It’s Slice of Life Tuesday!
It’s Slice of Life Tuesday! Time to write, share and give!
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July Vacation
Summer is here and we are taking a break before August hits!
Summer Notebook: A Worthy Mission
As teachers, most of us view summer as a much-needed period for decompression and recharging. But as teachers of writing, there are likely several of us who see summertime as a valuable opportunity to prepare. One thing I plan to do is purchase a summer notebook…
OLW CHECK-IN: EMBRACE
Maybe it was Betsy’s post, OLW Check-in: Note that first brought the whispers. As I read her post and thought about my final week of school I heard the whispers grow louder. Embrace.
Tuesday Slice of Life Story Challenge
Welcome to the Tuesday Slice of Life Story Challenge!
Memory Chains: A Strategy for Writer’s Notebooks
Here’s a fun strategy you can try to generate writing in your notebook this summer. Come back-to-school time, you can teach your students how to use this strategy if they get stuck.
Let’s Pretend!
We encourage fantasy play at choice time and outdoor play. We teach readers to pretend to be characters as they read. When role-playing is a natural and essential part of childhood, why wouldn’t we encourage our young writers to make-believe?
Watching Our Word Wall Come Alive
Read this post for the story of one classroom’s creative celebration of word wall words.
Write to the Finish!
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.
Tuesday Slice of Life Story Challenge
Welcome to the Tuesday Slice of Life Story Challenge!
Personalizing charts to foster intention and independence
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.
OLW Check-In: Note
How’s your OLW going this year? Mine has been popping up again recently and reminding me to make more of an effort.
Enlisting Writing Support from Parents
Parents can be a tremendous educational resource. Yet, in middle school it can be challenging, as developmentally our students are beginning to morph from children into young adults. Thinking about next year, I have drafted some ideas for partnering with parents on how to help their kids become stronger writers. How might parents provide support in the way writing workshop teachers believe is most helpful? Here are a few ideas…
Scaffolding Student Blogging: Setting Students Up For Success
Using what we know about best practice and scaffolding writers, our blog writing begins.
Tuesday Slice of Life Story Challenge
Welcome to our community or writers, readers, and commenters.
One Line a Day
One reason we write is to help us remember. As a result, a line-a-day journal is a great way to inspire kids to write daily all summer (and maybe all year) long.
Six REAL Purposes For Kids to Write This Summer and Beyond
We do all we can to keep kids writing over summer. But are we assigning tasks and busywork, or actually enriching their writerly lives?
I’ve created a tool to share with families and students of all ages to inspire writing for REAL purposes this summer and beyond.
Teach Kids How To Teach Minilessons
Teaching kids how to teach a minilesson might be easier than you think.
Patterns of Power: Review + Giveaway
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
Tuesday Slice of Life Story Challenge
Welcome to the Tuesday Slice of Life Story Challenge!