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 […]
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. […]
In my last post, I discussed how a small change I made to the seating in my classroom affected my day-to-day approach to teaching writing. Simply moving students into small groups allowed me to see so many valuable opportunities for collaboration in my instruction. Today, I’m going to talk about the collaborative benefits another small […]
A recent conference has me thinking about ways to use audio recording to help my students gain independence as writers.
I think my students would tell you that our classroom is a happy, productive place. They would also tell you that it’s predictable. Monday through Thursday, we write during notebook time, read mentor texts and take notes during the lesson, and write and confer during workshop. We do this for 46 minutes four times a […]
Mentor Text: “China’s Web Junkies,” an Op-Doc from The New York Times Skill: Using evidence to support a position Background: Every year it seems that more and more of my students are denouncing Facebook. They talk about it freely during passing time as they unpack their bags. “You’re still on? I’ve been off for a […]
