A meeting place for a world of reflective writers.
Right now, we really do not know how school will look in the coming year. Will it be virtual? Will it be physical? Will it be a hybrid model? Who knows? But if we agree that our beliefs are implicit, and that they guide our intentional actions, then perhaps not only reading this post but also examining and identifying your own will help you be the best you can be… whatever the circumstances you find yourself in next year.
With the volume of students most middle school writing teachers serve, how is one to plan for differentiation? Using a basketball analogy, here is one play you can run…
Although I’m not typically a fan of stand-alone activities, this exercise, presented at last year’s NCTE Conference, incorporated many positive elements aimed at supporting writers working doing argumentative work…
Using student work as feedback for our teaching informs us. It empowers us. In a way, it allows young writers to become our teachers…
Working within a tightly segmented middle school schedule (or any pre-planned schedule) can sometimes pose a challenge to “fit in” an opportunity for closure. With this special challenge in mind, how can we perhaps be more intentional about this important time in our workshops?
As a new teacher, I sometimes made assumptions about my students that may not have been based in reality. Of course, this is human to do so. We all make assumptions at times. But when it comes to teaching writing, what if we replaced the act of making assumptions with curiosity? What if we worked to make curiosity our best friend in our teaching?
As each new year approaches, many of us begin thinking about the physical space(s) we create for our writers. How might it/they be more effective? Inviting? Or different? The spaces we design for our middle school writers can greatly affect how they “view” writing. Check out this week’s Throwback Thursday for ideas on creating space for writing in the middle school writing workshop!
As teachers, how might we reflect on our own practice in a way that could make a difference for our students next year? Here are a few lenses for setting some goals…
Although this time of year predictably proves to be extremely busy, creatively scheduling a little bit of time to visit at least some of your next-year’s writers can pay valuable dividends.
Finding ways to trust kids, it might be said, creates more space for learning. In this post, I offer a few ways trust can be manifested in a writing workshop…
Sometimes it can be difficult to imagine creating or allowing a wider audience to read our students’ writing. But there is great possibility in doing so. It just takes a shift in attention…
Donald Murray, author of the seminal text A Writer Teaches Writing (Houghton Mifflin, 1985), teaches us that one of the most important things to a writer is time, time to write. But with the many time constraints faced by teachers, how can we be thinking about time in ways that make a difference for our students?
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…
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…
When conferring with a writer, our big aim is to engage in a meaningful conversation with the student about his or her writing. An individual writing conference is likely the single most effective way for a teacher to help move a writer forward. But many times, even with our best intentions and attempts at “training” students how to converse during a conference, the student will sometimes say something curt, like, “Good.” Or, “It’s fine.” Silence. That’s it. That’s all they have to say. What to do? Fear not! Conferring Carl suggests six strategies to help teachers address this situation…
