Robyn Carter Writer Educator Storyteller

Curriculum Writing, Design & Promotion

Multimedia ELA & STEM Lessons | Study Guides | Explainer Videos  Slideshows | Infographics | Professional Development Resources for Educators

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K12 & Professional Development
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Higher Ed

Curriculum Writing & Design

Higher Ed Resources

Multimedia Study Guides | Explainer Videos | Slideshows

Google Slides •

Finding a Form seminar Slideshow

Location, Location, Location

So you’ve got a handful of short stories, all nearly finished. How do you decide how to order them in a collection, and how do you approach revising individual pieces with the big picture in mind? Do you go with your gut or tinker with links? How do you develop cohesion across a collection whose stories are not explicitly interrelated?
In this seminar we’ll look at ways a variety of authors have explored (or ignored) these questions.
Study Guide •

Introduction to Literature Course Guide

Week 2 Lecture & Media: Analyzing Point of View, Symbolism & Theme in The Short Story

“By excluding almost everything, [the short story] can give perfect shape to what remains.”

–Steven Millhauser in “The Ambition of the Short Story.”

“A short story is a love affair, a novel is a marriage. A short story is a photograph; a novel is a film.” –Lorrie Moore

This week we will focus on the short story, identifying the elements unique to this form, and investigating critical approaches to short sto
Study Guide •

Introduction to Creative Writing Course Guide

Part 1 asks you to explore how elements of poetry and fiction are manifest in creative nonfiction, and how poetry and fiction borrow from real-life experiences. To narrow your focus and lighten your workload, choose one work of creative nonfiction and one story or poem to discuss, including (if you’d like) one or more of the genre-blurring works below.


A Note on Terminology: Works of creative nonfiction are called essays, so refer to them as such.



Genre-blurring Forms


Slam Poetry

Curriculum Writing, Design, Product Description & Social Content

K-12

Multimedia ELA & STEM lessons | Study Guides | Explainer Videos | Slideshows | Infographics | Online Learning Opportunities | Printed Student Anthologies

Virtual Classroom

Professional Development for Educators

Multimedia Middle-Grade Novel Studies | STEM & History Extensions

Room2Ruminations •

The Last Cuentista STEM Extension: Goldilocks Planets, the Habitable Zone & the Recipe for Life

Stretch the cross-curricular reach of your novel study with this STEM slideshow & Quizizz game for use with Donna Barba Higuera's middle-grade novel, The Last Cuentista. In a Chapter 17 flashback, Petra’s dad explains how Sagan is a “Goldilocks planet” –– not too hot, not too cold, but “just right” for human life. This lesson explores the recipe for life and what living on a Goldilocks planet might be like.
Teachers Pay Teachers •

Journey to Topaz, Yoshiko Uchida/Dorothea Lange Historical Fiction Bundle

Extend the cross-curricular reach of your novel study with these two EDITABLE resources for use with Yoshiko Uchida's autobiographical novel, Journey to Topaz, inspired by her experience in a Japanese-American internment camp during World War 2. Explore this historical moment in depth with this set of discussion questions, vocabulary building activities, and history extension lesson on the photography of Dorothea Lange.
Teachers Pay Teachers •

The Last Cuentista STEM-extension Activity: Halley's Comet

For use with Donna Barba Higuera's middle grade novel, The Last Cuentista, this 13-slide STEM-extension activity features explainer slides, diagrams, images, and a video about the celestial event that kicks off the novel––an exploration of what would happen if Halley's Comet actually collided with earth. This resource also includes a link to an interactive Quizizz version of the slideshow with questions that assess comprehension.

Multimedia Mentor Author Studies

TPT/Pinterest •

Poetry of Prepositions with Mentor Authors Robert Burleigh & Jewell Parker Rhodes

"Madlibify" your poetry workshop with this editable, 1-2 week-long mentor poet study featuring Robert Burleigh’s poem & picture book, Hoops and Mentor sentences from Jewell Parker Rhodes’ Ghost Boys. Suitable for grade 4 and up, prepositions star in this 8-lesson unit built around an exploration of how this overlooked and underrated part of speech can play an important role in imagery that moves.
Teachers Pay Teachers •

Revision Workshop|Synecdoche|Mentor Author Tracey Baptiste

Skill in the Spotlight
• Pebble Eyes & Flaky Skin: Playing Name Games with Synecdoche

Designed to integrate into a writing workshop, this mentor text study asks students to read as writers—to pay close attention to elements of craft—and apply Tracey Baptiste's writing techniques to their own works in progress. Mentor sentences from The Jumbies serve as springboards for a deep dive into an exploration of synecdoche.
• Graphic organizers and sentence-frames to scaffold new drafts or revisions to

Explainer Videos

Revision strategy explainer videos I scripted, produced, and integrated into a series of multimedia writing units for middle grade students. Click the video's YouTube link to get to my channel.

Writing Workshop Infographics & Slideshows

Pinterest •

Writing Workshop Intensive: Dialog

A 34-slide Google slidedeck for teaching a dialog-writing intensive. Integrate into a writing workshop or teach as a stand-alone unit.

Features include:

• Comic-style explainer sequences that cover the role of dialog in story-telling and offer easy-to-understand definitions and examples of several aspects of “dialog anatomy,” including punctuation and paragraphing, dialog tags, and dialog beats.

• Videos and editable Kahoots that reinforce concepts introduced in the slides. Look for Kahoot links in the speaker notes section beneath the slides where Kahoots appear.

• Questions for discussion.

• Editable formatting. Change any element of the slideshow to fit your own needs. Customize and differentiate by skipping or modifying.
Teachers Pay Teachers •

Exploding the Moment w/ Part Charts: A Show-Don’t-Tell Scaffold for the Revision Workshop

These mantras are writing workshop gospel, yet so many of our students have a hard time achieving precision, their descriptions so often hanging on stative verbs and clinging to abstract adjectives. “The trip was awesome,” they write. “My sister is mean…The dog looks normal.”

Introducing PART CHARTS, graphic organizers that transform instructions like "Show, don't tell" into concrete steps students can grasp.
• A close look at three example student drafts and their part chart-guided revisions.
Teachers Pay Teachers •

Maximize Your Metaphor Mojo Infographic/Poster/Game

Teach techniques for sharpening metaphors with this writing workshop resource. Components include:

A colorful infographic with 3 "Don'ts” to avoid for writing metaphors that work.
Links to video explainer versions of each "Don't."
An editable Google table version of the infographic.
Links to 4 Quizizz games that reinforce concepts introduced in the infographic.
A link to download the infographic formatted for printing as a poster/anchor chart.
Teachers Pay Teachers •

Writing Workshop Resource: 3 Keys to Strong Writing Infographic/Poster

• An infographic detailing three keys to strong storytelling, regardless of genre: sensory details, motion & tension.
• A link to a JPG version of the infographic as a 12 x 18 inch classroom wall poster/anchor chart, you can upload to an office product store for printing.

Here's what the text says:

1. SENSORY DETAILS. Descriptions that show your readers the images, sounds, smells, tastes, temperatures & textures in the world of your story or poem.

TIP- ZOOM IN & FOCUS. Describe with nouns an

Publishing

Printed Anthologies of Student Work | Editing | Layout | Design | Publication Coordination