Ralph Fletcher – moving writers

November 30, 2015April 19, 2016Rebekah O'Dell

Working as Our Students’ Editor

Near the very top of the Things That Disheartens English Teachers list are the comments we leave on students’ papers that aren’t considered, aren’t heeded, and — if we’re honest — often aren’t even read. I hear it from secondary teachers constantly; even in the best case scenario, it seems that students work hard on […]

September 14, 2015April 19, 2016Rebekah O'Dell

Translating Writing With Mentors for Elementary and Middle School, Part I

Our bookshelves are jammed full with books meant for elementary and middle school teachers. Donald Graves, Nancie Atwell, Georgia Heard, Katie Wood Ray, Ralph Fletcher, the gals at Two Writing Teachers — these are the teachers who have taught us how to teach writing, who continually push us to reconsider what we think we know […]

April 7, 2014April 6, 2014Rebekah O'Dell

The Power of Flash Drafting: Less Thinking, More Writing

I am very late to the flash draft party. It’s not a new concept. Ralph Fletcher mentions it in What a Writer Needs, and he attributes the concept to another teacher entirely. But I hadn’t heard about it until a Twitter chat last month when a group of elementary writing teachers raved about its power […]

March 10, 2014Rebekah O'Dell

Connecting Writers’ Struggles to Mentor Text Solutions

I have recently found myself reinforcing (and re-teaching) the fundamentals of how to use a mentor text with my ninth graders. After our most recent unit, I asked students how many of them went back and looked at the mentor texts I provided on their own after we had used them in a mini-lesson. 56% […]