When it comes to instructional time, what matters most is that we organize our plans around a purpose.
Tag: reading
No Unicorns Here: Demystifying the Hard Work of Reading with Mentor Texts
How adopting a mentor text approach to writing instruction is actually helping me teach reading comprehension
Three Things I Believe
A tough start to the school year combined with the launch of a new unit created the perfect storm to force me to put into writing 3 beliefs that drive me as an educator.
Reader Mail: How do you balance writing and reading instruction?
“Would you rather teach only writing or only reading?” The question my husband asked me during a marathon session of Would You Rather (we were driving from Virginia to Maine). “Writing. Hands down.” From the time I was a little girl, I’ve kept diaries, written letters to friends near and far, submitted poems to contests. […]
A Lesson for Tomorrow: Using Art to Teach Repetition in Writing and Reading
Students are great barometers of lesson effectiveness. At the end of each writing workshop genre study, I ask students to reflect on the lessons that had an impact on their thinking and writing. When asked which mini-lesson she found to be the least helpful in our memoir genre study, a student wrote: The mini-lesson I […]
moving writers 