Every year, I have one or two writers who arrive at my sixth grade writing workshop door fully formed: they love to write, they write beautifully, and they write well across many genres. While some of their classmates struggle with everything from generating ideas to the nitty gritties of punctuation and paragraphing, these… Continue reading Tailoring Our Teaching: Stretching our gifted writers
Category: writing workshop
Tailoring Our Teaching with Conferring: The Basics with the Youngest Writers
What chair are you sitting in when it comes to conferring? Is it too hard, too soft or just right? Read on to find common questions and tips when sitting beside the youngest writers.
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Tailoring Our Teaching: Using a Writing Engagement Tool
During a 40-minute block of independent writing time, we sat back and observed the students. We recorded their independent writing behaviors at eight separate time intervals.
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Tailoring Our Teaching: No Need to Wing It If You’ve Got Great Conferring Notes
Lucy Calkins, author of many books on teaching writing, often says that conferring is the heart of writing workshop. I once heard her say to a group of graduate students that she wished we called it “conferring workshop.” This way it would be clearer to everybody that it is the conferences that really make the… Continue reading Tailoring Our Teaching: No Need to Wing It If You’ve Got Great Conferring Notes
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New Blog Series: Tailoring our Teaching / Assessment-based Strategy Groups for Expository Writing
When I first began teaching using a workshop model, I spent forever planning my minilessons. I wanted to make sure that my language was exactly right, and that I got to each part of the minilesson (I often forgot the active engagement). I felt that the quality of my minilessons was the measure of my… Continue reading New Blog Series: Tailoring our Teaching / Assessment-based Strategy Groups for Expository Writing
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Coaching Conferences in the Writing Workshop
It’s January, at the top of a mountain in Vermont. Ten six and seven year olds are lined up on the side of a ski trail. Their skis all pointing toward me, ready for me to guide them down the mountain. “All right everyone, HOT CHOCOLATE!” I shout. Kristin, the tiniest one, in the front… Continue reading Coaching Conferences in the Writing Workshop
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Using the Cut-and-Tape Method to Draft
As a district, we have experimented with several ways to get students' writing out of the notebooks and into a draft. This is one of those ways.
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Teacher Prompt and Support Continuum—Talking to Drawing
Prompting and support can be tricky business. Here are some tips for early writers who have moved from the verbal story and are ready to draw. These suggestions will help you support the right things at the right time in the right way.
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Teaching memoir: Views from sixth and seventh grade
Moving from personal narrative to memoir presents challenges and rewards for sixth and seventh graders - they are working with a very familiar genre (they’ve been writing personal narratives since kindergarten, after all), and yet memoir requires digging deep and working hard to create something entirely different. The rewards are quite wonderful, however, for in… Continue reading Teaching memoir: Views from sixth and seventh grade
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Ten Suggestions for Encouraging Kids to Write at Home
Dear Parents and Caregivers, You might not realize it, but there are a zillion things you can do right at home to foster a love of writing. Even if you, yourself, are not all that comfortable as a writer, you can still do a lot to raise a kid who does love to write. Here… Continue reading Ten Suggestions for Encouraging Kids to Write at Home
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When You Just Can’t Get Started
Always looking to share real and authentic writing tips with my students, I compiled this list of strategies for when we’re in a writing rut and just can’t get started.
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It Starts With a Conversation
A peek inside a preschool writer and picnic style workshop.
