A meeting place for a world of reflective writers.
There can be many moving parts in the writing workshop. Partnerships can be a driving force in the growth and goal setting of writers within your classroom. In my experience, there are three areas I work to strengthen within my writers to ensure partnerships foster this growth and development across the year.
In my previous November post about partnerships, three ideas were shared: (1) Study existing partnerships to assess current and potential effectiveness; (2) Teach a replicable process for meaningful revision; and (3) Teach writers how to create process pages. Today I will share just a few more strategies for supporting and strengthening writing partnerships…
A writing partner provides a sounding board and creates a social opportunity for feedback, criticism, and notions of what improvement could look like or sound like. The problem with partnerships, however, is that left to their own devices kids are not very good at being partners. How can we help kids get better? Here are a few strategies…
All writers seek feedback. All writers write for an audience. All writers question themselves. And for these reasons, writers long to bring their work to another person– another set of eyes, another pair of ears. Hence, the writing partner in writing workshop. When working well, partnerships can help grow the confidence of each writer in our classes by providing support, authentic peer feedback, and a sounding board for ideas. Here are a few ingredients to consider when creating a community of writers…
Welcome to a crash course in setting up partnerships for your writing workshop. You’ll find actionable steps to get started with room to grow and make partnerships a seamless part of your workshop environment.
Someone once told me: You can’t write well about something you don’t care about. One day, I listened in on two first grade partners, Jennifer and Marco, sharing their pieces of … Continue Reading Writing Partners: Authentic Purposes for Writing
Elevate the experience of using talk within your workshop with some tools.
Like so many routines and procedures, the investment of time to establish successful, productive, independent partnerships is incredibly worthwhile!
Do you ever have the feeling that every time you come near a partnership, they stop what they were really doing? Here are ten tips for coaching into partnerships, without taking over.
I attended Kathleen Tolan’s “Once You Have Taught Workshops for Years, How Do You Go from Good to Great? Tap the Power of Peer Conferring and Supporting Student Independence and … Continue Reading Moving from Partnerships to Peer Conferring
Our blog series kicks off with a post on creating space in your classroom to get writing partnerships up and running right away.
Writing partners can be an important source of inspiration and support for your kids. It’s the rare kid who truly wants to work alone all the time. Writing requires an audience, … Continue Reading Top Five Lessons to Teach to Writing Partners of All Ages Right Now
We’ve all been there. Reading your own writing to somebody else can be scary. Even when I am teaching adults in writing institutes and graduate courses I often have to … Continue Reading Setting Up Writing Partners for Success
I’m in the midst of creating writing partnerships for my students based off of a questionnaire I gave them today. It is HARD WORK trying to match kids up with … Continue Reading Partnership Grid
Right now, we really do not know how school will look in the coming year. Will it be virtual? Will it be physical? Will it be a hybrid model? Who knows? But if we agree that our beliefs are implicit, and that they guide our intentional actions, then perhaps not only reading this post but also examining and identifying your own will help you be the best you can be… whatever the circumstances you find yourself in next year.
How can we do the most good and the least harm when communicating with caregivers, hosting virtual meetings, and planning remote writing instruction?
During the Teachers College Virtual Teaching Institute a few weeks ago, staff developer Natalie Friday introduced an idea for learning during the current global pandemic: Passion Projects. With schools now closed, several of them for the remainder of the academic year, some students (and teachers!) may feel like they are actually living the movie, “Groundhog Day.” So with this gift of time (if we can see our way to interpreting it that way), why not encourage students to pursue a passion they have or would like to grow?
I can’t think of a more important time for sharing stories.Our students are living through a most historic moment as the world faces the Covid-19 global pandemic. Many of us are experiencing school closures and trying to navigate distance learning for the first time under challenging circumstances. If one of your goals is for your students to grow as writers, feel part of a community, and document this unique time in history, consider joining us for the 2020 April Classroom Slice of Life Story Challenge (SOLSC).
Our teaching worlds have been turned upside down. For many of us, every system and structure we’ve had in place for planning, teaching and learning has changed over the past few days. As you find our groove in the new reality, here are some practical suggestions that will help bring the many comforts of your classroom home.
We give our writers a lot of stuff. Their folders are full of charts, worksheets and examples meant to be helpful for independent writing, but are students using these tools to their fullest capacity? Are writers waiting for us to say “get out ___” or “look at ____”? This post will give you some practical ideas for how to help students achieve interdependence and utilize the silent teachers in the classroom to their fullest capacity.
