She showed it to me!

Great news! The student who I blogged about yesterday went home and did the first of the graphic organizers last night. WOO-HOO! She really did a nice job working within the structure I set up for her. (Hopefully these scaffolds can be taken away in a couple of weeks.)

Photo Fridays: Look Back, but Always Look Ahead

A view from behind

Originally uploaded by teachergal

I’ve come to believe that once I make a decision, I should never look back. And quite frankly, I don’t. I stick with something once I commit to it.
Perhaps that attitude has carried over into my life in other ways. For instance, I’ve been photographing a [...]

Poetry Friday: At the Pumpkin Patch

Jenny Whitehead’s Book, Holiday Stew: A Kid’s Portion of Holiday and Seasonal Poems, is chock-full of wonderful treasures that can be shared with kids on religious and secular holidays. It’s categorized by season and has adorable illustrations to-boot. Here’s a portion of one of Whitehead’s Halloween Poems, “At the Pumpkin Patch,” which you [...]

Helping a Student Generate Non-Narrative WN Entries

One of my students seemed to be stuck as she sat in her writing focus spot today. She was supposed to be collecting entries and growing some thinking, but her pencil was barely moving. When I pulled alongside her, I realized that she needed some more structure. Hence, I created some crude [...]

Words of Wisdom from Fletcher

I was rereading A Writer’s Notebook: Unlocking the Writer Within You for pearls of wisdom to lend to one of the reluctant writers in my classroom this evening. Here are some of those pearls that I dug out of Ralph Fletcher’s book that bear repeating. (If you don’t have this book, then run [...]

Thank You!

Little did I know what I was in for when I asked for response.  Thank you!  Thank you!  I cannot even begin to tell you how your response has stretched me as a writer and gave me insight as a teacher.  What a neat little community we have here of teachers and writers together.  Thank [...]

Day in a Sentence – Written at 6:15 a.m.

I’m sitting in darkness because my desk lamp, which has had the same fluorescent bulb for the past five years, just blew out.

Stacey’s SOLSC

My handwritten slice… about one of the students who inspired the entire Slice of Life Story Challenge this past winter. (He’s coming back for a visit next week!)

It’s here and we hope you join us!

It’s Tuesday, which means it’s time for our weekly SLICE OF LIFE STORY CHALLENGE. Please link your post here by clicking on the image linky below.

EDITED: If the button isn’t working for you, then just post your link as a comment!

Response PLEASE!

I was asked to submit  a piece of writing for a little newsletter the All-Write Consortium is putting together.  The focuse for this issue is Why Workshop?  So I refined a poem that I think fits with the theme.  I would love some feedback before I submit it.  Here are some questions I have:

Do you [...]

Collecting Ideas As An Essayist

Today’s lesson is one of my favorites of the school year. It’s the day when the kids really start to notice the world around them with a heightened sense of awareness. The teaching point for today is: Writers observe the world with extra care and alertness and then think hard about their observations, [...]

Stacey’s M.M. Post: Tomatoes

Jersey Tomatoes. The sound of those two words evokes a strong smell memory. I can smell the garden-fresh, bright red, ripe tomatoes my father grew in our backyard when I was a little girl. The aroma of the soil, the smell of the vines, and the taste of the tomatoes whose juice [...]

Join the Trip Down Memory Lane

It’s time for Memoir Monday! Link your post to this one by clicking on the image linky.

We all have lots of small moments to write about!

I went through “My Pictures” Folder this morning and located a sleuth of photographs that capture some of the small, ordinary moments of my life during the past year. I put it into a wordless slide show (below). However, I think these photos are begging for words. There are stories that need [...]

Writing About Issues

Living Life Twice, a blog written by Alan J. Wright who lives in Australia, has a fantastic post entitled “Writing About Issues -Big and Small.” Here’s an excerpt from his post:
Students were asked to read an article that attracted their interest. Following this, they were asked to identify the issue, and then identify what [...]

Launching Personal Essay

It’s nearly November, which means it’s time for me to start teaching my students how to craft personal essays. I use Calkins and Gilette’s book for my teaching points, but deviate from their text when it comes to teaching the actual lessons since I’ve tweaked every lesson each year that I’ve taught it. [...]

Thinking More About Teachers & Notebooks

I’m sitting in Nashua preparing for tomorrow’s presentation. Part of my preparation means returning to my old binders and files when my thinking changed about the teaching of writing. The shift in my thinking came in 2006 when I was engaged in my studies as a graduate student in the Teachers College Literacy [...]

Teaching Writing Workshop with A Wide-Open Notebook

Here’s the public version of the presentation I’ll be giving at the New England Association of Teachers of English’s Fall Conference tomorrow. Click on the link below to view the presentation, which I’ll post on our Presentations Page too.
NEATE – Fall 2008 Conference – Inspiring Children to Write – Upload a Document to [...]

Stories in Hand

Ruth just convinced me to sign up for a free online course called “Stories in Hand,” which you can read more about by clicking here. The course is a hybrid: art and writing.
If you’re passionate about capturing the small moments of your life, similar to what we do every Tuesday with the [...]

Poetry Friday: Voting Acrostic

After yesterday’s lesson, and the awesome “get out & vote” posters my students made, I decided to write an acrostic poem about voting.

Vigorous supporters

Of candidates always

Take to the polls.

It’s important that

No one, regardless of their zeal, forgets to

Go to the polls on November 4th!

This week Kelly is hosting Poetry Friday.

“Time Line” for On-Demand Assessments

I mapped out the way my students could go through the Quick Publish Process today. (They have today and tomorrow to quickly publish a personal narrative before we begin our next unit of study, personal essay, on Monday.) Here’s what the “time line” of the writing process looked like:

A Little Copywriting

This afternoon, I’m going to teach a Social Studies Lesson about voting I found on Scholastic.com. It’s a lesson about having kids persuade adults to vote in a non-partisan way. I created a PowerPoint to go along with the lesson. Feel free to use it if you’re interested in teaching the same [...]

Take off the Top of Your Head!

After all of the writer’s notebook work and the storyboard work and the oral storytelling, it sometimes seems as though students don’t realize how they then need to craft their draft.  I’ve found that explicit teaching of this idea is important.
Today I did just that with some third graders.  I showed them my storyboard and [...]

What really happens to you?

This past March we started the Slice of Life Story Challenge in an effort to help teachers (and kids) preserve little moments of their lives in writing. Most of us, myself included, live extremely ordinary lives. However, there’s something about carving out a slice of one’s day, and writing about it, that can make the [...]

Ruth’s SOLS: Shopping Fools.

On Saturday morning the little guy wanted to join me on some errands.  I relented.  Even though I was looking forward to some time alone, just browsing through stores, I chose him instead.   I told myself, Someday you’ll have plenty of time to browse through stores, but you won’t always have a little boy who [...]