For the last few days, I have had the privilege of attending the National Council of Teachers of English Convention in Baltimore, Maryland. While there were many colleagues and friends who shared the experience, I know many others couldn't attend. I'm sure there are others who will share in the upcoming weeks, but for now, in somewhat of a post-convention haze, I'm scrolling through my notes and pulling out some of my favorite quotes and ideas from my experiences.
Author: Melanie Meehan
I am the Writing and Social Studies Coordinator in Simsbury, CT, and I love what I do. I get to write and inspire others to write! Additionally, I am the mom to four fabulous daughters and the wife of a great husband.
In Case You Missed It: Reaching Your Writers
Our hope is that this blog series helps to bridge the divides between how we teach writing and how students learn writing because we all believe not only in the importance of writing, but also that all children can learn to write-- and learn to write well-- and even like writing!
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Communication, Collaboration, and Clarity: Reaching Your Writers
The more we can communicate, collaborate, and empower the people we work with, both adults and students, so that they know and understand the learning that should be happening in our writing classrooms, the more we will see that learning happen. When we all know what we’re working on and we have the tools and systems to support our pathways, great things happen!
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Sitting Side By Side With Standards
There is power in knowing and understanding standards because within them, we can extract teaching points, learning targets, and even success criteria. In this post, we'll thing about how we can use the standards so set up anchor charts, as well as learning progressions in order to establish clarity and navigable pathways for writers.
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A Book That Will Inspire Better Talk and Listening– and a Giveaway
Every now and then, a professional book comes along that has the potential to really change how I teach. You have a chance to win a copy of Unlocking the Power of Classroom Talk by Shana Frazin and Katy Wischow, and I know you will love this book!
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Intentional Practice In Our Writing Classrooms
Intentional practice leads to better performance. Writing instruction follows a similar pattern, and by about six weeks into the year, teachers know their students. Just like soccer coaches, teachers can start to develop some responsive instruction, both from the figurative sidelines, as well as through direct instruction.
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Three Ways To Increase Instructional Clarity
Teaching is an art, and sometimes tweaks don't work as we hope or envision. However, I hope that these three ideas do increase the clarity of instruction in ways that help all students learn to be independent confident writers.
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It’s Tuesday! Welcome to the Slice of Life Story Challenge!
Write your post. Share it with the community. Comment on at least three other posts.
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It’s Tuesday! Welcome to the Slice of Life Story Challenge
Write your post. Share it with the community. Comment on at least three other posts.
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The Importance of Repertoire for Teachers
We can change up how we are teaching depending on the situation and circumstances, but in order to do that, we have to know some choices and moves we can make. Knowing this, there are a few quick ways we can think about repertoire within our whole group instruction.
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Pausing to Remember 9/11
While every day is an opportunity to practice kindness, put our arms around the people we love, and cherish all that is good in our lives, perhaps today is an especially good day to remember the importance of doing those things.
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It’s Tuesday! Welcome to the Slice of Life Story Challenge!
Write your post. Share it with the community. Comment on at least three other posts.
