Our hope is that this blog series helps to bridge the divides between how we teach writing and how students learn writing because we all believe not only in the importance of writing, but also that all children can learn to write– and learn to write well– and even like writing!
The more we can communicate, collaborate, and empower the people we work with, both adults and students, so that they know and understand the learning that should be happening in our writing classrooms, the more we will see that learning happen. When we all know what we’re working on and we have the tools and systems to support our pathways, great things happen!
When writing workshop rituals become woven into the daily grooves of the writing community, cohesive safe zones develop. The consistency of rituals in a classroom helps students transition within the workshop environment smoothly… Well-established rituals create the space for students to concern themselves less with movement and more with the work of a writing.
Providing options for paper allows all your students to do the same type of writing (opinion, persuasive, or argument) in many different ways. Differentiating the materials makes it possible for all your students to do the work–without having to resort to a formula or fill-in-the-blank worksheet.
How a story about babies and bandages helped kids and families differentiate between equity and equality….and what it looks like for everyone go get what they need during writing workshop.
We cannot always afford to provide students everything we want to give them, but it’s important to find ways to give all kids what they need. It is possible to create a space with flexible seating options on a limited budget.
Where are the places your writers find themselves stuck? Identifying our writers’ sticky spots can help us determine entry points for writers to pull themselves out of being stuck and instead strive!
It’s a great day for a slice of life story!
How do we reach our writers who come to us from traumatic backgrounds? How do we help writers who have painful stories they don’t feel comfortable sharing? How do we help children feel safe to write something when they prefer to sit and write nothing? Please share your ideas and experiences in the comments so we can learn from each other and reach more of our writers.
Kids need to know why writing matters. And we need to not only know, but presence that ‘why’, both for our students and for ourselves.
All week here at Two Writing Teachers we will be sharing how to reach ALL of your writers.
There is power in knowing and understanding standards because within them, we can extract teaching points, learning targets, and even success criteria. In this post, we’ll thing about how we can use the standards so set up anchor charts, as well as learning progressions in order to establish clarity and navigable pathways for writers.
Writers need a purpose. A foundation. Yet sometimes we rush kids through the planning and rehearsal phase of writing. What are some ways to support kids in heading into writing grounded in purpose? Read on to learn a few strategies…
Over the years, kindergarteners have shown me that the kinds of environmental tools that they will actually use are: ones which are at their level, ones which they have meaningful memories (or ownership)… Continue reading
Welcome to the first Tuesday in November!
Crafting a system for conferring notes can be a catch-all of sorts, a strategy for ensuring that teammates engage in the highest leverage instructional conversations before the unit begins—even if they haven’t had extended time to unit plan together.
How do you keep learning and growing as a teacher of writing? How do you apply what you’ve learned from reading professional texts? Today I am sharing the way I am applying my learning from professional texts with my third grade students.
Just like Dory, in the movie Finding Nemo, young writers can easily lose their way and forget where they were headed, especially if they stop for too long and lose their momentum.
Specific feedback helps students replicate what you want them to do in their writing.
Welcome! Join today’s Slice of Life Story Challenge by… writing a post, sharing the permalink in the comments section, and visiting at least three other slicers to leave a comment for them.
