Terry Hardison oversees the development of English language arts resources for Curriculum Pathways. Prior to joining SAS, Terry worked for 21 years as a teacher and as a district-level English language arts supervisor.
At a restaurant recently, I overheard part of the conversation at an adjoining table. A man with a stentorian voice was complaining about one of his co-workers. “And the worse part,” the man boomed, “is that this guy constantly tries to take credit for my ideas, which you know is
As a high school English teacher, I faced a dilemma every February. Throughout the year, I assigned texts by African American writers, including Phillis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, Langston Hughes, and Zora Neale Hurston. After all, their voices were central to any discussion of American literature. For Black History Month, however,
Let’s face it: teaching students to write well is a remarkably complex task. Whether they’re explicating an Emily Dickinson poem or reporting lab results for a science class, student writers must express themselves clearly and forcefully—and that usually involves revision. As James Baldwin knew, rewriting is both painful and
As the new school year gets under way, you may be looking to ease your students back into English language arts. Here are a few ways that Curriculum Pathways can help. Check out Crio! Ready to give shape to some new ideas about novels or writing types you will be
The purpose of our innovative Writing Reviser tool is both significant and, I think, subtle—the tool aims to teach students how to write. No one would argue that this is easy. It isn't. We’ve all seen writing programs that take the “easy” path—marking student errors, subjecting students to endless “drill and kill”
When I’ve had the chance over the last few years to show Writing Reviser in classrooms and at conferences, I’ve been careful to point that its purpose is not punitive. Specifically, I mean that the tool does not simply search for and highlight mistakes that student writers inevitably make. Instead,
Good news! We’ve revised the Writing Reviser. We’re happy to announce a number of exciting new features we’ve recently added to the Writing Reviser menu to help students select words that are more vivid, accurate, and powerful. Give meaning to those empty expressions. A new feature in the Sentence Economy
We regularly revise and add features to Writing Reviser so that it is even more responsive to the needs of students! More specifically, we've bolstered the Writing Reviser menu to help students spot potentially problematic words and expressions, thus making their sentences clearer and more powerful. Tell the reader what “This” means.
In the spirit that even good work can get better with revision, we continually revise Writing Reviser. We think you'll be especially excited about a couple of features that help students revise words and expressions in ways that will make their sentences more varied and powerful. Draw on more words in your
Every April we celebrate National Poetry Month, a time when verse-loving educators, media specialists, booksellers, and publishers introduce novel ways to promote poetry. Teachers plan special units on the Romantics, poetry lovers attend readings and symposiums, and we all expect to see releases of new and old titles. It’s a
It goes by many names. Proficiency-based education, mastery-based education, standards-based education, and—perhaps the most commonly used appellation these days—competency-based education. Whatever name you know it by, you’ve probably noticed that schools at every level are increasingly making the transition from a seat-time system of grade levels and courses to one
Students increasingly use Google Docs to complete essays, lab reports, blog posts, and other writing tasks. That’s why Curriculum Pathways has created free digital resources; they include a revision add-on and a punctuation tool—both of which help students who use Google Docs improve any type of writing. So if you’re attending
All learners have comfort zones. I find it enjoyable, for example, to grapple with the complexities and rhetorical puzzles that James Joyce offers up in his novel Ulysses. But we also know our discomfort zones— concepts or subject areas that make us nervous or unsettled. Give me anything written by
We called her the Diagram Queen. She was a small woman, probably no taller than five feet, but her students looked upon her as a giant. Each day, she would greet us with a smile and utter these simple instructions: “Students, take out a sheet of paper. Before we start
I don’t need to make the case that providing students with models of good writing can be a powerful tool for improving their work. That’s why I want to feature in this Buried Treasures post the Argument Writing section from inContext, our massive network of terms, definitions, and activities that
For English language arts, any discussion of Buried Treasures would be incomplete without a mention of the research wizard from the Writing Navigator series. The four products in this series guide students through the writing process (planning, drafting, revising, and publishing). But students who wish to support their ideas with quotations
In this Buried Treasures post, I want to spotlight a powerful little writing exercise you may not have discovered. It’s a sentence-modeling activity that appears in all nine titles of the English Poetry Series, but you can apply it to any writing task that requires text analysis. In the series,
If you are a regular reader of the blog posts on this site, you may recall that our curriculum specialists occasionally identify and describe some of their favorite SAS Curriculum Pathways resources. For example, 5 SAS Curriculum Pathways Hidden Gems highlights valuable—but often overlooked—lessons in math, English, science, social studies,
We all know the feeling. Call it "punctuation despair." The sense that you're about to do something dreadfully wrong. Sartre might have called it "l'inquiétude de la virgule incertaine" ("the disquiet of the uncertain comma"). Your writing assignment is due, and you’re still not sure whether the semicolon in your
If you’ve been looking for an engaging punctuation tool that students can use on their tablets or phones, your search is over. Punctuation Rules!, one of our most popular web-based resources, has been converted to HTML5 and is now mobile ready. New Features The updated tool includes a few
Among the millions of Google Drive users are many students who increasingly use Google Docs to create essays, lab reports, blog posts, and other forms of communication. That’s one reason why Curriculum Pathways created the SAS Writing Reviser Add-on, a tool that helps students using Google Docs improve any type
“Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance” Ralph Waldo Emerson has long been lauded as America’s great champion of individualism and nonconformity, but this mantle may now be passing to Adam Grant, Wharton School business professor and bestselling author. In his new book Originals:
Perhaps it’s the frenzied primary campaign season that’s to blame. But for some reason, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the state of our public discourse. More specifically, I’ve noticed that our political candidates are increasingly unwilling—or unable—to answer questions with logical, detailed answers. When asked to explain why
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” –Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice It is almost certainly a truth universally acknowledged that Jane Austen’s opening line from her great novel is one of the most
Every April we celebrate National Poetry Month, a time when verse-loving educators, media specialists, booksellers, and publishers introduce novel ways to promote poetry. Teachers plan special units on the Romantics, poetry lovers attend readings and symposiums, and we all expect to see releases of new and old titles. It’s
As often as I can, I like to ask English teachers about the types of SAS Curriculum Pathways resources their students respond to and enjoy. Many of them will talk about Writing Navigator, Exploring Poetry about Sports, or Punctuation Rules! And I frequently hear about how much students enjoy the
I recall sitting at my desk one sunny morning back in June, frowning at my computer screen as I reread the first two paragraphs of a blog I had been laboring over for the last hour. This is not working at all, I remember thinking. I’m not saying what I
I’m sure most students would agree that writing well—especially writing well for a variety of purposes—is not easy. On any given school day, a student might be asked to analyze a poem by Emily Dickinson, to construct a lab report following a science experiment, or to explain the historical importance
Every so often I like to amuse myself by scrolling through a website that identifies special days, weeks, and months during the year that honor a person, event, product, or virtue. For example, we all know that April 1 is April Fools’ Day, but I was surprised to learn recently
It’s late March, and I can see signs of spring everywhere I look. The dingy snow piles that lined our streets and highways in February have finally melted away. If I look closely, I can make out the first traces of tree pollen that will gradually coat our cars and
