Charts have become less common in the classroom as slides become more prevalent. But paper charts serve specific purposes that slides can't serve. Here’s why we all should be making more charts.
Category: Straight from the Classroom
One Topic Writers: The Importance of Interest in the Writing Workshop
What do we do when a student wants to write about the same topic every day? Let them be! Keep reading to explore why interest is so important for our student authors.
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Family Write-In: Inviting Caregivers to Write Alongside Their Children
What happens when you invite caregivers to write alongside second graders? Joy, vulnerability, and a powerful shift in perspective.
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Strategic Vocabulary Connections: Straight from the Classroom
Here are three strategies for integrating intentional vocabulary connections into your reading and writing instruction. While these examples come from a seventh-grade classroom, they can be effortlessly adapted for K-12 learning environments.
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How AI Can Enliven a Unit and Spark Revision
What if your students could see their stories come to life with just a few clicks? That’s exactly what happened when I introduced AI-generated images to my second-grade writers.
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Learning Logs: Straight from the Classroom
Learning Logs are a low-prep, highly transferable, and easily adaptable strategy that helps students process new learning and make personal connections to their learning through writing.
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Stronger & Clearer: A Partnership Protocol
The Stronger & Clearer protocol incorporates oral rehearsal, peer feedback, and revision into the writing process. Check out the steps to try this partnership protocol in your own classroom.
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Getting to Know You: Building Classroom Community Through Shared Writing
Get to know each student and build classroom community with this beginning-of-the year shared writing activity that also includes language development for multilingual learners.
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Sentence Expansion to Build Fluency: Straight From the Classroom
Sentence expansion has been a technique I've used with many students from early elementary grades up through middle school, and it has provided practice opportunities for creating increasingly complex sentences with consistent use of conventions.
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On Memory, Meaning, and Making Sense: Straight From the Classroom
One of the things I value most about young children's writing is what it reveals about them: how are they learning to make sense of their world? Here I share three recent examples of stories written by some of my four-year-old students.
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Supporting the Home / School Connection: Straight From the Classroom
Parents want to support their children with writing at home, but often do not know where to begin. This post provides some simple ideas you can share with them.
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Studying Writing with a Lens on Writing Lines: Straight From the Classroom
Learn about how one school studied student writing with a lens on writing lines and discovered small shifts that could make a big impact.
