Keep Going ‘Til the End!

This post is as much for me as anyone. I believe in finishing the school year strong. However, this belief tends to conflict with a natural urge to shut down as the end of the year approaches. I’m vigilant in fighting this urge and ask that you will join me. Here are some ways I [...]

Words that are Speaking to Me

“This is a story about darkness and light, about sorrow and joy, about something lost and something found. This is a story about Love.” —Walt Disney’s Cinderella Retold by Cynthia Rylant

Year-End Student Reflection

An integral part of being a writer is taking time for reflective practice. The end of the school year is one time to ask students to reflect on their lives as writers. Take some time to consider which aspects of their writing lives you would like students to consider. Here is a PDF of a [...]

Journey Around a Topic

Earlier this month, The Longest Day: Celebrating the Summer Solstice, which is written by Wendy Pfeffer and illustrated by Linda Bleck, was released by Dutton Children’s Books.  The Longest Day is non-fiction, but it reads like fiction since Pfeffer paints vivid in the reader’s mind with the language she purposefully selects.  The vivid language she [...]

Celebrate!

Today I attended a second grade Popcorn Poetry Party. All the second graders gathered in the shade outside with parents and fans (i.e., teachers) surrounding them. They took turns “popping up” to the mic to share their poetry. As a light breeze swept over us I was reminded of the importance of celebrating student writing. [...]

How much can you fit into one school year?

Many teachers are spending preparation periods working with colleagues to develop a curriculum map for the 2010-2011 school year.  Developing a scope and sequence that is developmentally appropriate, interesting to children, and meets state standards is of crucial importance.  However, it’s not always easy to plan for the following school year. Rissa, of the Learn [...]

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You Won’t Want to Miss This!

My daughter brought this home in her backpack. She reads 10 books this summer, completes this, takes it to a Borders, Borders Express, or Waldenbooks, and gets a free book. If your students are 12 or under, then click here to print the form to send home in their backpacks.

Words that are Speaking to Me

Words tickle him like fingertips in the ribs. — Jerry Spinelli, Loser

When’s the right time to start writing literary essays?

I’ve been doing quite a bit of thinking about literary essays lately.  The topic first came up in early May when I was consulting with a third grade teacher who I had worked with earlier in the school year.  I asked her how her year had been going and she lamented about having so many [...]

Inspiration for an Independent Writing Project

With the school year wrapping up, I’m assuming that many of you are starting your final units of study.  I’m sure many of you are doing an independent writing project unit so as to get your students ready to go off and write independently this summer. When I received a review copy of Todd H. [...]

Share Your Story

Stories are as unique as the people who tell them, and the best stories are those in which the ending is a surprise. At least, that’s what Travis Parker recalled his dad telling him when he was a child. Travis remembered the way his dad would sit on the bed beside him, his mouth curling [...]

Ruth’s SOLS: 16 May 2010

Late, I know, but sometimes things are just too fresh to write about on demand. Here is what I was hoping I could get out yesterday. Grey skies surrounded our little gathering. Some were missing, yet even though they were half a globe away, they still seemed present. There were thirteen of us. Three daughters. Two sons-in-law. [...]

Book Reviewing Policy

We’ve been reviewing a lot more books on this blog in the past year.  Therefore, it’s time for us to share a review policy, inspired by The Reading Zone and The Well-Read Child Blogs. Types of Books Ruth and I review professional teaching books, as well as books for children and young adults, which teachers [...]

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What Goes in a Writer’s Notebook?

One of the things which took me a few years to really understand is what goes in a writer’s notebook. It was one of those thinking journeys which twisted and turned through many ideas, brainstorms, trials, and errors and eventually emerged on the other side with a basic understanding that seems simplistic. Everything I put [...]

Words that are Speaking to Me

“Indeed, the more she wrote, the louder the stories seemed to grow, swirling in her mind, pressing against her head, anxious for release. She didn’t know whether they were any good and in truth she didn’t care. They were hers, and writing them made them real somehow. Characters who’d danced around inside her mind grew [...]

Procedures

My school is putting together pertinent lessons for the first few weeks of school to make launching Reading and Writing Workshop more succinct. So for the past few weeks I’ve been considering the most important procedures to ensure a solid Writing Workshop. I believe procedures will make or break Writing Workshop. So, I’m wondering, what [...]

Punctuating Dialogue

Have you ever noticed how challenging it is for kids to punctuate dialogue correctly?  (Let’s be honest… there are many adults who have this problem too!)  I’m not in favor of utilizing grammar worksheets to teach this to kids since that doesn’t get them to really notice how real authors do it.  Sure, they can [...]

How’s Your Writing Workshop Going?

As the year winds down, now is a perfect time to reflect on your Writing Workshop. Here are a few questions I’m mulling over this week. What did I do well this year as a writing teacher? What did I do differently this year in Writing Workshop? Why did I try this new idea? Will I [...]

Ruth’s SOLS

Tuesday @ 5:58 am: Putting the tea cup in the dishwasher, Sam says, “There’s nothing like a cup of hot fresh tea to start the day off right.”

Logical Situations in Fiction

Did you know that the Curious George Stories, written by Margaret and H.A. Rey, were inspired by many real-life circumstances the writers went through as they escaped from France in 1940?  Remember how Curious George always made it out of a sticky situation by the skin of his teeth?  Well, that’s exactly how life was [...]

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Joy in the Journey

I’ve been thinking all weekend about today’s post. I keep a list of topics to blog for days like today. Days when I’m not sure what it is I should write. However, none of them seemed right. How is it that I can have a list of 23 ideas and yet none of them are [...]

Words That Are Speaking to Me

“Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of [...]