Rebekah and I often often tweet ideas for notebook time, and recently many of you have been asking us to explain it and show how it fits into the workshop. Put simply, notebook time is an opportunity for students to play in their notebooks with different ideas, information, and genres. In our classrooms, notebook time […]
Tag: penny kittle
Coming to Terms with the P-Word
My friends don’t understand why I love bikram yoga–the heat (105 degrees), the humidity (40%), the predictability (26 postures repeated twice). “Don’t you get bored?” they persist. No. In fact, the predictability of the class is one of the aspects that makes the yoga so enjoyable. Most people learn the 26 postures quickly–it just takes […]
Writing Our Way Into Critical Thinking
Way back one month ago, I made some resolutions for my classes. Among them was a switch-up that would turn the Quick Write into a broader Notebook Time — giving my students lots of varied opportunities to play with words in different ways. In short, switching things up has been invigorating for my students. I […]
Writers Have Plans: Using Next Lists to Build Writing Lives
Last night I tossed and turned, hunting for an idea for this week’s post. This morning at the breakfast table, a steaming cup of coffee beside me, I scan through a Google folder labeled “Blog To Do List.” Rebekah and I created this file months ago, preloading it with ideas for future entries. I feel […]
Responding to the Writer, Not the Writing
Lucy Calkins’ wisdom about teaching the writer (and not the writing) continues to reverberate decades after the publication of her book The Art of Teaching Writing. Yet many of us do not teach in a way that promotes writers. I know because I was one of them. In the past, I taught writing one composition […]
New Year’s (Writing Workshop) Resolutions (or, Why Didn’t I Do This in August???)
Midterms are over, and we have reached the point of the year where, inevitably, I second guess every decision I have made so far and long for a do-over. And while this year hasn’t been without its victories, I still wonder, What ever happened to that uber-planned-perfectly-balanced class I dreamed of while I sat by […]
Moving Writers … an Invitation
Eight hours before your presentation at NCTE isn’t the time for second guessing. Huddled on a hotel bed, surrounded by a sea of papers, laptops, and California Pizza Kitchen take-out, we debated. Something was missing. After months of polishing the fundamentals, something wasn’t right. Something we couldn’t put our finger on. Some meaning for which […]
