How Reading Responses Have Saved My Life This Year (+ how they can save yours, too)

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]