Back to School

Some of you have been back to school since early August, while others head back after Labor Day.  Our site stats show people searching for terms that relate to the first month of the school year.  While there are 7+ years of posts in the TWT archives, I wanted to point you to some “back to school” posts written by various members of the team and/or guest bloggers through the years.

•  CONFERRING
  • Best practices for conferring.
  • Helping students learn about their role (and yours) in a writing conference.
  • Keep track of who you confer with by using a visual conference tracker.
  • Organizing your conferring notebook.
  • Spruce-up your conferring record-keeping form with this new one that includes a place to track students’ writing goals.
  • Table conferences can function as a management tool.
  • Think about conferring as if you were a doctor.
  • Using Evernote to confer with writers.
• CONVENTIONS
  • Apostrophes: misused and the joy of apostrophes.
  • Best first drafts (in lieu of sloppy copies).
  • Paragraphing: knowing when to start a new paragraph and making paragraph decisions.
  • Punctuating dialogue.
  • Use minimal markings instead of fixing errors.
• GETTING TO KNOW YOU ACTIVITIES:
  • Celebrity Writer Profiles are a fun way to showcase all of your students for the writers they are now and the writers they hope to be by the end of the school year.
  • Plan a family literacy night.
  • Use a literacy profile to get to know your students as readers and writers.
  • Visual Writer Introductions are a way to help your students get to know all about each other, including their quirks.
• GOAL SETTING
  • Beginning a year of teaching writing with reflection.
  • Setting writing teacher goals.
  • Ten ways to develop a daily writing life.
• MINILESSONS:
  • How to plan a minilesson from scratch.
  • It’s all about the link.
  • There are more ways than one to teach a minilesson.
• ORGANIZATION:
  • Binders: I called my students’ binders “GEAR Binders.”  The original name for these organization tools are “MOOSE Binders.”  Regardless of the name, home-to-school binders are a great way to keep your students organized.
  • Create a functional meeting area.
  • Creating plan boxes.
  • Literacy bags can help students transport their books, reading logs, and writer’s notebooks neatly between home and school.
  • Personalize your plan book.  (Templates can be found by clicking here.)
• READ ALOUDS
  • Get students excited about being part of a writing community with these books.
  • The case for picture books in the upper elementary grades.
• ROUTINES
  • Our August 2014 blog series was devoted to sharpening workshop routines.  Click here to be directed to the posts that will help you the most.
• SHARING
  • Make time for students to share every day.
  • The importance of talk in the writing process.
  • The power of the author’s chair.  (Read more about sharing by clicking here.)
• THINGS TO WRITE ABOUT
  • Heart mapping (This post will also take you to a post on bone maps.)
  • Memory boxes help students gather things that are important, which can help them with their writing.
  • Writing territories are powerful tools for helping students find things to write about.
• UNITS OF STUDY
  • Launching writing workshop in the primary grades.
  • Slicing through the school year.
  • Start the year with a poetry unit.
  • Thinking through units of study you’ll teach this year.
• WRITER’S NOTEBOOKS
  • Instagram can help treat writer’s block.
  • Notebook routines.
  • Set up notebooks for a year of writing.
  • Stuff you can place on the front and back covers of your students’ writer’s notebooks.
  • Ways to weave the “slice of life” routine into your classroom.
• WRITING CENTER
  • Organize your writing center so it holds the necessary materials.
  • Writing centers that work for you and your students.

If you want more back to school posts, then just search our archives.  Just use the pull-down menu in the middle-nav of this blog to view old posts by topic or month-by-month.

Have a fantastic 2014-2015 school year!