It’s Time for a Chart Check-in: From the TWT Archives

If you’re wondering how to maximize charts in your classroom, these four transformative posts from the #TWTblog archives are sure to inspire.

Seven Ways to Help Students Catch Up After a School Absence

Here are several possibilities to get students up to speed after being absent from school.

The Importance of Charts in Classrooms: Resetting Our Workshop Practices

Within classrooms, charts are critically important elements for shifting the responsibility of learning.

Looking Forward

The end of the school year is the perfect time to venture out of our classrooms and learn about what is happening in classrooms across our school buildings. These opportunities remind us that the work we do with writers is collective.

Making the Most Out of Charts: Maximizing Writing Time

Surprising tips for getting the most out of your charts as visual support!

Some Summer Writing Motivation

The idea of creating anything at all that motivates children to continue learning and developing themselves as writers has kept me awake over the last few nights. And after a conversation with a few VERY trusted colleagues, I'm thinking sleep is going to be intermittent tonight, too. (Why can't I just turn off?) I know…

The Power of Silent Teachers: Helping Writers Increase Productivity and Build Independence Through Interdependence with Tools in the Classroom

We give our writers a lot of stuff. Their folders are full of charts, worksheets and examples meant to be helpful for independent writing, but are students using these tools to their fullest capacity? Are writers waiting for us to say “get out ___” or “look at ____”? This post will give you some practical ideas for how to help students achieve interdependence and utilize the silent teachers in the classroom to their fullest capacity.

A Peek Into the Start of an Information Unit

When we show students examples of what they should be creating before and during their writing, we are, in many ways, providing them a figurative ride up the chairlift with many good skiers in front of them. In two separate classrooms, I introduced an information writing unit with a classroom teacher with a pile of books and writing samples and the students sitting in a circle. "Your job," I said, "is to look at these books and pieces like writers. What did the author do? How did they do it?"

Sitting Side By Side With Standards

There is power in knowing and understanding standards because within them, we can extract teaching points, learning targets, and even success criteria. In this post, we'll thing about how we can use the standards so set up anchor charts, as well as learning progressions in order to establish clarity and navigable pathways for writers.

The Importance of Repertoire: Nurturing Independence From the Start

The truth in writing -- and in many aspects of life -- is that there isn’t really one way to do anything. The strongest writers understand their options and are flexible and intentional with their choices. That’s repertoire!

Continuing Along the Narrative Pathway: Part 2

Almost every student could use these charts to identify what they were working on, how they were working on it, and whether or not they needed instruction of some sort of help. 

Six Ways To Make Charts More Student-Centered

From the planning process to the creation, read to find out six ways to make kids the center of your charts--the center of learning.