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English Language Arts

English Language Arts

Students & Educators

Terry HardisonFebruary 11, 2019 0

The February Dilemma

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,

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Students & Educators

Ralph MooreOctober 12, 2018 0

Learn what all the buzz is about: Sign up for a Crio webinar!

At Curriculum Pathways we’re so passionate about education that in addition to building our resources, we’re now also giving you the tools to build your own. Whether you’re remixing someone else’s work or starting from scratch, you’ll build lessons like never before. Not a programmer? No problem. Crio enables anyone

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Students & Educators

Ralph MooreOctober 8, 2018 0

Learn About Writing Reviser in this fun Webinar!

Want your students to ask questions experienced writers ask automatically? Available at no cost from Curriculum Pathways, Writing Reviser allows writers to focus on purpose and audience, essay structure, and use of written language (sentence economy, variety, power, and clarity). As a result, students learn to express themselves with greater precision and

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Students & Educators

Terry HardisonSeptember 4, 2018 0

Getting Started with the Writing Reviser Add-in for Microsoft Word

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

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Students & Educators

Scott McQuigganSeptember 4, 2018 0

5 Reasons All Writers Need the SAS Writing Reviser Add-in for Microsoft Office

Are you one of the millions of writers using Microsoft Word, for work or life? Whether you are writing a narrative essay for your 5th-grade teacher due in two days, summarizing your methods and results for the lab report due by the end of the semester, drafting a new blog

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Students & Educators

Terry HardisonAugust 20, 2018 0

Back to School: English

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

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Students & Educators

Molly FarrowMay 22, 2018 0

Never Underestimate the Humble Tool Tip

Active (close, engaged) reading involves analyzing the meaning and context of new content. According to ASCD, the goal of close reading is to uncover many layers of meaning. But first students must grasp the functional meaning of each word and reference in the text. Writing centers at George Mason and many other universities offer

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Students & Educators

Terry HardisonMay 9, 2018 0

Mission Critical: Teaching Students to Think like Writers

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”

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Students & Educators

Terry HardisonMay 8, 2018 0

Writing Reviser: Now Offering More Opportunities for Improvement

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,

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Students & Educators

Terry HardisonMay 7, 2018 0

Writing Reviser: Choosing Better Words

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

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Students & Educators

Terry HardisonMay 7, 2018 0

Writing Reviser: Making Sentences Clearer

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.

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Students & Educators

Terry HardisonMay 7, 2018 0

Writing Reviser: Improving Sentence Variety

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

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Students & Educators

Terry HardisonApril 6, 2018 0

Why in the World Do We Need Poetry?

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

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Students & Educators

Mimi StapletonDecember 21, 2017 0

3 Reasons to take our new free online PD course: Building Unit Plans

Ah, winter break! It's a time when many educators take a break from teaching. But for those that want to earn CEU documentation and learn how to integrate technology in your lesson plans, we’ve got you covered. Our newest free online PD course, Building Unit Plans with Curriculum Pathways, guides

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Students & Educators

Terry HardisonNovember 28, 2017 0

Supporting Competency-Based Writing

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

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Students & Educators

Ralph MooreNovember 8, 2017 0

Show with Code: Integrate Coding in Core Curriculum

Are you ready to code in your ELA, math, science, and social studies classes? We now have lessons to support coding across the curriculum. Our new Show with Code series challenges students to demonstrate mastery of certain concepts through CodeSnaps coding activities. The initial lessons in the series include these titles and disciplines: Show with

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Students & Educators

Ralph MooreOctober 16, 2017 0

FAQ: Four Ways to Get Started with Writing Reviser

Writing Reviser, the free Curriculum Pathways writing tool, allows student writers to focus on purpose and audience, essay structure, and expressiveness in their own drafts — rather than in some abstract textbook example in which they have no investment and (alas, too often) little interest. Available on the web and as a

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Students & Educators

Tim McBrideSeptember 27, 2017 0

Writing Reviser Add-on + Animated Bulldog = Improved Student Essays

Working to reinforce the virtues extolled in our Writing Reviser, we’ve prepared a series of English language arts videos starring a lovable pit-bull named Muggs—aptly named after a dog owned by the famous American writer James Thurber. The synergy between the two tools has helped many students learn to write more forcefully,

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Students & Educators

Tim McBrideSeptember 25, 2017 0

Students can Quickly and Easily Document Research with the Writing Reviser

The Byzantine particulars of documenting sources within a research paper and correctly formatting a final Works Cited page have frustrated students and teachers since the invention of papyrus. Worse, struggling to research the proper way to cite research sources steals valuable time from activities central to any writing class: refining the essay’s

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Students & Educators

Tim McBrideSeptember 19, 2017 0

Writing Reviser: Cut Needless Phrases with a free Google Doc Add-on

Strings of choppy prepositional phrases often cripple student writing—especially when those phrases attempt to compensate for a weak verb, a tactic akin to filling up your radiator as a remedy for running out of gas. Consider this defilement of my first sentence: A common type of failing in writing by

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Students & Educators

Tim McBrideSeptember 11, 2017 0

Problem Relatives: Google Doc Add-on vs. Wordy and Misplaced Clauses

A simple problem has long prevented students from revising their papers to correct mistakes with relative clauses: they can’t identify those clauses. Writing Reviser eliminates that problem. We highlight all the relative pronouns in an essay and present arrows pointing toward the word to which it relates. Students simply follow

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Students & Educators

Tim McBrideSeptember 7, 2017 0

Spot Verbs in Nouns' Clothing: Use Writing Reviser Google Doc Add-on

Too often beginning writers revise their work without a clear sense of purpose. Sadly, that often results in a paper that becomes different rather than better, a process akin to someone blindly twisting and re-twisting a Rubik’s cube, uniformed by a larger strategy. The process can be painful to watch.

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Students & Educators

Tim McBrideSeptember 6, 2017 0

Help Students Vary Sentence Length with Writing Reviser Google Doc Add-on

One of the easiest ways to lose a reader is to write a series of sentences with the exact same structure: “See Spot run. Watch him jump. Pet his head.” Compare that juvenile effect to one in which the student purposefully varies her sentence lengths: “Sitting in an expensive restaurant,

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Students & Educators

Tim McBrideSeptember 6, 2017 0

Actively Combat Passive Voice with a Google Doc Add-on

“Prefer active voice” may be the single most frequently dispensed injunction to improve writing. Strunk and White, George Orwell, and all student handbooks of the past 50 years extol the virtue of active verbs. But two problems often go unremarked: Students cannot reliably identify passive constructions in their own work.

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Students & Educators

Tim McBrideSeptember 5, 2017 0

Track Big-Picture Stats with the Writing Reviser Google Doc Add-on

Open the Statistics feature in the free Writing Reviser Google Doc Add-on, and you’ll see an elaborate but easy-to-read analysis of your entire essay. It’s the writerly equivalent of a blood test report, except that instead of listing your cholesterol level and lipid profile, we diagnose statistics crucial to the revision process.

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Students & Educators

Laura CroyleAugust 3, 2017 0

Engage Fake Readers: Provide the Power to Pick

Autonomy leads to engagement Research supports time-on-task as a proven strategy in developing reading skills. Studies show that students’ time spent engaged directly correlates to achievement levels. The more they are engaged, the more they learn. The key word is engaged. Simply allocating time to read during the school day

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Students & Educators

Terry HardisonApril 3, 2017 0

Coaxing Student Writers Out of Their Comfort Zones

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

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Students & Educators

Terry HardisonMarch 13, 2017 0

Daring to Diagram

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

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Students & Educators

Terry HardisonFebruary 27, 2017 0

Using Jefferson to Model Argument Writing

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

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Students & Educators

Terry HardisonJanuary 26, 2017 0

Documenting Sources with a Research Tool

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

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