Whole-class text studies are one of the most impactful ways to strengthen our reading-like-a-writer work with students.
Category: craft
Chants for Writing: Support Routines, Conventions, and Craft
Chants are a highly engaging teaching strategy that support multilingual and monolingual learners alike. Try them out for teaching routines, conventions, and craft in writing workshop.
Ideas, Craft, and Stories
Author Aisha Saeed shares her writing inspiration and the relationship between authors and their young readers and how they inspire her storytelling.
10 Books Celebrating Black Joy and Daily Life
While books about oppression, struggle, and suffering are of critical importance to read and discuss with children, so are books about Black joy and about the daily lives of Black children. I've curated a list of ten new (i.e., published in 2019 and 2020) texts that focus on Black people living life. Depending on who your students are, these books could serve as mirrors, windows, and/or sliding glass doors.
Instructional Ideas Inspired by the Author Spotlight Series
Have you been a reader of our annual Author Spotlight Series? How have you used these posts to inspire your teaching? Read on to find a collection of the Author Spotlight posts and ideas for using these treasures with your students.
All Aboard! Virtual Field Trips and Writing Experiences
In these days where we are home so much, take your class on a virtual field trip or two and allow them choices of what they will write about! This post includes 6 trips all ready to go with writing menus for each trip. Many thanks to Clare Landrigan and Pernille Ripp who both inspired what I am sharing here with you today.
Classroom SOLSC: Blogging Strong in Week 2
We are heading into our second week of blogging in the Classroom SOLSC during extraordinary times. Please let us know in the comments how we can best support you and your students at this time.
Every Child Can Write Blog Tour: Focus on Spelling and Conventions (Giveaway)
Welcome to the next stop on Melanie Meehan's Every Child Can Write blog tour! Today's focus is on Chapter 8, which has excellent ideas for educators when it comes to teaching striving writers about spelling and conventions. Be sure to comment on this post for a chance to win your own copy of Every Child Can Write! (You are going to want a copy of this book ASAP! It is THAT good!)
Fault Lines in the Constitution: A Review, Five Tips, + Giveaway!
This new book by Cynthia and Sanford Levinson is a treasure trove of information as well as a handy example of many elements of inspiring nonfiction writing.
First Graders Get Crafty
First graders use a mentor text to get crafty during a unit on informational writing.
Sharing Some Exciting News
I'm proud to announce my second professional book with Stenhouse Publishers will be coming to you in the winter of 2016.
Craft Tables for You — Part III of III
This week I'm sharing the Happy Like Soccer craft table my graduate students created. My students worked in partnerships to flesh out explanations for craft moves they identified in Maribeth Boelts's book on the second day of class.  I asked them to create a craft table with a partner for two reasons. First, I… Continue reading Craft Tables for You — Part III of III