Glogster

I recently read a post on Raising Reading and Writers that talked about Glogster.  I hadn’t heard of Glogster, which is a tool for creating virtual posters, and therefore checked it out immediately.  This is a site that allows you to create a poster through text, images, video, and music.  Once you create your own [...]

Slicing on Tuesday

Beginning Procedures

I’m a believer in routine. When writing workshop is predictable everyone is able to work more efficiently. It takes several weeks to build the procedures necessary to create the culture of writing workshop. Over the past two weeks I’ve collected some footage of routines in primary classrooms. One of the important things about developing routines [...]

Celebrate What You CAN Do!

If I were still a classroom teacher, then tomorrow would be my first day back to school (unless I were still teaching in Manhattan, and then I’d be heading back the day after Labor Day).  Even though I no longer have a classroom of my own, I can still recall how overwhelmed I felt in [...]

Words that are Speaking to Me

When you first start writing — and I think it’s true for a lot of beginning writers — you’re scared to death that if you don’t get that sentence right that minute it’s never going to show up again. And it isn’t. But it doesn’t matter — another one will, and it’ll probably be better. [...]

Launching Writing Workshop in the Primary Grades: A Guest Blog Post by Mary Brothers

Mary Brothers is starting her tenth year of teaching with Dublin City Schools where she has taught first, second, and fourth grades. Last year she was a Technology Support Teacher for the district and started her blogging journey. She blogs about her learning, as well as that of her students’, at Teaching in the Tech [...]

Katherine Bomer Speaks About Her Newest Book

I have admired Katherine Bomer’s work for a long time. Her books are exquisite.  Her love of children shines through when she speaks in front of a small group or delivers a keynote address to a huge audience.  Her warmth is genuine from the moment you meet her. Hidden Gems: Naming and Teaching from the [...]

Choice in Sharing

Robert B. Parker. There is no one right way. Each of us finds a way that works for him. But there is a wrong way. The wrong way is to finish your writing day with no more words on paper than when you began. Writers write. Every August, I think about what area in regards [...]

Quotations for Notebooks

I like collecting quotes, especially quotes about writing.  If you like inspirational quotes, then here are a few about writing.  Some of these would be perfect to paste onto the inside front cover of your students’ writer’s notebooks if you’re planning to purchase notebooks or hand out school-issued writer’s notebooks to them. “Stories are the [...]

Slice of Life Story Challenge

Evolution of Anchor Charts

There are many ways to go about creating an anchor chart to use in your classroom. One way is to create the chart ahead of time and use it as part of your instruction. I find myself using this approach when I think my teaching point is brand new for students. An example of this [...]

A New Notebook for the New School Year

Some teachers buy them for their students.  Some teachers have parents purchase their own.  Some teachers have school-issued marble composition books.  Regardless of where students’ writer’s notebooks come from, there should be some fanfare for utilizing them for the first time during a given school year. I wrapped up my students’ notebooks, during my last [...]

Words that are Speaking to Me

Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas everyday. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don’t see any. — Orson Scott Card And this is exciting: Check out our book!

Imagining Possibilities: A Guest Blog Post by Ryan Scala

Ryan Scala has been teaching 4th grade (both as a general educator and a co-teacher working alongside a special education teacher in an inclusive setting) for the past nine years in Springs School, a small K-8 school located on the eastern end of Long Island in New York. He has worked as a teacher consultant [...]

Start the Year with Some Small Poems

Poetry has always been one of my favorite ways to get kids writing during the first weeks of school.  If you’ve done bio poems and are looking for an additional poetry activity, or just for something different, then this post is for you! All the Small Poems and Fourteen More is written by Valerie Worth [...]

Ruth’s SOLS: First Day Minilesson — What is Writing Workshop?

Here’s a little Slice of Life from the first student day. As a coach, the first day is one of the days I miss the most about being a classroom teacher. Thankfully,  Christi Overman (she blogs during the school year only, so you’ll want to check back regularly on Chocolate for Teachers) invited me to [...]

Fall Into Books with Your Students This Fall

Up until last week, if you had asked me what book I’d recommend you read to your students to get them excited about Reading Workshop (Yes, Reading Workshop.  I know, I know, this is a blog about Writing Workshop, but sometimes we have to write about reading!), I’d suggest Wolf by Becky Bloom.  Sure there [...]

Share your writing today!

The Power of Thanks

Today was the first day back for the new school year. Students will come tomorrow. I spent my morning in a series of meetings and the afternoon helping teachers prepare for the first few days of the new year. At the end of the day I returned to my office, reminded of the stamina it [...]

GoogleDocs Just Got Better!

Ruth and I spent a lot of time on the phone, using GoogleDocs, when planning and revising each chapter of Day by Day.  Yesterday we were planning for KSRA’s Annual Conference, which is the first of three conferences we’ll present at this fall.  (We will also be presenting at Literacy for All and NCTE, both [...]

Reflecting on Reading Like a Writer

So I took some time to create a video about the system I created in order to track and reflect on my summer reading. Because I pushed myself to reflect in a new medium, I feel like I dug deeper into the work I’ve done with reading like a writer. (I hope it’s not too [...]

Confessions of a Lurking Writer: A Guest Blog Post by Kristine Michael

Kristine Michael taught fourth grade for fifteen years before becoming the Curriculum Director for Granville Exempted Village Schools in Ohio.  Kristine is a Nationally Board Certified Teacher in middle childhood who loves talking books, literacy, and school. A newly confident writer, she’s currently developing character sketches for a fiction book inspired by her years of [...]

Interrupting Chicken Blog Tour

David Ezra Stein wrote Leaves, which was one of my favorite picture books in 2008.  Therefore, I was excited to read his newest picture book, The Interrupting Chicken, which was released this week.  Stein was kind enough to answer a few questions I had about The Interrupting Chicken, as well as a few other things [...]

Words that are Speaking to Me

“Every story is part of a whole, entire life, you know? Happy and sad and tragic and whatever, but an entire life. And books let you know them.” — Sara Ockler, Twenty Boy Summer I planned to post a video today of my system to track my summer reading. However, when I got up at [...]

Ruth’s Slice(s) of Life: A New Minilesson Idea

Slice 1: All morning I waited for Laurie Halse Anderson’s post about the writing challenge for today. Although a little apprehensive about whether this would be worthwhile, I found myself writing interview questions and then answering them in the voice of a dad. Well past the required fifteen minutes, I was still writing, learning all [...]