How to Use This Site

For Everyone:

This site is written to be used by students, parents, and teachers.  If you are an adult, feel free to sign your comment however you like, but if you are a student – NEVER put your last name on a website.  I would love to know if you are a boy or girl commenting and your age, and if you want, you could write your first name if you want me to address you in a response to a comment.


For Students:

If you are a student, I hope that you will read my blog posts and find something in them that will inspire you to create a new writing project.  If I am lucky, you will comment and share some of your inspiration with me.  I also hope you will check out my book recommendations.  I have always found the library a little intimidating without ideas to guide me through the rows of shelves, and if you have any good book ideas, I love to hear about new books too!  I think kids have a wildly unique view of the world and always enjoy hearing off the wall ideas.  Please share your thoughts in the comment section after my blog posts.


For Parents:

If you are a parent, I hope you will encourage your child to read my blog posts.  I try to put ideas out there that get kids thinking about the world around them in new and interesting ways.  Hopefully, they will write about their connections and any story ideas they create.  At the end of each blog will be a question or ideas for writing.  If you are home-schooling, this a perfect place to enhance your curriculum.  I also hope you will visit my book reviews.  I only post books that I like, and once you have read a few, you will have a taste for my interests – they are pretty wide!


For Teachers:

I hope that you will use this site to enhance your writing curriculum and allow your students to be more connected to the writing world on a safe platform.  You can read the blog posts in class and do a journal entry or discuss it as a group.  If you do this, you can post comments for your students as they call them out in class, or have them respond as homework.  Please remember to tell me if they are boys or girls (or include the student’s first name) and their ages.  I really enjoy hearing what kids are thinking and will try to respond promptly to comments.  You can also assign them a visit to my site as homework and they can return a sample of their writing or a journal entry the next day.

The book reviews are only of books I like (I prefer to stay positive) and are all followed by a Discussion/Project Ideas section that almost always comes from the core curriculum standards.  I focus my activities a lot on higher level thinking and thinking outside the box.  A few reviews have units attached.  If you like something you see and would like for me to write a unit for you, please contact me.  I write them to the specifications of the person making the request.  (I do not charge for this.)  Sometime in the spring, I hope to hold a writing contest and am in the process of putting together the logistics now.  It will come from many of the strategies my blog posts will teach throughout the year.


Thank you so much for visiting my site, and happy writing!