Our Favorite “Back-to-School” Posts

School begins on Monday in my neck of the woods. I realize that’s late since some of my friends’ kids went back two weeks ago! However, I grew up in the New York Metropolitan Area — in the 80’s and 90’s — where school never began prior to Labor Day.

Regardless of the date, you are either in school or planning to go back soon. Therefore, I have rounded up a bunch of posts to help you launch and sustain writing workshop.

Choice

• An Invitation to Make Writing That Matters
• Not All Writers Are the Same: Ideas for Differentiating in the Writing Workshop
• Off You Go, To Find a Just Right Spot!
• Paper Choices
• Pens Versus Pencils: Which One Is Better for Writing Workshop?
• Three Tips Avoid Overcommitting to First Words

Community Building

• Getting to Know Writers
• Knowing My Writers
• Putting the Large Stones In First
• Revisiting the Heart Map
• Risk-Taking in the Writer’s Notebook
• We Are Writers Here

Curriculum Planning

• How to Plan a Minilesson from Scratch
• How to Read a Unit of Study
• Write Your Own Teaching Points

Environment

• A Soft Start to Writing Workshop
• Blending Instruction: The One Stop Meeting Place
• Creating Classroom Environments to Launch the School Year Blog Series
  • This will lead you to eight posts focused on routines.
• The Blank Canvas Classroom

Feedback

• Do Not Write On That Paper!
• Moving From Partnerships to Peer Conferring

Independent Writing Time

• Building Stamina in Primary Writers
• How Do You Pull Away? Let Go of Their Hand.
• Protecting Student Writing Time
• What Are They Looking At? Tackling Slow Starters.

Routines

• Sharpen Your Workshop Routines Blog Series
  • This will lead you to six posts focused on routines.
• Teaching Students to Self-Monitor
• The Right to Write
• The Silent Hero: Routines and Procedures

Not sure what to check out first? Click here to read through posts from our most recent blog series, Dreaming Big for This Year’s Writing Workshop, to help you determine what your focus should be on the upcoming school year. (Click here to read the archive of the accompanying Twitter Chat.)

Brand new to writing workshop? Our August 2017 Blog Series, Writing Workshop Fundamentals, will give you a crash course in writing workshop. (Click here to read the archive of the accompanying Twitter Chat.)

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Search our archives if you need more back-to-school posts. Use the pull-down menu in the middle-nav of this blog to view old posts by topic or month-by-month.

Have a successful and invigorating 2018-2019 school year!