I was speaking last week with Ms. Hart, the ELA teacher, about what they're covering in English class. As a former English teacher myself, I'm keen to keep up with them. When she said they'll soon be going over the Schaffer Model, I perked up: Schaffer is one of my favorite tools to give students because it makes academic writing so much (relatively) easier. I suggested I could take a few days in leadership and go over it with them. She said it would be great because the snow days have put her behind schedule. A win for everyone.

So today we went over the silver bullet that is the Schaffer model. It accomplishes several things all at the same time:

• It helps with pre-writing.
• It ensures good organization.
• It promotes the use of strong evidence.
• It even helps students figure out what to write next.

We'll take a couple of more days to work on it. I promised students, though, that I would post the slideshow I used: Schaffer slideshow.