“If you were going to give just one piece of advice to a colleague who is just starting out with writing workshop, what would it be?”
As a literacy coach and consultant, this is a question that I have been asked again and again… and again.
And each time my answer is the same.
A glance at the clock tells me we have just three minutes to get our coats and lunches and line up. Students are still writing, but now there is no time to gather and share. I sigh, realizing this has become a pattern; without a clear plan for making the share happen, it often does not. But all that will change because… This is the year I’m going to make share time a priority!
“It’s a practice,” is a common refrain from the instructor in my yoga class. That being said, if my mat is anywhere close to a certain yoga rockstar, I admit it–I find myself… Continue reading
Welcome to a crash course in setting up partnerships for your writing workshop. You’ll find actionable steps to get started with room to grow and make partnerships a seamless part of your workshop environment.
Get ready for an invigorating series this week as we encourage you to dream big. This is your year to take one or a few elements from your workshop and reach heights you never have before.
As I sat down to write my post for the upcoming series, titled: Dreaming Big for This Year’s Writing Workshop I thought back to when I opened my writing workshop to digital tools.… Continue reading
It’s the final countdown to summer for me and my third graders. Here are some ways we’ve used writing to end the year in a meaningful way.
More and more, another way we’ve been making sure that charts become part of our writers’ toolbelts is to create individual ones that are either the same as the ones on the wall or close enough that they don’t require instruction for students to access.
Using what we know about best practice and scaffolding writers, our blog writing begins.
Welcome to our community or writers, readers, and commenters.
At a time when thoughts turn to sandy beaches and alarm clock-less days, it takes a very special professional book to make me wish (at least a little) that it was September and I could start implementing all these fabulous, fun and important lessons now! Patterns of Power: Inviting Young Writers into the Conventions of Language is a book that will make you happy to have the opportunity to be a teacher, working with young writers to help them explore, wonder, and apply the conventions they learn. It’s a book that I believe will transform how teachers and students look at conventions
Welcome to the Tuesday Slice of Life Story Challenge!
Potentially, one of the most impactful opportunities we have for making a lasting difference on our students as writers is when we pull up next to them and confer with them. It’s SO worth spending some time reflecting, setting goals, and developing tools and strategies for the conferring work we do as teachers.
My students got extra creative when we used some extra time in a spontaneous way!
As I move forward in planning summer professional development for the teachers in my district, I am already finding the infographic invaluable. In planning my session, “Getting Started with Blogging” I found the information on the infographic guiding each slide and each step as I planned the presentation.
Tuesdays are Slice of Life days. Welcome to our community or writers, readers, and commenters.
Tuesdays are Slice of Life days! Everyone is welcome in this community. Welcome to the Slice of Life Community! WRITE a slice of life story on your own blog. SHARE a link to your… Continue reading
It’s that time of year when we start to think about all the things we didn’t get to do with our students! Here are five writing exercises I am going to make sure students don’t leave without!
Sometimes our writing workshops can begin to feel a little like a house we live in– always something to improve, always something we haven’t been able to get to, etc. But I would venture to argue that, like a house, many things are working. It’s time to notice and celebrate them!
Think about the writer and making the writer better. What are the needs of a writer? What opportunities does technology offer to make the writer better?
