Literary Graffiti is a cool way to have students take notes electronically (and you can print them if we had printers installed).

Allows students to read a new (but classic) short story each day or just read one chapter from a classic novel each day. Could be used for any English class.

This site has several writing prompt ideas. It also discusses the modes of writing and gives two example papers

This site offers ideas for how to introduce composition to students. It also links to a nice .pdf for peer revision.

We need to think of some new essay topics for 9th grade comp. courses. This lists 200 prompts that are relevant to students today.

I think some of these teaching ideas would be interesting to get my students involved in thinking about argument. I could model a paper about eating bugs.

This article discusses the differences between reading for information and reading critically. It also breaks down the steps to reading critically and discusses synoptic and post-reading. These various types of reading work to help students better understand information.

This website describes how one teachers uses a blended learning approach to teach paragraph writing. This could be a useful model for our 9th grade composition course.

"Convince Me" PDF gives excellent introductory lesson ideas for argument aligned to common core standards.

This is a great PDF which distinguishes argument writing from persuasive writing and explains the terms students need to be familiar with. It also discusses ideas on how to teach the elements of argument and explains the importance of clear feedback.

This technique (Glossing) helps students see revision in papers. I want to look at this more closely -It may be a promising technique to try with 9th grade.

This source looks at how to have a discussion about revision with students to help them discover what inhibits their ability to revise. It goes on to discuss peer editing/revising and gives helpful tips for student-teacher writing conferences.

This links to a PDF about making teacher comments that students can actually use for revision.

This source discusses the importance of teacher modelling when we teach writing to students. The idea is to get them to see beyond their original draft and understand that they have more to say after their initial thoughts

National Writing Project Site- Start with a student's original draft and shows different steps of the revision process. Mostly prose writing.

This PDF shows how to compare and contrast. It emphasizes "What's the point?!" It also helps students write a paragraph step by step.

This website breaks down refutation writing to four steps (Restate, refute, support, conclude)