A meeting place for a world of reflective writers.
As schools begin to restart, I have been thinking a lot about ways to begin building community within our new COVID reality. Specifically, I have been thinking about ways we as teachers might harness the structure of writing partnerships as a means by which to help create meaningful, supportive connections between writers. Here are a few ideas . . .
In our blog series this week, the team at Two Writing Teachers hopes to support you in the common purpose of building community in your classrooms, however those classrooms may look this year. One important building block of community is helping kids feel connected through partnerships. Read on for ideas on this important topic . . .
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
After having spent a lot of time physically distancing ourselves from one another, we’re finding ways to gather a bit more closely again. Writing clubs are a way to bring students back together, honor student choice, and strengthen a classroom writing community.
Puppets are powerful vehicles through which kindergarten students can develop characters and experiment with storytelling and play is essential to the way that young children learn. By combining puppets and play, children can begin to do the important pre-writing work necessary to develop rich characters and powerful stories in writing workshop.
Author Aisha Saeed shares her writing inspiration and the relationship between authors and their young readers and how they inspire her storytelling.
Old dogs CAN learn new tricks, and your class CAN learn a new routine in April!
TWO WRITING TEACHERS 