Quick, answer without thinking: What is your favorite time of day to write? Me, 6:30am. I hate mornings but this is my only alone time all day. My children are still asleep. How often do you write? Just when the muse strikes? Or on a schedule? Every day, once a week? I was an inspiration [...]

OK Chris. Go out and hit the ball
like you did in practice yesterday,
step into it and drive it off the wall
in center field, just swing away
and put it out there in the gap in left [...]

Inside/Outside: “Fire Escape” by Mitali Perkins

Students will read “Fire Escape” by Mitali Perkins and compare how the roles of being an “insider” and “outsider” are portrayed in the story. Students will reflect on the force of culture in the lives of the characters as well as in their own lives [...]

Inference, or Teaching how to Read Between the Lines using “The Weather” by Giulia Caterini.

Many students must be taught how to infer and the difference between an inference an opinion. Students will practice inference by learning to search for clues as they read “The Weather” by combining textual evidence and background knowledge [...]

By Catherine Price Slayden

She is wasting away, they tell her, but she can’t afford to hear them. She is on to something, something amazing that will make her everything she’s always wanted to be. They don’t understand. They don’t look in the mirror and see what she does [...]

I know that many of you YARN readers spent the summer nurturing the writer in you—by going to summer creative writing programs, or just spending hours under a tree with a journal. And now, it’s back to school time! Time for exciting new pencils and sneakers, sure, but also time for the drudgery of school [...]