Do you ever hear the question, "Is this good?"
Category: 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.
Be the first reader of your writing!
It's important to take a beat before sharing one's writing. With practice and reminders, children can learn how to become the first readers of their work.
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.
Advice for the Perfectionists in Writing Workshop
Do you consider yourself to be a perfectionist? Are there students in your classroom who might be described as perfectionists?
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!
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...
Revising for Meaning
At the heart of all great writing is meaning. Writers select details carefully and deliberately, depending on the message we wish to convey to readers. How can we let meaning guide revision? Read here about a few ways...
An Elaboration Tool for Self-reflection and Revision
"Show don't tell," we say over and over to students but--it's harder than it sounds, though, maybe for multiple reasons.
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...
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...
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...