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.
Where are the places your writers find themselves stuck? Identifying our writers’ sticky spots can help us determine entry points for writers to pull themselves out of being stuck and instead strive!
Just like Dory, in the movie Finding Nemo, young writers can easily lose their way and forget where they were headed, especially if they stop for too long and lose their momentum.
Does the mindset of our student writers impact their independence? How does OUR mindset impact their independence as writers?
After a lot of researching, reading, writing, and reflecting I’m sharing some insights and steps toward building a growth mindset in our classroom communities of writers. Join in the conversation!
As our students write this year, it will be important for us to remember that they are still learners, and as such, they will be approximating. It will be unlikely they will reach mastery. Understanding this can actually improve our teaching…
This week, the authors at Two Writing Teachers share ideas for building independence in your writing workshops. Here’s a preview of what our series includes.
Every year brings with it new surprises. I was delightfully surprised by just ten minutes this year. Ten minutes made a big difference.
We all want to support and nurture inspired writers who work independently. So how might we carefully avoid creating uninspiring, teacher-dependent environments for learning? I present a few ideas here…
The cornerstone of writing workshop is that students get to choose their own topics rather than be assigned a topic by the teacher.
We’re not just teaching writers to be independent, we’re teaching them how to be independent.
Here are four ways to nurture independence during today’s writing workshop!
More and more, another way we’ve been making sure that charts become part of our writers’ toolbelts is to create individual ones that are either the same as the ones on the wall or close enough that they don’t require instruction for students to access.
Don’t let kids (or teachers) lose momentum for writing as summer approaches! There is no better time than now to implement independent writing projects, as we help kids prepare to lead writerly lives long after the school year ends.
I am a list person. I have lists by my computer, by my bed, in the kitchen, in my car console– And I love crossing things off my lists. One of the reasons… Continue reading
