Now, it is time to write your slice, share your link, and give some comments to (at least three) other slicers.
Giving Thanks + a Giveaway
Looking for a pre-Thanksgiving lesson to do with your students? Consider having them write gratitude poems or songs of thanks. Katherine Paterson and Pamela Dalton's new book, Giving Thanks: Poems, Prayers, and Praise Songs, can be used to inspire their writing. Leave a comment on this post if you'd like to be entered in a drawing for a copy of this book.
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ICYMI: A Wrap-Up of the Tailoring Our Teaching Blog Series
Our first blog series has come to an end. This post recaps the Tailoring Our Teaching Blog Series. Also, we'd like to know what YOU would like to write about the next time we host a blog series on TWT.
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Tailoring Our Teaching: Stretching our gifted writers
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
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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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Slice of Life & RSVP
There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you. ~Maya Angelou I am thankful to be hosting the Slice of Life Story Challenge on Tuesdays during the month of November. Writing Slice of Life Stories is what brought me to the Two Writing Teachers website so many years ago, so it is… Continue reading Slice of Life & RSVP
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Tailoring Our Teaching: Strategy Lessons Support Writers
Strategy lessons allow you to meet with a small group of writers during independent writing time. They're essentially small-group minilessons based on needs you notice several writers exhibiting.
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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.
