
Three Steps to Prioritizing Your Writing Instruction During the Pandemic
Whether you are fortunate enough to have a structure to collaborate with others on your grade-level team, or if you are planning solo here are three steps you can take.
A meeting place for a world of reflective writers.
Whether you are fortunate enough to have a structure to collaborate with others on your grade-level team, or if you are planning solo here are three steps you can take.
In this post, I’ll share three things I’ve learned from my own school district, where we have many multiage classrooms.
When the COVID-19 crisis hit, probably like many of us, I sought out voices of hope. For me personally, I knew one of those voices would be Cornelius Minor. I knew him to be the kind of teacher with the capacity to help us all see things in a new way during this unfamiliar period of virtual teaching. Fortunately, I was able to reach him by text. We sat down recently on a Zoom call to discuss his views on teaching remotely, his book, and a way forward.
Recently, researcher and professor John Hattie released a paper regarding his research-based perspectives on what truly matters for education (and what does not) during this time of global pandemic. Thus, when I ran across his latest thinking, I became eager to share some of it with you here…
Here are three things I’m working on, right now, in the first week of February.
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.
Whether you’re already back in school or returning in the next two weeks, I’ve rounded up some of our team’s best blog posts that will help you launch & sustain writing workshop in 2018-19.
Think about the writer and making the writer better. What are the needs of a writer? What opportunities does technology offer to make the writer better?
As educators, we need to take ownership of our teaching. If you think your tried and true lessons are lackluster, change them. Start with looking at your students and asking yourself, what do my students need? What are their strengths? Next, look at the VERBS in your standards. Precisely what is it your students need to master in this unit? Finally, embrace the art of teaching, follow their lead.
Need help writing strategies that are explicit and kid-friendly? Check out this excerpt from DIY Literacy.
It’s all about the link. Make sure your minilessons link to ongoing work. Link to making choices. Link to all the other minilessons. Link to the charts and resources in the room. Most of all link your minilesson always to problem solving and independence.
Minilessons are actually really easy to plan, and fun to teach. What? You don’t believe me? Let me show you, right now, how to do it.
4th Grade Teacher (& Slicer) Noor Shammas writes about her students’ Community Member Biography Project.
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