here’s a tip: Choose a topic you really want to write about. If the subject doesn’t matter to you, it won’t matter to the reader. “
Ways To Make Reading More Appealing To Students
KQED - 7/31/17
Lemony Snicket Pens Op-Ed On Sex In Literature For Students
New York Times - 7/29/17
Be More Precise: Replacements For 16 Boring Words
Global Digital Citizen Foundation - 7/27/17
Michiko Kakutani Steps Down From The New York Times.
New York Times - 7/27/17
On Committing To Read More
Washington Post - 7/21/17

"The tyranny of the urgent crowds in around me. If I yield to that tyranny, my life fills with mental clutter. Boredom, say the researchers, is when creativity happens. A wandering mind wanders into new, unexpected places. When I retire to the mountains and unplug for a few days, something magical takes place. I’ll go to bed puzzling over a roadblock in my writing, and the next morning wake up with the solution crystal-clear—something that never happens when I spend my spare time cruising social media and the Internet."
A Deconstruction Of How Online Journalism Hijacks Your Mind
Medium - 7/14/17

"By the end of the war it was clear that information warfare was a powerful weapon — it could raise armies, incite violent mobs, and destabilize whole nations. In response to this systematic manipulation of the truth, there was a concerted effort to create an institution of fact-driven journalism beginning in the 1920’s."
Just Read Poems. Stop Trying To Analyze Them All The Time.
New York Times - 7/10/17

"As a teacher, I’ve found that regardless of how open or resistant my literature students initially are to poetry, real progress begins when they get literal with the words on the page. I ask them to pick one interesting word, then go to the library and investigate that word.”
“Summer Reading For Your Woke Kid”
NPR - 7/6/17
Longread: On The Convergence Of Literary And Scientific Writing
New Atlantis - 7/1/17

"Precisely defined terms are often superior to poetic images for the purposes of science, but the opposite is true in our own personal experience of the world — the poetic image, while more vague, is also more meaningful and a better fit for understanding our own inner lives as well as the messy affairs of politics, history, and ethics.”
More College Summer Reading Lists
New York Times - 7/1/17

"Ohio State, the football-mad university of more than 60,000 students, could hardly be more different from Williams College, the prestigious liberal arts school in the Berkshires… But this summer, all of their incoming students received the same reading assignment”
College Summer Reading Selections (2017)
NPR - 6/30/17
On The Existence And Survival Of Short Stories
New Statesman - 6/27/17
TED Makes A Summer Reading List From TED Speakers
TED - 6/21/17
"22 Ambassadors Recommend The One Book To Read Before Visiting Their Country”
Conde Nast Traveler - 6/19/17
In Praise Of Writing Fiction
Creativity Post - 6/18/17
“Children's Love Of Reading At All-Time High”
The Bookseller - 5/31/17
On Editors: Author Publishes Email Dialog With His Editor
Slate - 5/15/17
E-Book Readings Declines, Print Reading Grows
Guardian - 5/14/17
An Argument For Focusing On Content, Not Form, In Writing Instruction
Washington Post - 5/8/17

"There are no rubrics, no rules, no strategies. There is audience and need, and the problem must be solved.”
Six Components Of Teaching Writing
NCTE - 5/1/17
When Reading A Book Requires Editing The Book, And Sharing It
Guardian - 4/28/17
On Literary Evolution, And The Teaching Of Empathy
Nautilus - 4/27/17

"Stories that vault readers outside of their own lives and into characters’ inner experiences may sharpen readers’ general abilities to imagine the minds of others. If that’s the case, the historical shift in literature from just-the-facts narration to the tracing of mental peregrinations may have had an unintended side effect: helping to train precisely the skills that people needed to function in societies that were becoming more socially complex and ambiguous.”
An Interview With Jill Lepore About Writing
Public Books - 4/24/17

"I’m baffled by the idea that reaching a wider audience involves using smaller words, as if there’s some inverse correlation between the size of your audience and of your vocabulary.”
A Deep Dive Into Digital Reading Versus Print Reading
Nautilus - 4/20/17

"It’s true that studies have found that readers given text on a screen do worse on recall and comprehension tests than readers given the same text on paper. But a 2011 study by the cognitive scientists Rakefet Ackerman and Morris Goldsmith suggests that this may be a function less of the intrinsic nature of digital devices than of the expectations that readers bring to them.”
Another Deep Look At Google Books
Atlantic - 4/20/17

"“Somewhere at Google there is a database containing 25 million books and nobody is allowed to read them.”
Trials In Collaborative Writing: The 6000 Edits To Define Happiness
Quartz - 4/18/17
NYT Has Run A Series Of “Copy-Edit” Exercises
Larry Ferlazzo - 4/17/17
On The Fate and Future Of Google Books
BackChannel - 4/11/17
Umberto Eco And Jean Paul Sartre Reflect On The Value Of Literature
Farnam Street - 4/10/17
College President: On The Value Of Writing And Reflection
Huffington Post - 4/7/17
Simon Armitage On Writing Poetry: “Language Is My Enemy"
Guardian - 3/25/17
AP Style Guide Now Permits “They” As Singular Gender Neutral
Poynter - 3/24/17
The NYT Has A Weekly Column Just For Book Recommendations
New York Times - 3/16/17

"Dear Match Book: I Need Short but Great Books for My Commute… Dear Match Book: What Books Are Best Savored by Reading Aloud?… Books for Those Who Love Sports or Just Love to Read About Them…”
Oxford Comma: Omitting One Comma Resulted In $10M Court Case
New York Times - 3/16/17
Forget Coding: Designers Should Learn To Write
Fast Company - 3/14/17
"The Impact Of The Book” - Pictures From A Museum Installation
Facebook/West Plains Public Library - 3/7/17
George Saunders Reflects On The Writing Process
Guardian - 3/4/17
News Site Requires Comprehension Quiz Before Commenting
Independent - 3/2/17
Many People Hear The Voices Of Characters They Read… After Finishing
New York Magazine - 3/1/17
Which Authors Use The Most Exclamation Marks Per 100,000 Words?
Atlantic - 3/1/17
Grammar-philes And Copy Editors Are Becoming Internet Stars
Columbia Journalism Review - 2/27/17
Mall Of America Set To Have… A Writer In Residence?
Slate - 2/21/17
Selfies As Sources Of In-Class Writing Prompts
New York Times - 2/21/17
Great Writing Instruction Sometimes Means Focusing On The Basics
KQED - 2/20/17
News Outlets Have Bots Writing Stories. What Does This Mean?
Wired - 2/16/17
On Reading To “Own” A Book
Medium - 2/15/17
Teaching Word Roots (Etymology) Can Aid Comprehension
ASCD - 2/1/17
“8… Middle Grade Novels for Kids Interested in Social Justice”
Barnes and Noble - 1/26/17
A Perfect Model of Close Reading… Of Louis CK’s Jokes [Video Essay]
YouTube/NerdWriter - 1/18/17
Gallup: 73% Prefer Print To E-Books, And More Reading Data
Gallup - 1/6/17
Can We Get Rid Of The Phrase “Creative Writing”?
Inside Higher Ed - 1/3/17
What Works In Teaching Writing, Backed By Experience And Research
Chronicle of Higher Education - 1/3/17
The Essay: History, Present, And Future
Atlantic - 1/1/17
What Is Blackout Poetry?
History Tech - 12/29/16
More Reflection On The Essay, John D’Agata, And Our Post-Fact Time
3 Quarks Daily - 12/19/16
Neitschze Had 10 Style Rules For Writing
Open Culture - 12/19/16
On The Grammar Of Emoji
New York Magazine - 12/16/16
Brain Pickings Best Children’s Books Of 2016
Brain Pickings - 12/12/16
Even Entrepreneurship Magazines Make Summer Reading Lists
Inc. - 12/7/16
Tips For Addressing Grammar In Written Work
Dartmouth - 12/5/16
NYT Best 10 Books Of 2016
New York Times - 12/1/16
“The Hero’s Journey” Simplified To Summarize Every (?) Story
Gizmodo - 11/29/16
Telling Stories Is An Essential Skill For All Professions
Misc Magazine - 11/29/16
Writers Choose Their Favorite Books Of 2016: Adichie, Adiga, And More
Guardian - 11/26/16
Aristotle’s Three Modes Of Persuasion: Ethos, Logos & Pathos
Farnam Street - 11/22/16
5 Strategies For Improving Student Writing
Chronicle of Higher Education - 11/21/16
Renaissance Learning Releases 2017 K-12 Reading Report
eSchool News - 11/18/16
Reading More Leads To More Learning. (Big Surprise…) Here’s Data.
THE Journal - 11/17/16
How Larger Writing Classes Might Actually Lead To Better Learning
EdTechResearcher - 11/17/16
eBooks And Hardcovers Are Down. Audiobooks Way Up.
JStor - 11/16/16
A Post-Election Rubric For Assessing Writing
McSweeney’s - 11/11/16
On Writing “The Arrival”
Talkhouse - 11/10/16
Some Reflections On Teaching Writing
ASCD - 11/10/16
On Teens And Reading: Why They Do And Don’t, How To Encourage More
KQED - 10/31/16
The Power Of Journaling: An Entrepreneur Starts Selling Journals
Shopify - 10/30/16
Students Write Novels For Class
KQED - 10/21/16
“Strategies To Help Students ‘Go Deep’ When Reading Digitally”
KQED - 10/16/16
Notes On How To Use Evidence Well In History Essays
History Tech - 10/12/16
Is Written (vs. Visual) Communication Essential For Sustaining Democracy?
Medium - 10/11/16
Should We Teach Grammar—Or Simply Read More And Write More?
NCTE - 10/3/16
On Teaching Composition: What Works And What Doesn’t
Chronicle of Higher Education - 10/3/16
Writing Tips From The Business World
Harvard Business Review - 9/28/16
“Can You Read A Book The Wrong Way?” - 2 Authors Sound Off
New York Times - 9/27/16
Why These Startup Founders Set Aside Time For Reading
Fast Company - 9/23/16
A Five Paragraph Essay Condemning the Five Paragraph Essay
NCTE - 9/10/16
“Morning Pages”: 750 Words Per Day, First Thing In The Morning
Quartz - 9/9/16

"Shortly after waking, they curl up with a journal and pen or pencil. They start writing, and they don’t stop until they’ve filled at least three hand-written pages—about 750 words. The routine is called Morning Pages, and people ranging from journalist Oliver Burkeman to entrepreneur Tim Ferriss say it’s changed their lives.”
Regular 20 Minute Journaling Helps Fight Emotional Funks
New York Magazine - 9/6/16
"We Are Reading Less Literature”
Pacific Standard - 8/31/16
The History Of Cursive, And Why Losing It Isn’t A Loss
New York Times - 8/20/16
The First Conference On Emojis? This November
Digiday - 8/12/16
Comma Queen: The New Yorker Has A Grammar Videocast
New Yorker - 8/3/16
Why We Read And What We Gain From It: Neil Gaiman And Others
Brain Pickings - 8/3/16
A Research Summary On Whether Teaching Vocabulary Helps Reading
Research Gate - 8/1/16
Reflexive Pronouns: A British Epidemic?
New York Times - 7/28/16
On Using A Period In Text Messages
The Conversation - 7/19/16
On The Emptiness Of Teaching Writing Through Formulas And Acronyms
Rethinking Schools - 7/1/16
A Verbose Tribute To Annotation
LA Review of Books - 6/27/16
On The Resilience Of Text, And Why We Won’t Be All Video In 10 Years
LA Times - 6/23/16
A Brief, Animated History Of The Book
TED-Ed/YouTube - 6/13/16
On The Decline Of Punctuation
New York Times - 6/9/16
Whichcraft: New Yorker Comma Queen On “That” Vs. “Which”
New Yorker - 6/6/16
On Moving Beyond Formulaic Writing
Rethinking Schools - 6/1/16
People Prefer Paper, And More Reading Trends From 2015
New York Times - 5/26/16
Has Peak Digital Passed? Digital Sales Are Down, Paper Sales Are Up
Guardian - 5/13/16
Some Nuance On How We Read From Screens: Concepts vs. Details
Pacific Standard - 5/11/16
Writing What You Know Might Be The Best Study Strategy
Medium - 5/7/16
Avid Reader Shane Parrish Talks About Reading And Taking Notes
Evernote - 5/6/16
A History Of The Word Processor
New Republic - 5/2/16
Student Use Of Rubrics For Peer Editing As Accurate As Teachers
Journal Of Adolescent And Adult Literacy - 4/18/16
On The Remarkable Resilience Of Print Books
Wired - 4/14/16
AP Will No Longer Capitalize “Internet”
Twitter - 4/2/16
Ta-Nehisi Coates: On Writing The Reboot of Black Panther Comic Book
Atlantic - 4/1/16
On The Relevance Of Citation In The Age Of Google
LA Review of Books - 3/29/16
James Patterson Aims To Write Books Readable In One Sitting
New York Times - 3/21/16
What Does Digital Reading Mean For Data On How People Read?
New York Times - 3/14/16
Stanford Develops A Science Writing Program
Stanford - 3/11/16
Some Strategies For Increasing How Much You Read
Austin Kleon - 3/3/16
Reviewing Writing Style Guides
Harper’s - 3/1/16
An Interview With Robert Caro: On Reading And Writing
Gothamist - 2/17/16
Students Still (Overwhelmingly) Prefer Reading On Paper
Digital Trends - 2/7/16
A Simple Plan To Read More: Read 25 Pages A Day
Medium - 1/30/16
A Deep Dive Into Research On Reading On Digital Devices
Nautilus - 1/7/16
Teach Vocabulary Through Analyzing And Writing Rap Lyrics
NPR - 12/23/15
On Whether Computers Will Be Able To Learn To Read
Priceonomics - 12/11/15
What It Means To Grow Up When Books and Albums Are Digital
New York Times - 12/5/15
Should We Read Aloud To Teens?
School Library Journal - 11/25/15
The Story Of Cuneiform, Some Of Our Earliest Writing
Smithsonian - 10/20/15
The Origin Of Ellipses?
Guardian - 10/20/15
Google Books Gains Legal Support In Scanning Every Book
TechDirt - 10/16/15
Should We Stop Buying eBooks? It Seems Everyone Else Is…
New York Times - 9/22/15
Should We Accept “They” As 3rd Person Gender Neutral Singular?
Hopes and Fears - 9/21/15
Harry Potter Fans Leave Notes In Books At Stores and Libraries
The Star - 9/21/15
Alice In Wonderland, And The Rise Of Literary Annotation
New Republic - 9/21/15
John McPhee On Choosing What To Leave Out When Writing
New Yorker - 9/14/15
On The Frivolity—And Then Poignancy—Of Emojis
Brooklyn Rail - 9/8/15
On The Passive Voice, And Why It Should Be Avoided…
McSweeney’s - 9/3/15
A Brief History of Punctuation
BBC - 9/2/15
Majority Of Students Prefer Printed Books, Says Textbook Company
Campus Technology - 9/1/15
Making Time For Books Make You Less Busy And Less Stressed
Harvard Business Review - 9/1/15
People Read Literature On Paper, Pulp On eBooks, Says Amazon UK
Telegraph - 8/26/15
Short Stories Composed Entirely of Dictionary Sample Sentences
Slate - 8/26/15
Tribute And Guide: How Writing Makes Great People
99u - 8/18/15
The Evolution (Devolution?) Of Summer Reading
Wall Street Journal - 8/14/15
We Read Short Form Writing Online, But We Crave Depth
Re/Code - 8/7/15
How To Write To Reduce Cognitive Load For Readers
MIT - 8/3/15
14 Tips On Writing From 14 Famous Writers
Medium - 7/30/15
Writing: From The Greek Traders To The Monastic Scribes
Lapham’s Quarterly - 7/29/15
How Editors Have Made Great Writers, Including Harper Lee
Telegraph - 7/15/15
A Browser Plugin That Adjusts Word Spacing For Readability
Quartz - 7/14/15
On The Value Of Rereading Literature
New York Review of Books - 7/11/15
Can Writing Your Goals Dramatically Improve Your Outcomes?
NPR - 7/10/15
A Summary What We Know About Reading On Screens vs. On Paper
Fast Company - 7/8/15
EdX Offers An English Grammar And Writing Course
EdX - 7/7/15
An Argument For Using The Summer To Reread Old Favorites
Wall Street Journal - 7/1/15
Mapping The History Of Metaphors In English (A Work In Progress)
Guardian - 6/30/15
The World’s Best Indie Bookstores: A Crowdsourced List
Guardian - 6/19/15
Do Different Typefaces Evoke Different Feelings? (Obviously!)
Wired - 6/18/15
How To Build A Habit Of Reading
99u - 6/10/15
“Metaphor Designer” … It’s A Job!
Aeon - 6/9/15
Bibliotherapy: Prescribed Reading For Life’s Challenges
New Yorker - 6/9/15
What Is The Boundary Between Fact & Fiction? (via Joseph Mitchell)
Atlantic - 6/1/15
College Newspaper Abandons Print, Uses Only Twitter And Medium
Nieman Lab - 5/27/15
Hardy Boys And The Ghostwriting Industry
Atlantic - 5/27/15
The Case For Writing (And Reading) Books Online
Medium - 5/14/15
10 Tips For Clearer Writing (And Why)
Without Bullshit - 5/4/15
Give Kids Books Before The Summer And Prevent Summer Slide
Science Daily - 4/25/15
In Praise Of The Physical Book
New Republic - 4/19/15
On The Complication Of Writing Different Races
Literary Hub - 4/9/15
“In Praise Of Irrelevant Reading”
First Things - 4/8/15
The Active Voice Tells Better Stories. Science Give Up The Passive.
Slate - 4/1/15
Umberto Eco on Antilibraries: On Having Books We Haven’t Read
Brain Pickings - 3/24/15
Exploring the Gender Gap In Reading
Brookings - 3/24/15
The Relativist Approach To Grammar
Wall Street Journal - 3/13/15
McPhee’s Playful Look At Frame Of Reference When Writing
New Yorker - 3/9/15
An Ever Growing Portion Of Our News Is Written By Robots
New York Times - 3/8/15
7 General Ways For Teachers In Any Class To Support Writing
Cult of Pedagogy - 3/6/15
How Robot Writing Works
Wired - 3/6/15
How The Guardian Navigates British vs. American Spelling
Atlantic - 3/1/15
Digital Natives Still Prefer Reading Print
Washington Post - 2/22/15
Fantasy Literature (e.g. Harry Potter) Stimulates The Brain Differently
Pacific Standard - 2/13/15
Should We Abandon Our System Of Spelling?
Atlantic - 2/9/15
“Loving to Read” Is Relatively New
New Yorker - 2/2/15
92% Of College Students Say They Concentrate Better Reading Print
New Republic - 1/14/15
Dictionaries For Kids Are Replacing Nature Words With Tech Words
Guardian - 1/13/15
Reading “For Fun” Drops Nearly 10% Among Kids In 4 Years
Guardian - 1/9/15
Reading Aloud To Children Is Beneficial—At Any Age
New York Times - 1/8/15
NPR Hosts A Write-In Grammar Hall Of Shame
NPR - 12/30/14
In Defense of Clichés
Irish Times - 12/22/14
2014 Writers On Writing: Yiyun Li, David Mitchell, Jane Smiley, More
Atlantic - 12/22/14
Online Review Sites Like Yelp Foster Creative, Purposeful Writing
Fast Company - 12/17/14
Writing Online Was How Ayesha Siddiqi Developed Her Voice
Guardian - 12/9/14
An Argument for Aggressive Annotation
New York Review of Books - 12/3/14
Why It’s “A Historic” Not “An Historic”...
Washington Post - 12/1/14
Even the Business World Recognizes The Power Of Metaphor
Harvard Business Review - 11/17/14
Neuroscience Says Reading Suspense Is... More... Suspenseful...
Fast Company - 11/7/14
Digital Writing Month Began Yesterday
Digital Writing Month - 11/1/14
Austin Kleon: “33 Thoughts On Reading”
Austin Kleon - 10/17/14
Advocating for the Passive Voice
Atlantic - 10/14/14
Now You can Change the Reading Level When Reading the News
Brilliant Blog - 10/8/14
Turnitin Offers Automated Writing Feedback to Students
EdSurge - 10/7/14
Lawyers and Adverbs: A Relationship Built Around Humanity
Wall Street Journal - 10/7/14
Steven Pinker on Good Writing, and Classic Style vs Plain Style
Slate - 9/30/14
Another Example of How Summer Reading Stops Summer Slide
New York Times - 9/25/14
Books vs Screen: 3 Differences in How You Read
Mic - 9/22/14
"A Generic College Paper” [Humor]
McSweeney’s - 9/19/14

"Utterly contrived topic sentence revealing pretty much every flaw of structured essay writing. Therefore, supporting sentence invoking source that exists only in the bibliographies of other cited material (pp. arbitrary to arbitrary + 5). Contemplative question? Definitive refutation paraphrased from a blog found at 2AM.”
Are We Innovating Ourselves Out of Reading and Writing?
Fast Company - 9/17/14
Slow Reading: Reduces Stress, Replenishes Energy
Wall Street Journal - 9/16/14
The Life And Death Of Diagramming Sentences
NPR - 8/22/14
Live-Tweet, YOLO, Hot Mess, and More Enter the OED
New York Times - 8/15/14
Studies Begin to Tease Apart How eReading Changes Understanding
New York Times - 8/13/14
Metaphors Work Both Ways (Fishy Smells Inspire Suspicion)
Pacific Standard - 8/13/14
The Science of Typos. (Yes, There’s a Science of Typos.)
Wired - 8/12/14
Creative Reading Nooks
Design Milk - 8/1/14
Read to Your Kids. Read to Your Kids. Read to Your Kids.
Creativity Post - 7/31/14
Reading Harry Potter Might Help Battle Prejudice
Pacific Standard - 7/29/14
Tips for Starting a Writing Center
Edutopia - 7/18/14
We Need to Reteach Ourselves to Read on Digital Devices
New Yorker - 7/16/14
Junot Diaz: Dungeons & Dragons Made Me a Better Storyteller
New York Times - 7/13/14
Science Says It’s Best to Fall in Love with Readers...!
Elite Daily - 7/9/14
Context Matters: Why Students Are Choosing Books Over eBooks
Discover - 6/17/14
Is “Serious” Reading Fading?
New York Review of Books - 6/10/14
Twitter: Home of Accidental Iambs, Anagrams, and now Pangrams
Slate - 6/6/14
Is “Lunch” Bad English, and Other Grammatical Dilemmas
NPR - 6/3/14
What is the Science of Handwriting vs Typing?
New York Times - 6/2/14
4 Global Architecture Firms Reinvent the Bookshop
More Intelligent Life - 6/1/14
Levar Burton is Bringing Back Reading Rainbow
Slate - 5/28/14
A Different Take on Why Kids Aren’t Reading
Forbes - 5/13/14
Reading For Pleasure Continues to Drop Among Children
Common Sense Media - 5/12/14
New York Public Library Backs Down from Gutting 42nd St
New York Times - 5/7/14
Reading on Paper Continues to Drive Deeper Comprehension
Wired - 5/1/14
Top 20 Most Read Books by Grade Level, K-12
Renaissance Learning - 5/1/14
More Criticism of Robo-Grading
Boston Globe - 4/30/14
How Reading Happens in the Brain
Brilliant Blog - 4/21/14
Reading Banned Books Correlates with Increased Civic Engagement
Pacific Standard - 4/10/14
The Ideal Length of Tweets, FB Posts, and Other Digital Text
Fast Company - 4/7/14
3 Steps for Teaching Imitative Writing from Model Texts
Educational Leadership - 4/1/14
Which Comes First: Writing or Critical Thinking?
Educational Leadership - 4/1/14
David Foster Wallace on 5 Common Word Usage Mistakes
Farnam Street - 3/27/14
On Writing Short
New York Times - 3/24/14
How We Use Punctuation Differently in a Digital Age
Atlantic - 3/19/14
Take Your Notes Manually, Access Them Digitally
NPR - 3/18/14
How One City Is Working to Close the Word Gap
NPR - 3/17/14
Should Digital Reading and Writing (of Email) Simulate Hard Copy?
Fast Company - 3/11/14
Is Reading a Class Issue?
BBC - 3/11/14
What is the Place For Speed-Reading Anyway?
Atlantic - 3/10/14
What is the Life of Longform Writing Online?
Tow Center - 3/9/14
An Entirely New Way to Read. For Some, It Will Be Much Easier.
Fast Company - 3/3/14
Lawyer Makes Editing Program That Might Help Teach Writing
WordRake - 3/1/14
Anne Lamott’s “Bird By Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”
Farnam Street - 2/26/14
What is the Most Internet Sentence?
New Republic - 2/26/14
Teaching Grammar Through Writing, Not Drills, Works Better [Fixed Link]
Atlantic - 2/25/14
Audiobooks Revive the Culture of Storytelling
New York Times - 2/22/14
The Long History (and Short Future?) of Rhetoric and Composition
Ann Larson - 2/22/14
Why Did USC Shutter Its Professional Writing Program?
LA Weekly - 2/20/14
Google: Writing Is a Design Skill. 5 Ways to Write Better Copy.
Fast Company - 2/18/14
How Twitter Helped An Intellectual Learn to Write
New Yorker - 2/12/14
Do We Read More, Less, or Differently?
Pacific Standard - 1/30/14
Do We Still Need the Comma?
Slate - 1/28/14
Books vs Blogs: Which Has a Better Return on (Time) Investment?
Forbes - 1/24/14
Does Reading Really Make You More Intelligent?
Guardian - 1/23/14
One Writer’s Look: The 5 Best Punctuation Marks in Literature
Vulture - 1/16/14
E-Book Reading Grows, Print Holds Steady
Publishers Weekly - 1/16/14
Netflix for Books
New York Times - 12/24/13
The Effect of Reading Lingers in the Brain for Days
Futurity - 12/23/13
Tech is Here to Stay, But Books Aren’t Going Anywhere
The Globe and Mail - 12/21/13
Why Libraries are So Important for our Future
The Guardian - 10/15/13
How One Comedian Learned to Write
Fast Company - 9/12/13
Why Computers Can’t Meaningfully Grade Writing (Yet?)
Washington Post - 5/2/13
On The Role Of Objects In Good Writing
Atlantic - 10/2/12
“John Milton - Our Greatest Word-Maker”
Guardian - 1/28/08
What do Business Leaders Treasure Most? Their Libraries.
New York Times - 7/21/07

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