Over 140 Picture Prompts to Inspire Student Writing
Think The New York Times is only for readers at a high-school reading level? Think again. Besides written articles, The Times also offers a rich collection of visuals — photos, illustrations, graphics, GIFs and short videos — that are accessible to learners of all levels. Since 2016, we’ve been featuring these images in our daily…
181 Prompts to Inspire Writing and Discussion
Every day of the school year, we publish a fresh Student Opinion question. Below are all the 181 questions we asked during the 2018-19 school year (available here as a PDF), divided into two categories — those that easily lend themselves to classroom debate and persuasive writing, and those that are more suitable for creative,…
Unit 4: Informational Writing
Welcome to our fourth writing unit of the school year. Below you will find a detailed description of each element, as well as ways to put them together to make your own custom unit. To learn more, visit our writing curriculum overview.Unit overviewOf the three broad types of writing that the Common Core State Standards…
Live Webinar: Writing for Podcasts
Register for the live webinar on March 25 at 4 p.m. Eastern time.Student-produced podcasts are an engaging way to merge project-based learning, storytelling and digital media skills. Podcasts give students a voice — an opportunity to tell their story, teach something new or explore a topic that’s important to them. This multimedia form of expression…
Andreas Loizou: “I took it for granted that people wanted me to be educated:...
Before Alison, I worked in investment banking and finance with the likes of PWC, Goldman Sachs and Paribas. I also worked for a long time for the Financial Times. I’ve had a couple of books published, one is a novel that teaches people about banking and one is a book about business writing. I’ve spent…
Unit 6: Writing for Podcasts
Join our live webinar on April 29 on Teaching Students How to Produce Their Own Podcasts. Welcome to our sixth writing unit of the school year. Below, you will find a detailed description of each element as well as ways to put them together to make your own custom unit. To learn more, visit our…
Try This: 16 Real-World Models for DIY Writing Projects
If teachers need a model for inexpensive, authentic and game-changing writing instruction, they should look no further than the big box Swedish household goods and furniture company Ikea. Ingvar Kamprad, the company’s founder, created a brilliant formula: Take your average homeowners, invite them into a vast and winding labyrinth of well-designed and appointed model rooms,…
Our 2nd Annual STEM Writing Contest
Do I need a Works Cited page?Yes. We provide you with a separate field to list the sources you used to write your essay. You’re allowed to format your list however you want; we will not judge your entry based on formatting in this section. Internal citations are not necessary.Can I have someone else check…
Writing Comparative Essays: Making Connections to Illuminate Ideas
Notice how this student focuses. Instead of starting with a broad thesis like “We can see many parallels between the themes of ‘The Odyssey’ and our world today,” he looks only at how the Greek concept of xenia echoes today — and does so by examining just one article about Uganda. Below are the first…
Writing Rich Reading Responses: Our Summer Contest
You only have 275 words or so to work with, so this can be done lightly, in a paragraph or so. After all, as Anastasia Economides, a Times staff editor who judged in 2016, pointed out:At their age, I was always too intimidated to even read The Times, let alone reflect my thoughts on the…
