agency · drafting · editing · Resetting Our Workshop Practices Blog Series · revision

Writing on Students’ Work in Progress: Resetting Our Workshop Practices

I used to write on my students’ writing. NOW I believe if I’m the person writing down what I think a child should write, then I remove lots of that child’s agency.

EAL · multilingual · revision · translanguaging · writing process · writing workshop

Recording, Revision and Repetition: Empowering Multilingual Writers

Recording for revision, encouraging translanguaging, and repetition are useful strategies to exalt and empower multilingual writers. As teachers of multilingual students, encouraging translanguaging and recording as revision is akin to telling students: every aspect of you is valued. Every aspect of you is important. 

revision · writing process

Spicing Up Revision

During the revision phase of the writing process, I find that many writers will often 'tinker' rather than really revise for meaning.  Perhaps you've see similar behaviors in your middle school writers? Read on to learn a few tips for spicing up revision!

mentor texts · revision · writer's notebook

Reimagine Notebook Entries Using a Mentor Text

Using a mentor text can be a little like taking a course from a published writer- we can allow him or her to teach us how to be stronger writers. This can certainly happen with our drafts... but we can also do this work in our notebooks. Oftentimes, doing so can free young writers up to do larger-scale revision. Here's one way I tried that...

Mary Ehrenworth · middle school · partnerships · revision

Strengthening Writing Partnerships, Part I

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...

big picture · choice · goals · mentor texts · revision

A Few Ways to Empower Writers Using Mentor Texts

It could be said that what sets a writing workshop apart from other approaches to teaching writing is a focus on empowerment. Here are a few ways to empower writers when it comes to mentor texts...

revision · risk-taking · Teachers who write · teaching tools

4 Tips for Modeling with Your Own Writing

For many of us who work to live as writers and teachers who write, we likely do so in order to appreciate the challenge, the complexity, and the thrill that writing can provide for our lives.  It is living through the process that matters.  But what about turning some of our writing into teaching tools for our writing workshops? Here are four tips...