An Old Favorite

“If you want to teach me to write,first you must love me.” — Avi

Planning Idea

I’m super fortunate to be working with a couple of third grade teachers (Hi Sandy & Dan!) who are interested in helping their writers to naturally develop more sophisticated writing processes. Their students are coming off of heavy illustration study in their previous writing experience (in grades k-2), so we are trying to find a [...]

How do you know?

Often when I’m working with teachers, I get the question: How do you know? This can be in response to a number of things: minilesson ideas, conference teaching points, share sessions, anchor charts, unit planning, blogging, tweeting. Truthfully, the answer is often I don’t know. I’m just trying things that make sense. I’m trying things that [...]

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Unit of Study Phases

In preparing to talk with teachers about planning a unit of study, I created this chart to help show how I encourage students to individualize the writing process instead of forcing a lockstep approach to the writing process throughout a unit of study. Here are a couple of slides from my presentation: Many units of [...]

A Few Questions for Peter H. Johnston + a Book Giveaway

I’ve learned the importance of communicating clearly with students through the Responsive Classroom training I’ve had and books I’ve read about teacher-talk.  One book that resonated with me several years ago was Choice Words: How Our Language Affects Children’s Learning by Peter H. Johnston.  In his book, Johnston made me think deeply about the words [...]

National Day on Writing

The Third Annual National Day on Writing is coming up on Thursday, October 20th, 2011.  What will you do to celebrate the art of writing in your classroom next month?

A Scavenger Hunt

Last week I talked with a group of intermediate teachers about writers’ notebooks. We discussed the importance of writers’ notebooks to the life of a writer, as well as how to get them going in classrooms. The teachers returned to their classrooms and launched writers’ notebooks. Yesterday, a week later, we came back together for [...]

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Conference Roles

I like to think of a writing conference as a conversation. Just like many common conversations, there is a predictable structure to the writing conference. I think it’s important for us to teach students about their role and our role in a conference. Tomorrow I have plan to do this in second grade (as I [...]

How to Write

This past week I’ve had several conversations with young writers about how to write something. Not the logistics of making letters or spelling words, but how to craft their writing in order to make the reader feel or know something. With our youngest writers this conversation has centered around illustrations. With intermediate writers it has [...]

And the winner is…

Grireland, who left the twentieth comment (which corresponds the #20 picked by the random number generator I used) is the winner of the $100 DonorsChoose Gift Card from Intel.  Congratulations!  Please send me your complete mailing address by clicking here.

Martha Horn!

Martha Horn is coming to NE Indiana on October 14, hosted by the All-Write Consortium. I’m super excited to hear her thoughts about teaching our youngest writers. If you are interested in attending, just click here for registration information. Do you know her book, Talking, Drawing, and Writing? She wrote it along with Mary Ellen [...]

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Beginning the Journey

Today I worked with 17 teachers who attended the All-Write Primary Beginning Writing Workshop. Basically it’s a training for teachers who want to learn the basics of writing workshop and get it going in their classrooms. Although I’ve led this training many times, this is the first time it has been focused on primary grades. [...]

Reflections on September 11th

Ten years have passed since September 11th, 2001.  In 2001, I lived in Manhattan when the planes hit the Towers, the Pentagon, and a field in Shanksville, PA.  Today I live in Central Pennsylvania where the Susquehanna River has crested and has flooded the streets displacing many people from their homes. While natural disasters are [...]

Recap of our Summer 2011 Guest Blogger Series

Labor Day came and went this past Monday.  Nearly every teacher and child I know is back in school.  Therefore, our summer guest blogger series has come to an end.  Next Friday Ruth and I will be blogging on alternating Fridays.  However, I wanted to take a moment to recap all of the guest blog [...]

Watch a Video & Then Enter to Win a Gift Card

Longtime readers of this site know that I’m a big proponent of DonorsChoose.  During my years as a classroom teacher I had over 65 proposals funded on DonorsChoose thanks to the generosity of citizen philanthropists and corporations who chose to fund my proposals I wrote for classroom supplies, books, writer’s notebooks, field trips, and special [...]

Teach the Writer

I wish we could change the world by creating powerful writers forever instead of indifferent writers for school. —Mem Fox I just want to take a deep breath and read those words again. Exactly. “Powerful writers forever instead of indifferent writers for school.” Sigh. This is why I’m thankful for writing workshop. It helps us [...]

Getting Ready for the Tenth Anniversary of September 11th

It’s rare for me to read the “Sunday Business” section of The New York Times.  I’m more of a “Sunday Review,” “Sunday Styles,” front section, “Metropolitan,” “Travel,” and “Book Review” (in that order) kind of person.  However, as I was searching for the “Sunday Review” section this past weekend, the “Sunday Business” section’s front page [...]

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Labor Day

In honor of Labor Day, I’m writing a little post about the kinds of “labor” I expect to see in writing workshop. Early on in the school year, it’s important to define student and teacher roles in writing workshop. With the holiday, this may make a perfect minilesson in your workshop this week. The teaching [...]

Texting in the Middle of the Night

I recently accepted “friend requests” from some of my former students who are now in high school.  I’ve found myself playing the role of parent more than once, telling them to go to sleep (when I was up late feeding my daughter), to watch their language, and to think before they post a status update [...]

GUEST BLOG POST: How Can I Be A Teacher of Writers?

Deb Day has been teaching English and reading classes in northeast Iowa since 1989. In her current position she teaches speech, creative writing , ninth grade English, and coaches contest speech. She is married, the mother of two, grandmother of six, and is owned by Chloe, a one and a half year old Golden Doodle. [...]

Going “Back to School”

Some teachers have been back to school since August 1st, while others head back after Labor Day.  By looking through our site stats I’ve noticed a lot of people are searching for terms that relate to the beginning of the school year.  Therefore, I thought I’d take a few minutes to point you to some [...]