Ever since Marilyn Pryle’s Reading With Presence I have kept her book on the edge of my desk and picked it up every single week. The simplicity and elegance of Marilyn’s reading responses unlocked something for me — something that streamlined and systematized reading instruction, something that made my goals clear to me and clear […]
Category: Professional Development
What Comes After Mentor Texts? Student-Created Mentor Text Rubrics
I’ve been on a journey this fall to think about ways to move students toward increasing writing independence. We know mentor texts benefit writers of all ages. We know that isolating the moves writers make helps newer, less-experienced writers demystify the writing process and take their own work to new heights. But we also want […]
Scrap – Adapt – Welcome Back: A Protocol for Looking Back and Planning Ahead
In my job as a literacy consultant, I work mostly with teachers and administrators, not students. While I sometimes miss the kids, I really love getting to serve the grown-ups in the system because we are all learners, and sometimes – heck, way too often – we spend all of our energy worrying about how […]
Reading in Math? A Tale from Someone Who Survived It
Where do we start when teaching reading outside of the ELA classroom? Abigail takes you through some of the moves you may take. It’s not as scary as it might seem.
Writing Even Now, Especially Now
Continuing to write when the rest of the world felt like it’s on fire helped me to feel a little more like me. It helped me to keep some normalcy. And it helped me to reflect on what it means to be a teacher writer these days.
Unpolished Professional Learning: 3 Things That Are More Important Than Perfection
I’m finding that meaningful, unpolished support still looks awfully familiar to some of the same things I valued back when the world was normal.
No Small Thing: Squashing Impostor Syndrome and Publishing
Writing for an audience isn’t about having it all figured out. It’s about engaging in a community of thinkers and learning from the process.
Writing IS Professional Learning
When I started blogging for Moving Writers, I wrote mostly about my practice in the classroom. Since my role has shifted away from the classroom and toward supporting teachers, I spend a lot more time working on my own practice for adult learning. So most of what I blog about lately is about professional learning […]
Workshop + Don’t Drop: Resources from #NCTE19
One of my greatest NCTE joys have been the times members of the Moving Writers team have gotten to join forces at NCTE. I love these people — their deeply-felt philosophies about teaching writing to make a difference in children’s learning and lives, their practical, boots-on-the-ground, why-didn’t-I-think-of-that brilliance. Here are some of the resources from […]
Directing Thinking Traffic: A Protocol for Professional Learning
Whether I’m facilitating professional learning around mentor texts, grammar in context, or book clubs, something that has been especially impactful is sharing in classroom observations together. Whether we’re watching videos of ourselves, others, or we’re stepping into classrooms in real time, observations give us a chance to see the work in action, to breathe life […]
