When Ruth and I present, we always leave time for teachers to turn and talk. Our Monday morning session at KSRA was much smaller than our Sunday afternoon session, which meant we could walk around and listen-in to the teachers who were talking with each other. A variety of workshop-related questions were asked of me… Continue reading Answers to a Variety of Workshop-Related Questions
Category: minilesson
Showing a Story
Recently, I taught a minilesson about showing a story. In typical intermediate grade fashion, students were writing stories filled with struggles, but slim on creating a picture in the reader’s mind. My minilesson went like this (and, yes, it was less than 15 minutes!): Share this chart – all of which we’ve discussed in previous… Continue reading Showing a Story
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Show Don’t Tell
In narrative writing, it is difficult to shift from telling the story to showing the story. I've helped launch a fiction study in a couple of fifth grade classrooms this week, and we've decided to really focus on helping students make this shift as writers. So we made a chart with four "telling" statements: She… Continue reading Show Don’t Tell
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Minilesson Part II
The other day I posted about minilessons being one way to plant a seed of learning. I firmly believe this is a purpose of a minilesson and then through independent practice, conferring, and sharing, the learning "seed" grows and becomes personal and solidified in each writer. After I posted, I was reading a friend's thoughts… Continue reading Minilesson Part II
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Minilessons Plant a Seed
One of the things I'm working on as a writing teacher is keeping minilessons, well, mini. As I've focused on this goal, I've realized sometimes lessons go long because I'm working toward perfection. I try to cover all of the bases so students can write in exactly-the-right-way. It is hard to admit this to myself,… Continue reading Minilessons Plant a Seed
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WIP?
The past few months I've been reading several authors' blogs and I keep coming across the abbreviation W.I.P. Finally I figured out it means Work In Progress. WIP is part of the language of writers, therefore I introduced the term to fourth graders today with this chart: W.I.P. Decisions Topic --- What will I write… Continue reading WIP?
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Ruth’s SOLS: First Day Minilesson — What is Writing Workshop?
Here's a little Slice of Life from the first student day. As a coach, the first day is one of the days I miss the most about being a classroom teacher. Thankfully, Christi Overman (she blogs during the school year only, so you'll want to check back regularly on Chocolate for Teachers) invited me to… Continue reading Ruth’s SOLS: First Day Minilesson — What is Writing Workshop?
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Ruth’s Slice(s) of Life: A New Minilesson Idea
Slice 1: All morning I waited for Laurie Halse Anderson's post about the writing challenge for today. Although a little apprehensive about whether this would be worthwhile, I found myself writing interview questions and then answering them in the voice of a dad. Well past the required fifteen minutes, I was still writing, learning all… Continue reading Ruth’s Slice(s) of Life: A New Minilesson Idea
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Organzing Teaching Materials
I recently received an e-mail asking me: How do you organize your material (mentor texts, charts, minilessons, etc.) for Writing Workshop? I have just collected so much stuff this past year to do with Writing Workshop, but I just can't figure out a way to organize it. Most teachers are nearing the end of the… Continue reading Organzing Teaching Materials
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Follow the Dialogue
Tomorrow morning in Reading Workshop, I'll be teaching a lesson with the following teaching point: Readers keep track of who is speaking in a text, regardless of whether or not there are dialogue tags. The reason they do this is so they always know who is speaking. I'm going to be using two passages from… Continue reading Follow the Dialogue
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Verbs in Revision
Georgia Heard's Book The Revision Toolbox: Teaching Techniques That Work is one of the best books on the teaching of writing that I own. If it's not in your bookshelf, then click here to preview it and/or buy it (It's that good!). To that end, I decided to do one last revision lesson, before my… Continue reading Verbs in Revision
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Back to Basics: Strategy Charts (Part of TWT’s Big Picture Series)
Memoir: Early Strategy Chart Originally uploaded by teachergal I tend to have a lot of mini-charts for my students' notebooks rather than hanging large ones around the room (these days). However, I thought this one was worthy of some wall space. Essentially, these are the teaching points from the first four collecting minilessons of our… Continue reading Back to Basics: Strategy Charts (Part of TWT’s Big Picture Series)
