After reading Write Beside Them, Tara Smith realized she had to connect her teacher and writer identities. No longer would it be enough to share mentor texts and confer. She realized she needed to share her writing life with her students and walk them through her thinking as she wrote.
Category: writing
The Draft Series
Draft is a weekly essay series in The New York Times about the importance and art of writing. The weekly Draft essay is one of the first things I look for in my Sunday paper since it pushes me to become a better writer.
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Teaching Toolkits: Making Instruction Visible
Anna Gratz Cockerille provides tips for organizing and developing teaching toolkits you can use across the school year.
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Creating a Consistent & Meaningful Writing Life
Several months ago I began meditating as a way of trying to achieve a greater sense of overall vitality. I started out by listening to a 10 minute podcast from a program called Headspace, on my iPhone. Initially, it was challenging to carve out 10 minutes in my day for this purpose so I was… Continue reading Creating a Consistent & Meaningful Writing Life
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Family Writing Night
Cultivate home-school partnerships around writing by hosting a family writing night this fall.
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Notebook Routines
I think the thing that makes a writer is Habit. Yes, that's habit with a capital H. (I go back and forth between whether it's habit that makes a writer or belief that makes a writer. However, I'm coming to realize that unless you believe you are a writer you won't create a habit to… Continue reading Notebook Routines
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A New Way To Learn About Teaching Writing
It is the writer who might catch the imagination of young people, and plant a seed that will flower and come to fruition. - Isaac Asimov I began a writer’s group last year at my school, opened it to anyone who was interested. There are now seven of us. We continued to meet this summer and… Continue reading A New Way To Learn About Teaching Writing
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Connect Your Thoughts in a Writer’s Notebook + Giveaways
Last month, I was put on brain rest for two weeks in order to get better after having a concussion. Brain rest in my world meant no driving, no news (print, online, or TV), no decision-making, and very little computer use. (It was supposed to be no computer use, but I was able to negotiate… Continue reading Connect Your Thoughts in a Writer’s Notebook + Giveaways
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Slicing Through the School Year
Tara Smith shares how she launched, maintained, and celebrating the writing slice of life stories and comments -- all year long -- with her sixth grade students.
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Sharing Some Thinking from the Writing Institute
I've been wanting to try out Storify for awhile, but haven't head a reason to use it. Until now. I decided to put together Storify some of my tweets and pictures from last week's TCRWP Writing Institute. I hope it gives you a glimpse into some of the things I learned from my section leaders,… Continue reading Sharing Some Thinking from the Writing Institute
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Gardens of Young Writers
Teaching writing is a lot like gardening. It requires constant attention.
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Slicing in the Classroom All Year Long
The week of June 10th was hectic around here. I had a sleuth of appointments, was doing major revisions to the keynote I'm delivering this Thursday, and was getting ready to visit family in Connecticut. Therefore, I missed Tara Smith's post about her sixth grade students' final slice of the school year. All 50 of… Continue reading Slicing in the Classroom All Year Long
