strategies – moving writers

April 9, 2021April 8, 2021Michael Ziegler

What Happens to Feedback When Conferring Gets Organized

Providing feedback that builds on conferring conversations can be a game changer…if you start keeping track of your conversations with writers!

April 2, 2021March 31, 2021Shawna Easton

Three Authentic Audience Web-Based Platforms to Move Writers

Teaching writing, at first, was a struggle for me. It was a struggle because the kids seemed to detest it. When I asked them why I received all sorts of answers, but one answer that kept coming up was that they didn’t feel like the writing was “real”; they turned in all their writing to […]

April 1, 2021April 1, 2021Abigail Lund

The Enneagram Meets the ELA Classroom

Ever heard of the Enneagram? How could implementing personality types into ELA help your students better analyze characters and create authentic characters? I take you through some moves in this MW piece

March 12, 2021March 13, 2021Michael Ziegler

Turning the Page on Writing Conferences…with Reading Conferences

Some thoughts on why I always establish reading conferring in order to prepare students to confer about writing.

March 8, 2021March 7, 2021Starian Porchia

An Open Letter to Teachers (and those who love them)

Dear (overly tested subject) teacher, How are you? February in Texas was a rough ride. And, I’ve been thinking about how to support you. I’ve been thinking about the most meaningful thing to write about this month every day to add to the writing resources and ideas for supporting teachers of writing and writers themselves. […]

March 5, 2021March 3, 2021Shawna Easton

Write Where You Are: How Writing Helps Us Process Life

Things are a little stressful in Texas, where I live. We just survived a snow-pocalypse the likes we’ve not seen in a century. Many of us had power outages, no internet, no water, or busted pipes, and this was just during the week of SNOVID! That doesn’t include all of the trials of the aftermath. […]

February 8, 2021February 7, 2021Starian Porchia

Instructional Approaches for Teaching Writing Sin Miedo

Finding balance in the classroom is one of the most challenging aspects of instruction, especially now that time is even more valuable than before. And, every year at this time, conversations start about how teams of teachers are providing intervention and about what the data says in regards to which students are on track to […]

February 5, 2021January 30, 2021Shawna Easton

How Single Point Rubrics can be a Game Changer

One day, a few years ago, I was doing what all teachers do at some point: writing a rubric. And it looked something like this… Grammar and Mechanics The writer has a strong command of grammar, spelling, punctuation, and capitalization. The writer has command of grammar, spelling, punctuation, and capitalization. The writer has little command […]

January 29, 2021January 30, 2021Brett Vogelsinger

Designing With Grammar

Teaching grammar is my instructional nemesis. I’m sure I am not alone in feeling this way. For nearly twenty years now, I have worked at teaching grammar in the context of writing, without skill-and-drill worksheets, and every year I tweak my approach, often some variation of Harry Noden’s creative Image Grammar approach. But it’s still […]

January 27, 2021January 26, 2021noahteach

Did They Really Love That Lesson as Much as You Think?

In my first semester beat, I’m exploring the life-saving power of routines–but not just any routines. I’m talking about routines that make life easier, more efficient, and more familiar–even in the most daunting of times (cough, 2020, cough). I’m talking about routines that allow students to thrive whether you are teaching in person, virtually, hybrid, […]