Finding Common Ground Blog Series

Modeling and Mentors: Finding Common Ground

On the last day of this week's Finding Common Ground Blog Series, learn about the difference between demonstration texts and mentor texts. Both types of text have an important place in writing instruction.

academic choice · choice · Finding Common Ground Blog Series

Balancing Choice and Assignments in Writing Instruction: Finding Common Ground

Required writing units don’t have to mean zero choice for students. There are seven areas where you can still offer meaningful options: audience, genre, mentorship, process, strategies, tools, and topic. Choice helps kids stay invested in their writing even within a scripted curriculum. You’ll find practical ideas you can use right away to balance required assignments with student-centered choice. Small shifts can make a big difference.

Finding Common Ground Blog Series

Foundational Skills and Composition: Finding Common Ground

Opportunities to develop fluent transcription, accurate spelling, and flexible sentence construction flourish within authentic reasons for communicating ideas. Foundational skills, sometimes also called transcriptive skills, work in conjunction with compositional skills. When these two aspects of writing grow together, each reinforces the other.

content-area writing · Finding Common Ground Blog Series

Writing Workshop and Cross-Curricular Writing: Finding Common Ground

To develop the strongest writers with the skills to navigate complex ideas, research, draft, and produce well-composed pieces, students need ongoing opportunities to build their writing skills seamlessly across the entire school day. Today's post in the Finding Common Ground blog series focuses on ways to seamlessly link writing with content area instruction.

writing workshop

It’s Tuesday! Join us for Slice of Life!

Write, share, give.

Finding Common Ground Blog Series

Explicit Instruction and Responsive Instruction: Finding Common Ground

Are we teaching writing, or are we teaching writers? It's a question that's becoming increasingly important as schools balance curriculum fidelity with meeting the needs of the students sitting in front of us. This post explores how explicit instruction and responsive teaching work together to create meaningful writing instruction.

writing workshop

It’s Slice of Life Tuesday!

It's Tuesday. Write. Share. Give!

writing workshop

It’s Slice of Life Tuesday!

It's Tuesday. Write. Share. Give!

writing workshop

It’s Slice of Life Tuesday!

It's Tuesday. Write. Share. Give!

writing workshop

It’s Slice of Life Tuesday!

At the end of the school year, as we were helping students make plans for summer reading, third-grade teacher Kelli Banet shared a Summer Writing Toolkit she created for her students-with a little help from NotebookLM. The toolkit is filled with simple, engaging ideas to keep kids writing all summer long. I asked Kelli if… Continue reading It’s Slice of Life Tuesday!

slice of life

It’s Slice of Life Tuesday!

It's Tuesday! Write. Share. Give.

slice of life

It’s Slice of Life Tuesday!

It's Tuesday! Write. Share. Give.