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How to do an amazing celebration of poetry

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How To Host a Poetry Slam at Your School by Ralph Fletcher

I was recently invited to appear at a Poetry Slam at PS 117, a public elementary school in Queens, New York. Full disclosure: I’ve never been totally comfortable with the term “Poetry Slam.” It has always struck me as an oxymoron; the two don’t go together! Poetry should be gentle, thoughtful, contemplative. “Slam” is a loud, brash, in-your-face kind of word.

But maybe that perspective was too narrow. Unlike most other forms of writing, poetry is meant to be read out loud. A Poetry Slam taps into the performative side of this genre.

The Poetry Slam at PS 117 took place on Friday May 13, 2022 and I must say it was a powerful experience for everybody involved. While I was there it occurred to me that other schools might want to conduct Poetry Slams. I put together this blog post to show how you might do so.

Michelle Endelson, a third grade teacher, invited me to appear. The teachers decided that the Poetry Slam would include the 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders. First, the teachers spent a few weeks with the students in their classrooms, reading and writing poetry. Some of the teachers used my book Poetry Matters: Writing a Poem from the Inside Out.

It’s been my experience that many students are better at WRITING their poems than DELIVERING them. I was concerned that the kids would speak too softly and haltingly when the kids got up to present their poems. A few weeks before the Poetry Slam, I sent Michelle a handout on “Reading a Poem Out Loud,” with guidelines for students.

Ambience matters in a poetry slam. When I stepped into the auditorium I was impressed at how the gym was decorated. The subdued lighting and soft jazz music playing in the background created a mellow, coffee house atmosphere that communicated to the students: This is a special day.

At 8:15 am hundreds of excited kids filed into the auditorium and took their seats. Michelle went to the mic, greeted everyone, and introduced me.

The students’ poems that fell into five categories:

1. Whimsical poems

2. Poems that inspire

3. Poems with strong imagery

4. Poems of the soul

5. Poems with powerful messages

As the celebrity guest, it was my role to introduce each section. I did so by saying a few words, and reading a couple of my poems.

Then the students got up, one by one, to recite their poems. A Powerpoint made it easy for the audience to follow the poem being presented. Two 5th grade girls did a terrific job hosting the Poetry Slam. One girl introduced each student: “Our next amazing poet is…” Then, after that student finished presenting the poem, the other girl responded briefly: “What a great poem! I never thought of Venus being a lonely planet. Let’s give Shakira fours snaps!”

The Poetry Slam was a rousing success. I was only present for the Poetry Slam itself, so all the important work took place before the day of the event. I asked Michelle to break down all the steps she took leading up to the Poetry Slam. This is what she told me:

My Principal, Mr. Erik Van Gunten, organized several committees designed to enhance instruction while highlighting poetry and infusing technology. He asked for volunteers to spearhead the school’s first Poetry Slam. I immediately volunteered along with my colleague Kerry Kerpen, a second-grade teacher. I knew at the inception that I wanted Ralph Fletcher to be our guest mentor and honored host at the poetry slam.

My principal and I mapped out the events:

1. Notifying the teachers of the date of the poetry slam so they knew they had to prepare the students and infused their rooms with poetry.

2. Utilizing Poetry Matters by Ralph Fletcher to support the students in crafting their own poems.

3. Setting up a date for the poetry contest to allow students sufficient time to prepare their work for presentation.

4. Placing signs throughout the school advertising the event in advance

5. Initiated "Fletcher Friday" where the morning news team would read a poem written by Ralph Fletcher.

6. Designated a date as Poetry Contest Day where students in grade 3-5 participated in a competitive poetry reading. This activity consisted of students reading aloud their individual poems for submission and possible participation in the Poetry Slam.

7. Once I received the names and poems of the students, I worked on revisions with the students emphasizing line breaks.

8. For two days I went to each grade individually speaking directly with the poets. I proceeded to meet with all the poets, and we spoke about the ingredients of a good poetry reading. I showed the students videos of young poets so students could view the components of good stage presence.

9. We practiced with the poets for a week, so the students were comfortable reciting their poems.

10. Students wrote their poems on Google Slide to create a visual for the audience.

11. Each of the poems were then printed and categorized as follows: Whimsical poems, inspirational poems, Poem with strong imagery, poems of the soul, poems with powerful messages.

12. The art teachers worked on creating posters and banners and creating a visual environment to compliment the Poetry Slam.

13. Two days before the Poetry Slam student practiced in the auditorium.

14. Two student MC’s were selected for the event.

15. Technical lighting was also handled by a student from the upper grades.

“Some of our students are faced with language and learning difficulties,” Michelle Endelson told me. “Students and staff were amazed at how the Poetry Slam served as a platform that allowed children to eloquently present their poetic creations. In addition, they got the benefit of pride and self-esteem as they were cheered by their peers.”

I think it’s essential to find somebody willing to be point person for an event like this—Michelle deserves a lot of credit for making this happen.

Participating in this Poetry Slam was a powerful experience that led me to revise my thinking. I usually encourage smaller, more intimate share sessions that take place within a classroom. But my experience in Queens reminded that there is definitely a place for big, splashy event that celebrates many writers at one time. The Poetry Slam at PS 117 made a lasting impression on those students, something they won’t soon forget.

Reading a Poem Out Loud
Think of three stages:

Stage One: You hardly know the poem. Sure, you wrote it, but you’re not yet comfortable reading it out loud in a smooth, fluent way. It’s like meeting a person for the first time. You’re just learning the poem’s “personality.”

Stage Two: You’re no longer doing a “cold reading” of the poem. You’re beginning to learn it, starting to get comfortable with the different parts and knowing what is coming next. Now you can start to recite the poem with expression, using your unique voice.

Stage Three: You know the poem by heart. You know it so well the poem has become part of you. You look at listeners while you recite it with confidence, making your voice shift (softer, lower, slower, faster, louder), to match the meaning of the poem. Go ahead and belt it out!

Remember: It’s perfectly okay to be at Stage One or Stage Three, but you’re working toward Stage Three. Keep in mind this quote from the great Bob Dylan: “I’ll know my song well before I start singing.”

Tips on Reading a Poem Out Loud: Think of your poem as a play, and add stage directions. Mark up your poem, adding reminders that tell you how to read it. You might bracket particular parts, or underline certain words, adding directions such as:

READ THIS PART S – L – O – W – L – Y or

LOUD!!! or

ANGRY!!

As you mark up your poem, and practice reading it out loud, you may decide to revise it, maybe cutting a line, or changing certain words. Reading out loud is a great way to hear where the rhythm is off.

Ralph Fletcher has been a mentor to teachers and young writers everywhere. He has helped hundreds of thousands of teachers understand the importance of letting go and trusting their writers. Ralph's professional books are part of this tradition.

Students know Ralph as the award-winning author of more than 20 books for children and young adults, including Fig Pudding, Twilight Comes Twice, The Writer’s Notebook, Marshfield Dreams: When I Was a Kid, and most recently Marshfield Memories: More Stories About Growing Up.
Find Ralph on Twitter at @FletcherRalph.

Topics: Ralph Fletcher, Poetry

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How To Host a Poetry Slam at Your School by Ralph Fletcher

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Participating in this Poetry Slam led Ralph Fletcher to revise his thinking. There is definitely a place for big, splashy events that celebrate many writers at one time.

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More great ideas from Oz Lit Teacher

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After spending all weekend working out the best way to teach a genre, locating the required resources and then executing the perfect minilesson, the last thing a teacher wants to hear when they send their students off to write is "but I can't think of anything to write about!"

Even when a topic is provided (which is the least preferred option if we're serious about teaching students to become lifelong writers), there are many students who still just can't think of something to write about. What is their problem? Are they lazy? Are they just not creative? Is it something else?
What is going on here and what can we do about it?
The first thing I would ask you to do here is to reflect on the gradual release of responsibility. What explicit instruction (modelling/demonstrating) have you provided to students on how writers come up with ideas? What guided practice have the students been involved in? What role are the anchor charts in your room playing in supporting students with this? How have you built your students' knowledge and capacity to enact this skill independently? Has it been a gradual release of responsibility or is it time to revisit some of the first phases of the Gradual Release?

Just as we spend time teaching students about the structure and organisation of writing, we need to spend time teaching them about how writers develop their ideas in the first place. Students can, afterall, know everything about the so-called structure of a narrative or a persuasive piece, but if they don't have an idea to write about (or it either isn't strong or one they care about) it will all be for naught.

On this very topic author Jackie French says: "Thinking is the most important part of writing a story. A badly written story with fascinating ideas will be fun to read. But even the best writing in the world can't make boring ideas into a good book."

Why? Because, as Vicki Spandel (2013) states:

"Ideas are the heart of the matter. They influence- and are influenced by- every other trait. How we organise information, the voice with which we express ourselves, the words we choose, the way sentences flow, even the formality or playfulness of conventions: all, all are deeply, profoundly affected by the message."

Teacher tips for building ideas for writing

1. Study mentors

As with any writing skill, I suggest you start by consulting the wisdom of some high-quality mentors. Read through their texts and then inquire with students about how they think the author came up with their idea.

Some books, such as Phil Cummings' book Touch the Moon, include an author's note telling the reader exactly how they came up with their idea. Some authors, such as Mem Fox, have a Q&A section on their website where they answer the question every kid wants to know- where do your ideas come from? (Her answer: "real life; books; and feelings of the deepest kind"). Other authors, such as Jane Godwin, have an explanation on their website for every book they have written. (Jane's site is fantastic for this!)

For your own reference, here is a quick cheat sheet of where some of our most loved authors got their ideas for their books. You can also download a PDF version here.

2. Create an anchor chart

Get discussion going with your students about how writers come up with their ideas. Create an anchor chart to help remind them of this when they are stuck. Make sure you include ways the writers in your class come up with their ideas and then add some of the way published authors have come up with their ideas. Talk to the students about how YOU come up with ideas too! From the table above we already have a list of ways writers can come up with ideas and I'm sure your students can find many more. Remember to keep referring and adding to this chart throughout the year.

3. Practice the art and skill of coming up with ideas

Provide visual prompts for students and encourage them to turn and talk about what it reminds them of from their own lives or from books or TV (the images on author Sue Whiting's Instagram account would be terrific for this). Get your students talking! Once they have had the chance to talk about things it reminds them of, get them to write a list of possible ideas they could write about that come from this visual. Don't force them to write about it though, just get them to list the ideas. We want them to practice the skill of coming up with the ideas, not writing about them (yet). Have students share their lists. Repeat this activity multiple times to warm up the 'idea generation muscle' in their brains.

4. Practise developing ideas from words.

Author Jen Storer says words are like magnets because they attract ideas to them. Give students a few words and get them to sit and think of possible ideas these words might conjure up. If a narrative contained the words 'spray can, dog and boot' for example, what could a possible story be? Have them talk about their ideas with other students. They don't always need to write about them, they just need to practice coming up with them. This is true for persuasive writing too; if I was writing to the council to ask them to fix the fence at my local dog park (true story), what might be some reasons I could give them? Don't write the piece, just write the reasons as a list. By the end of a unit on generating ideas students should have a large number of options for persuasive topics they could write about (some given to them, some created by themselves), along with some early ideas of reasons to support their argument. Get them to select the topic they feel most passionately about to take further into a full piece of writing.

5. Engage students in Writer's Notebook activities

The Writer's Notebook is designed to get students to notice the world around them. It encourages them to think about events, feelings, people and places from their own lives. As we have seen with lots of published authors, so many of their ideas come from their own lives.

Visit the Oz Lit Teacher Writer's Notebook Ideas slide deck for ideas on writers notebook activities to use with your students. (You can print the ideas in this deck for use in your own class- don't forget to add other activity ideas you have used to share with others).

Want more lesson ideas?

See Jennifer Serravallo's Writing Strategies book. She has a whole chapter on different lessons for developing writing ideas with students.

Ideas is the first trait in the 6 traits of writing because, as Vicki Spandel says, it influences all the other traits and is influenced by the other traits. If we don't give our students explicit instruction in how to develop ideas, we can't expect them to successfully enact this skill independently, And, if we skip this very important skill, it won't matter how wonderful our persuasive, narrative, recount, procedural (or any other genre) writing minilessons are, our students' writing will not get off the ground or shine without the foundational layer of good ideas.
Don't forget to share your own lesson plans and ideas with the rest of the Oz Lit Community. How do you help those students who don't know what to write about? What has worked for your students? I'd love to hear your ideas in the comments below or on the Oz Lit Teacher Facebook group.
Related blog posts:
References
Spandel, V. (2013). Creating writers. Boston,: Pearson, p.63.

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5 Teacher tips for overcoming "I Don't know what to write about"

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After spending all weekend working out the best way to teach a genre, locating the required resources and then executing the perfect minilesson, the last thing a teacher wants to hear when they send their students off to write is "but I can't think of anything to write about!"

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Dos and Donts

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Writer's notebooks can be powerful tools in the writing classroom but I've heard a few myths floating around about these and I think it's time to clear some of them up.

Let's take a look at 5 myths you might come across when talking to teachers about writer's notebooks.

Myth #1: Having a writer's notebook automatically improves student writing.

Not true.

Like a hammer, a writer's notebook is a tool. And, just like a hammer, it needs to be picked up and used for it to be effective. Having a hammer in the shed will not help build the house... having a "writer's notebook" in a locker will not help improve student writing.

Using the writer's notebook as a tool to increase the amount of time, volume, student choice and engagement is what will improve student writing.

When it's used regularly to help students notice the world around them and capture ideas for writing, trial different craft strategies and practice writing in a risk-free environment- that's when it will improve student writing.

Myth #2: There's one correct way to use a writer's notebook.

Nope.

You only need to read through my interviews with Trace Balla, Lian Tanner and Claire Saxby to see that each of these published authors uses their writer's notebook in a different way. ( Sign up to my mailing list to be notified of other posts, resources and info on my writer's notebooks series).

Sure, there are similarities (none of them mentioned pasting worksheets into their books, for example), but there's not one clear set of rules about exactly how these tools must be used.

What is clear, is that the use needs to be authentic- it needs to help the writer with their process of writing.

This means some authors doodle more in the notebook and others use it as a dumping ground of ideas. Some use it heavily in the planning stages, others put it away once they've started typing their work.

Most authors write in their notebooks regularly (and often daily).

Many authors mention jotting down overheard conversations or interesting words, others sit and jot their thoughts at the start of each day.

Often, when teachers feel like they're using the writer's notebook in the 'wrong' way, they lose confidence with them and don't use them at all.

My recommendation for learning the best way to use a writer's notebook is to start using one yourself! This will help you learn what is authentic and helpful to you as a writer and what isn't.

Here are Aimee Buckner's guidelines for what's in and out of the writer's notebook:

"It's not a science, there is no one right way. Keeping a notebook is a process."
(Buckner, 2005)

All authors agree: the notebook is a messy place.

(I know, I know- this makes us control freak teachers uncomfortable- "how can we fit 'messy' into a nice neat little box? I need rules, I need structure, I need a pretty printed outline from Pinterest!")

No. You don't.

Myth #3: Students can have complete freedom when using a writer's notebook.

I'm calling BS on this one.

Yes, the writer's notebook is a messy place.

And yes, it's all about the needs of the writer and their creativity and expression.

BUT you can't forget our good old friend the Gradual Release of Responsibility when using these tools!

Remember Fisher and Fry's statement?

'All four phases of the gradual release of responsibility framework are necessary if we want students to learn deeply, think critically and creatively, and be able to mobilize learning strategies.'
(Fisher and Frey, 2014)

We can't send our kids straight into the independent learning phase and expect a classroom of Roald Dahls and J. K. Rowlings to emerge. They need focused instruction.

Our students still need explicit teaching on how to collect and build ideas and how to mine the world around them for topics and themes. They need strategies NOT prompts.

They need teaching on how to turn an idea into a piece of writing that is interesting and engaging for a reader.

They need mentoring on how they can use the ideas in their notebook to craft writing that applies the teaching from the genre minilesson.

They can't do any of this if the notebook is only used for 'Free Writing Friday, ' (where the 'free' part often means the lesson is 'free' of explicit teaching).

Effective notebook writing needs explicit teaching. In fact, it's purpose built to support teaching of the 'ideas' trait (as well as test out the other traits).

Students might not apply the minilesson teaching in the writing time immediately following the minilesson, but you (and they) will be able to call on those minilessons when you're conferring with writers down the track. (' Remember when we did that minilesson on adding detail to your ideas? This might be a good time to use that strategy..."

Myth #4: The Writer's notebook is only useful for 'collecting seeds.'

Ralph Fletcher often talks about the notebook as a place for collecting seed ideas that might later germinate into beautiful flowers. (It's important to note that he's also very realistic about how many seeds actually do turn into flowers- a rate that's pretty reflective of my actual greenthumb capacity).

He also calls notebooks incubators:

"A writer's notebook works just like an incubator: a protective place to keep your infant idea safe and warm, a place for it to grow while it is too young, too new, to survive on its own. In time, you may decide to go back to the idea, add to it, change it, or combine it with another idea. In time the idea may grow stronger, strong enough to have other people look at it, strong enough to go out on its own."
(Fletcher, 1996)

So yes, writer's notebooks are certainly great for 'collecting seeds' to write about later...

BUT their use does not stop there.

As you can see in the way Lian Tanner uses her notebook, writers often dip in and out of their notebooks throughout the entire writing process.

In the drafting and revising stages, notebooks are wonderful places to test out craft ideas after minilessons.

You might do a minilesson on 'creating a lead' for example (organisation trait) and, after students have read through mentor texts to see how other writers start their stories, they could use the notebook to test out different lead strategies for one of their own pieces.

Myth #5 It's either notebooks or genre instruction- you can't do both.

Bullocks.

It's not an either/or sum.

In fact, notebooks shine when used in conjunction with genre instruction.

Let's take persuasive writing as an example:

Have you ever had this problem: After teaching all your best, carefully planned minilessons on the organisation of a persuasive writing piece you are dismayed at the voiceless, dull and boring writing that students hand back to you?

Enter the writer's notebook!

Teach your organisation minilessons BUT rather than assigning a topic (don't even get me started on cats vs dogs as a topic!) ask your students to reread all the writing in their notebook to look for possible topics they could write about:

What are the common themes they've written about?

What topics do they know a lot about?

What do they care about?

What keeps popping up?

(Obviously, the more writing they've done in their notebook, the more effective this task will be.)

Narrow the list of potential ideas down until they find the one idea that stands out for them at this point in time.

Now, when students apply the learning from the minilesson, they'll be writing on a topic they actually know and care about. This will impact the voice in their writing as well as their motivation, engagement and perseverance with the task.

"Offering students choices about their learning is one of the most powerful ways teachers can boost student learning...

Students engage in deeper, richer learning.

Students display more on-task behaviour.

Students' social and emotional learning increases.

The learning environment becomes more collaborative.

Teaching is more fun."
(Anderson, 2016)
Writer's notebook can be powerful tools for improving student writing, but they must be used in a way that promotes time for writing, increases volume of writing and allows student choice in writing.
Want some great strategy lessons for the writer's notebook? (Or got some great ideas you want to share?) Check out my free downloadable PowerPoint with nearly 40 strategies and ideas.

You're welcome ?

Now, go and get yourself a book to start writing in! ( And, if you haven't already signed up to my mailing list and received your copy of my recommended mentor text list, you should do that too!)

Want more PD on writing? I'm running a one day PD this coming school holidays (see below).

(Also, let me know if you're interested in me running a one hour writer's notebook PD over the holidays or early next term...
References:

Anderson, M. (2016). Learning to Choose, Choosing to Learn: The Key to Student Motivation and Achievement. ASCD.

Buckner, A. (2005). Notebook Know-How: Strategies for Writers' Notebooks. Stenhouse Publishers.

Fisher, D. and Frey, N. (2014). Better Learning Through Structured Teaching: A Framework for the Gradual Release of Responsibility, 2nd Edition. 2nd ed. Alexandria: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Fletcher, R. (1996). A writer's notebook. HarperTrophy.

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Writer's notebooks can be powerful tools in the writing classroom but I've heard a few myths floating around about these and I think it's time to clear some of them up. Let's take a look at 5 myths you might come across when talking to teachers about writer's notebooks. Not true.

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Grammar is a broad concept, which can include syntax, usage of punctuation and spacing, vocabulary, inflections, spellings and generally accepted ways of speaking, writing, and communicating. The rules or expectations for "grammar" may change with region, context, purpose, and many other factors.

When I teach summer writing courses, I often include time for everyone to reflect on their own experiences as writers. Invariably, many adult writers remember something about how they were taught grammar - whether it was the dreaded red pen, or diagramming sentences. When it comes to teaching grammar and mechanics, it seems that many people have a lot of memories and experiences related to what not to do:

We know not to mark up a child's paper with lots of red ink.

We know not to correct children's grammar in mid-sentence while they are speaking.

We know not to drill children with worksheets and drudgery.

We know not to model confusing grammar and mechanics in our own speaking or writing.

But what to do?
PURPOSE
It might be helpful to clarify your purpose in teaching grammar. I usually talk about grammar with students in terms of making decisions about our writing, rather than following a set of rules about writing.

Truthfully, there are no "rules" for grammar. There are always many options for how to say something, what type of punctuation to use, the construction of a sentence and so forth. To suggest that there is a correct way , or "standard" English way, or an incorrect way just isn't really true (See Eats, Shoots, and Leaves by Lynne Truss for a lovely explanation of this). Instead of teaching grammar so as to follow "rules," I teach grammar so that students can communicate with an audience effectively.

In most cases, readers will be distracted if a piece of writing is littered with spelling errors and a mix of capital and lower case letters. Most readers have come to expect quotation marks, commas, paragraph indents, and other conventions to help them read text more easily. In some cases, a writer is better off using a very academic tone and sophisticated vocabulary, but in other cases they might need to use a more casual tone and some slang to get the point across.

I want students to be able to anticipate what their targeted audience might be expecting. What will surprise the audience? What will go unnoticed? What might distract them from the writing?

We study grammar so that we can communicate effectively. We want our writing to be easy for our readers to read and understand, and we want them to get the message we intended for them.

Students can study what real published authors do to learn what to do in their own writing. By studying elements of grammar in meaningful contexts - like a familiar read-aloud, a letter from their teacher, or any other meaningful text - they can learn how to make grammatical decisions to improve their own writing.

SYNTAX

Syntax refers to word order. Specifically, the order in which words are arranged to form a sentence.

Syntax is just one of many aspects of grammar that teachers often find challenging for students to grasp. Sometimes, well-intentioned educators resort to teaching students "formulas" or rules for sentences, sentence worksheets, fill-in-the-blanks and other measures in an attempt at teaching students to speak and write in complete sentences.

These practices look a lot like the practices that adult writers tell me were their least successful experiences in school. Fortunately, there are other ways to go about it.

A starting point is to give students lots of built-in time for oral language. This might look like lots of turning-and-talking during read-aloud conversations, with prompts to get kids started in the direction of a complete thought, or it might look like partner work during writing workshop where students say aloud what they plan to write that day.

In either case, gently coaching students to use complete sentences when they are engaged in oral language is more effective than you may realize. Just sitting nearby and whispering to a student to finish their thought... and then giving a full five seconds of wait time before you do anything else ... is incredibly powerful. (And if the student is still stumped, that might be when you model for them what the full sentence might sound like.)

However, it is the more complex sentences that tend to give students more trouble. And it tends to be more challenging in writing than it is in speaking (though not always).

Try reading one of these texts from National Geographic's website with the lens of syntax. (Keep in mind we could read many times with many different lenses - punctuation, capitalization, verbs, you name it).
https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/facts/arctic-fox https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/space/article/mission-to-mars https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/bessie-coleman
If you're not sure what to look for, you might refer to this handy chart.

When I look at these texts, what stands out to me is that most of the sentences are compound or complex sentences. There are very few simple statements. If I think about this as a craft move-a decision that the author made-I might imagine what the writing would sound like if it contained lots of simple statements instead of the more complex sentences. I might imagine how the writing would sound if the author had used more exclamations and questions. Either of those decisions would have changed the text significantly.

In a shared reading lesson, I might display this text and read it to my students, and then ask them to try rewriting portions of it using only simple statements. Then, have them open up their own writing notebooks and choose an excerpt of their own writing to do the same. Just a brief bit of practice will quickly create a memorable experience with writing that helps students understand why authors might choose more complex sentences instead.

When I look back on my own life as a student, I remember many of the same dreaded practices that adult writers often share with me -the red pens, the worksheets, and being cut off mid-sentence to have my speech corrected. But, as an educator, there are many practices I can say yes to that I hope kids will grow up to remember positively:

We know that grammar is a set of craft moves, not a set of rules.

We know that writers make decisions about how to use conventions.

We know that writers consider their purpose and audience when they make a decision.

We know that studying what great writers do can help us learn to be great writers too.

For a very practical description of effective grammar instruction, I recommend this post by Sarah Dean: Teaching Grammar Effectively, as well as The Power of Grammarby Mary Ehrenworth and Vicki Vinton as an excellent resource for planning grammar instruction.

Literacy Coach, Consultant, Author, Graduate Course Instructor, and Mom. Passionate about fostering a love of reading and writing in learners of all ages. View all posts by BethMooreSchool

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Grammar is a set of craft moves, not a set of rules.

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Traits of Writing

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It's no surprise that I get a lot of questions about the 6+1 traits of writing.

I do, after all, bang on about them ALL. THE. TIME.

Why?

Because even though I love writing and have had articles and stories published in journals and books, I never had an effective way of breaking quality writing down for students until I learned about the traits.

Pre-traits, I didn't have a consistent set of 'looks-fors' when reading student writing. I'd hesitantly offer up suggestions for next steps and then feel deflated at the lack of significant improvement in student writing.

Enter the traits...

Finally, I was able to 'look under the hood' and label all the little cogs that work together to produce impactful writing. I could assess students' writing with these cogs in mind and identify precise teaching points that were actually relevant to my students.

The turn-around in my confidence and competence in teaching writing effectively is what keeps me banging on about the traits today.

I want every student (irrespective of postcode) to be on the receiving end of high-quality writing instruction that gives them the whole story about effective writing (i.e- it's much more complex than just structure + punctuation + grammar + spelling).

So, to help clarify your understanding of what the traits are and what they aren't let's look at 3 common misconceptions about them:

Misconception #1: The traits are a writing program.

Nope.

The traits will NOT tell you what to teach next week.

They will not give you a bombproof recipe for instruction that will turn every child in your class into Meg McKinlay or Bronwyn Bancroft.

(Note: Can I get a bit of appreciation for my clever use of alliteration in that last line please? Hello Word Choice trait!)

In fact, this misconception is probably the one that disappoints teachers the most.

Often what happens is, they're looking for a quick fix for their writing instruction, they buy the traits books, read them and then get disappointed when they can't find the pre-prepared lessons they need to teach.

That's because the traits aren't a program or a script to follow.

They're actually a set of assessment criteria.

Assessment criteria that empower you as the teacher to make professionally informed teaching decisions based on the writers in your class.

Nothing else matters in teaching and learning as much as quality assessment, that is, data that inform and differentiate instruction for each learner in a never-ending cycle of inquiry to discover what works best. (Sharratt, 2019)

An investment in learning about the qualities of good writing is an investment in the ONLY silver bullet in high-quality literacy instruction: teacher content knowledge.

Build knowledge on how to assess writing and you'll then be able to flip that into targeted teaching points for your students.

Misconception #2: The traits only apply to narrative writing

If you've read my blog on traits vs genre you'll already know this one's codswallop.

The writing traits were developed after a bunch of teachers read 1000's of pieces of students writing (in all different genres) and identified the common elements of the most effective pieces.

These common elements reached across genres and certainly weren't just applicable to narrative writing.

Good writing is good writing- be it narrative, persuasive or even business writing.

Check out this comment on the voice trait from Holly Cardamone, Australian communications expert, in her book Tell Your Story:

Here's the thing: nailing voice is not easy. There was an entire study unit dedicated solely to voice in my Writing and Literature Master's in the context of narrative, non-fiction and fiction, because voice is one of the critical elements of readability. (Cardamone, 2020)

See! The qualities of good writing aren't genre specific.

Misconception #3: The traits won't prepare my students for NAPLAN

Before I tackle this one, I want to make one thing abundantly clear:
Our job as teachers is NOT to create NAPLAN writers.
Our job as teachers is to create lifelong writers- the ones who go on to use writing in their lives outside of school.

The ones who know and respect the power of words and writing and have enough skills to unleash that power- if and when they so desire.

My intention in responding to this misconception is NOT to help you 'game' your writing instruction to get good NAPLAN scores, it's to prove that good NAPLAN scores will be a natural consequences of strong writing instruction that tells the whole story about effective writing.

Now that we've got that cleared up...

For all its faults, the NAPLAN writing assessment actually has a decent set of criteria for evaluating good writing.

Both the narrative and persuasive assessments use the following 9 criteria headings (the number in brackets denotes the maximum score available for each criterion):

Audience (6)

Text structure (4)

Ideas (5)

Vocabulary (5)

Cohesion (4)

Paragraphing (3 for persuasive, 2 for narrative)

Sentence structure (6)

Punctuation (5)

Spelling (6)

The difference is, the persuasive assessment includes a 'persuasive devices' criteria (4), whereas the narrative assessment has one for 'character and setting' (4).

Let's look at those criteria in terms of the 6+1 traits:

Hmm...interesting!

Irrespective of whether it's in high-stakes testing, business writing or even a Facebook status update, good quality writing is good quality writing.

Teach that, and the school's NAPLAN growth data will take care of itself.

So there you have it- 3 common misconceptions about the 6+1 writing traits.

Do you know of any others lingering about?

Of course, if you want to learn more about the traits, I'm running a self-paced online course version of my Writing Traits Masterclass that starts tomorrow (Monday, Feb 22).

Here's what some previous participants had to say about it:
I loved that you presented the PD like a teacher! No confusing acronyms or long-winded explanations for everything. Just simple, practical, useful knowledge. I didn't feel mentally drained after any of your sessions. It was refreshing. Thank you! I loved the picture book example texts and the way the classes were paced. Great take away ideas for all traits. Really valuable teaching opportunities were explained well and easy to implement. -Dianne References: -Krystin

Cardamone, H., 2020. Tell Your Story. Melbourne.

Sharratt, L., 2019. CLARITY: What matters most in learning, teaching, and leading. Thousand Oaks: Corwin.

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3 Common Misconceptions About The 6+1 Traits of writing - Oz Lit Teacher Narissa Leung

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It's no surprise that I get a lot of questions about the 6+1 traits of writing. I do, after all, bang on about them ALL. THE. TIME. Why? Because even though I love writing and have had articles and stories published in journals and books, I never had an effective way of breaking quality writing down for students until I learned about the traits.

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Inspiring Writers - reading/writing connections

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Inspiring Writers - reading/writing connections

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This week I found myself closely re-examining the content gathered across the pages of my writer's notebooks all these years. I was focused on the kinds of collected items that had gathered upon the pages. Certainly a multitude of my own words and thoughts. However, there were also the words of other writers nestled along side my own words.

It lead me to thinking about what I have seen in a multitude of kids notebooks across the last 20 years or so.

What struck me as significant, was the noticeable absence of words gathered from potential writing mentors. These young writers appear to have been left out of the loop when it comes to the treasure awaiting them in the very books they read, as well as those read to them, -treasure their eyes, their minds, overlook almost daily. Nobody rang the alarm alerting them to these collectible word treasures. They don't read like writers and that's such a shame...
I am a frequent gatherer of words I wish I had written. Words from fellow writers, both inspiring and thought provoking. I consider it important for student writers to view this type of gathering as legitimate activity for them to pursue. My writer's notebooks regularly reflect this passion for gathering word treasure. Our notebooks have space to accommodate those words possessing the power to rub off on our own words. When our eyes fall upon words we identify as wondrous, we should copy such extracts into our notebooks as a reminder of powerful and inspirational writing. These words are the words we wish we had written...

When sharing my harvest of notebook entries, I frequently say things like:
'I love that line, let me tell you why.' 'Listen to the sounds of that magical sentence. Can you hear it too?' 'What great description of the setting. I can see that so clearly in my mind.' An emotional response to the writing of others is important to acknowledge within yourself, as a reader. It is also important to share these responses with less experienced readers and writers. When we are moved or provoked, by the words on the page, the writer has done their job. We must show the less experienced writer how we engage with the words of other writers. As writers, and teachers of writing, we need to develop a close relationship with those authors we admire. We need to get close to their words. We need to study closely, aspects of their craft. We need to learn to savour their words. We need to learn to read, not just with our eyes, but our also with our ears, our hearts. Reading like a writer requires a coordinated effort within each of us. These authors (and illustrators) can become our mentors. We can be lifted on their wings.
You could begin by asking your students to bring a favourite book to the workshop and engage in a bit of exploration... Text detectives all. Such actions hopefully spark the possibility that they too might be able to write in such engaging ways. When in time student writers begin to notice such things themselves, teaching becomes so much easier and much more fulfilling. Before we do this important exploratory work I often share some of the influences on my own writing.
'The rain came with clouds, the colour of bruises.' *Description

'Trickles tipped caterpillars off their twigs and turned to torrents.' *Alliteration

'Noah Barleycorn left home in the early morning, before the sun rose, before the dogs woke, before the dew stopped falling on the fields.' *Establishes time, using repetition

'You could watch the black soil soaking up the water. It swells when it gets wet. The top of the soil looked alive. it moved and puffed up as if it was reaching for the rain.' * strong visual imagery

It remains important for young writers (and their teachers) to begin to appreciate the immense power of other writers; -their capacity to positively impact the writing we all do.
You've gotta love that...

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Helping Young Writers Find Treasure- Learning To Read Like A Writer

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This week I found myself closely re-examining the content gathered across the pages of my writer's notebooks all these years. I was focused on the kinds of collected items that had gathered upon the pages. Certainly a multitude of my own words and thoughts.

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Opinion

By Alan Wright

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Recent discussions regarding boys writing show they continue to lag behind the results achieved by girls. To find the root causes, let's delve deeper.

Approaches used in too many classrooms convince writers, particularly boys, that the adult in charge has all the control over their writing. Naturally, the teachers want the student to improve, but that can involve them wresting control of almost every aspect. Here's the topic, now write me a page. No choice of topic or genre, no opportunity to rehearse words, no discussion, no "think before ink".

The young writer despairs: It's about the writing, not about my writing.

The write stuff ... how to motivate boys. Credit:Virginia Star

Such approaches don't encourage brave actions on their part. They are merely required to produce a response. Nothing more. The sole purpose is to get it done. The sad result? It's unlikely to motivate them. Repeated doses of this and they become disengaged. The energy for writing evaporates.

At a time when adolescent learners are seeking increased autonomy and independence, the curriculum strips away control. When writers have some skin in the game, when they are given choice, the likelihood of persisting increases.

A rethink of how our middle schools deliver writing is long overdue. Bold and daring teaching is required. We are told adolescent students dislike writing. Maybe, just maybe, they only dislike the kind of writing they are being made to do.

Why have teachers traditionally asked all the students to write on the same topic in the exactly same way? This entrenches a fabricated writing experience, decreasing the chances of student investment. If we want boys to write, let's give them some choice. That motivates them and in turn builds confidence.

Teaching writing is not about telling students what to write. It is about showing students how to write effectively in different genres, for different purposes, for different readers, across different subjects.

Many boys lack male models of readers and writers in their lives. They may live in book deserts. A teacher may be the only reader some boys encounter.

They may see literature as mutually exclusive from their passions, let's say sport and recreation. But writing can be about those passions, too. And they can discover that reading is not merely a school-based activity. It's a life skill. For writing to thrive, reading is an essential companion.

That connection needs to be highly visible. Ask students: What have you read that is like what you're
trying to write?

Our young writers need teachers willing to demonstrate why writers write, and to show them how writing works best. Teachers who share their own writing.

Otherwise we will get another generation of young writers passing through our schools thinking: I can't wait to be like you, someone who doesn't have to write.

Until the writing revolution, we will continue to experience a quite avoidable disconnect between writing and the adolescent mind. Boys, as writers, will continue to fail to thrive.
Alan J Wright is an educational consultant, author and poet who has worked extensively throughout Australia and the United States.

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Opinion By Alan Wright Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size Recent discussions regarding boys writing show they continue to lag behind the results achieved by girls. To find the root causes, let's delve deeper. Approaches used in too many classrooms convince writers, particularly boys, that the adult in charge has all the control over their writing.

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Writers Share: Alan j Wright- Where Does Your Poetry Hide?

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Poetry Videos- Alan j Wright Reads Aloud

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If you are still wondering about the efficacy of providing student writers with choice, these findings by Daniel Pink succinctly sum up the situation:

'Control leads to compliance; autonomy leads to engagement.' (2009, p. 108).

When the students decided on a possible topic of interest the teacher asked about purpose and audience,
'Too often in schools, teachers own the work. We create and teach lessons, dole out assignments, and assess the results, leaving students feeling like worker bees, dutifully completing assigned tasks with little power or control. However, when we give choice, we both empower students and help them develop and take more responsibility for their own learning.'
Daniel Pink, 'How Schools Can Spend Time More Wisely ' (2009)

Many Additional Benefits of Choice: Through choice, you can assist students self-differentiate their learning so work is more appropriately challenging. You can also combat student apathy, helping students connect with their strengths and interests and giving them more autonomy, power, and control over their work, which boosts their intrinsic motivation. These are perhaps the two most compelling reasons to use choice as a part of daily teaching and learning in schools, but there are many other additional benefits that are important to recognize as well, for they help highlight the true power and potential of choice.'

Students engage in deeper, richer learning.

Students display more on-task behaviour.

Students' social and emotional learning increases.

The learning environment becomes more collaborative.

Teaching is more satisfying and effective.

Australia's Victorian Education Department Literacy Portal Website has this to say regarding choice:Rehearsal is a natural part of writing. If teachers limit the ability of student writers to make choices, it limits both the practice of writing and the important exercise of topic and genre selection. Rehearsal cannot take place, since the writer usually doesn't know what he or she will be writing that day. Where the teacher chooses topics and genres for the student writer, both choice and rehearsal are starved of oxygen.

'At all stages of primary school, students need the opportunity to deploy their existing skills in acts of meaningful, communicative writing. Even when still very new to writing (and grappling with the fine motor skills of holding a pencil), young children need the freedom to experiment with drawing and writing. Wilson (2006) sees independent writing as an opportunity for children to write 'exploratively and wonderingly'(p. 9), finding voice through writing about things they find important.
It is through this active attention to encoding text that existing skills are consolidated and developing strategies are put to work, reinforced and extended. Independent writing is therefore a time to write and utilise the strategies and understandings gained through whole class, small group and one-to-one instruction.' Independent writing provides students with the opportunities to employ the various skills and knowledge they have developed throughout the more supported teaching practices of modelled and shared writing as well as those areas which have formed the focus of the mini lessons or writing conferences.
Students should have the freedom to engage in independent writing at all phases of the writing process. Independent writing is not just 'free choice' writing but what the student does with their work as a result of explicit instruction and scaffolds offered by the teacher. In this sense, it is the independent phase of the gradual release of responsibility (Pearson & Gallagher, 1983; Duke, Pearson, Strachan & Billman, 2011).
Independent writing is both the natural response to the teaching cycle, student ideas and projects (Christie, 2005; Gibbons, 2015; Hammond, 2001) as well as recognition of the gradual release of responsibility (Pearson & Gallagher, 1983; Duke, Pearson, Strachan & Billman, 2011).
As well as forming a part of staged, sequential teaching, independent writing can be a time the student writes with little support from the teacher, trying out ideas in a risk-free environment where genuine writing attempts are recognised and rewarded.
Gadd & Parr, 2016) found effective teachers involve students in the selection and construction of writing tasks whenever possible.
Perry and Drummond (2002) contend that 'when students have choices, they are typically more interested in and committed to activities, and committed learners are more likely to increase effort and persist when difficulties arise.'(p. 306).
An example of student involvement in task construction involved a teacher inquiring of his or her students:

The students wrote because they had something to say (which they had decided on) and the text type to be utilised emerged from the topic rather than the other way around. The topic (and its purpose related task) drove the writing. This is a powerful motivator.
Effective teachers provide opportunities for independent (as well as instructional) writing for students. As an instructional approach, independent writing principally involves students writing for self-selected purposes and on self-selected topics and at times and places selected by the student. This is the ultimate manifestation of choice. 'What things have we been doing lately that we might write about? Have a think...' 'Who might want to read about this?' and 'What do you want to tell them about this?' 'Would you be writing to report or to persuade or to recount...?'
The intended audience may, or may not, include the teacher (Perry & Drummond, 2002). As the teacher is expected to provide little guidance or support for most students on "what" and "how" to write during independent writing, the teacher must ensure that students hold mastery of the problem-solving and self-monitoring strategies required for successful outputs to be generated (Perry & Drummond, 2002). '
And this from Lucy Calkin's work...

Teachers across the study consistently encouraged their students to write independently by implementing variations of the above guidelines. Some timetabled independent writing sessions; others merely encouraged their students to write in their own time. Some allowed for total self-selection of topics; others offered topics that students could choose from if they wished. Some encouraged use of a "writer's notebook" (Calkins, 1994) Students produced electronic or hard copy and noted possible topics for writing and wrote on imaginative, real-life, and factual topics that they were excited about. Their independent writing was not assessed as such, but teachers were always willing to respond to writing (if asked), or help students prepare it for a wider audience (if asked), or both. But no matter how they implemented independent writing, teachers were committed to encouraging their students to write for themselves whenever possible.
As one teacher stated: I want writing to be a real-life thing for my students...It's not just something you do between 9 and 10; it's something you do because you've got something to say...and you want to get it out of you... Um, I think my students like writing cause they know they can say whatever they want (within reason!) and they know that I'm always happy to read their writing and talk to them about it ... I want them to think of themselves as writers and understand that writing isn't just something you do in writing time. ' Page 42 set 1, 2017 TEACHING AND LEARNING

'When we incorporate choice, students own the learning process. We honour their agency and empower them to become the life-long learners we want them to be. At some point, they will leave the classroom and they won't have someone right there, right there by their side in control of their writing life. They will have to take charge and make decisions about their own learning. This is why student choice is so critical.'
Alan Wright
Igniting Writing- When a Teacher Writes, Hawker Brownlow 2011.

Some links that provide additional support for allowing students CHOICE and agency.
http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/116015/chapters/The-Key-Benefits-of-Choice.aspx
This article refers to choice in reading, but it is equally applicable to writing: http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/Journals/ELQ/0383-feb2016/ELQ0383Top.pdf
A teacher outlines how he provides and promotes choice for the writers in his classroom: https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/blog-posts/john-depasquale/promote-student-choice-writing-workshop/
Ralph Fletcher video on choice https://blog.heinemann.com/ralph-fletcher-importance-choice-writing-classroom

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Some Research on CHOICE In Student Writing

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If you are still wondering about the efficacy of providing student writers with choice, these findings by Daniel Pink succinctly sum up the situation: 'Control leads to compliance; autonomy leads to engagement.' (2009, p. 108). When the students decided on a possible topic of interest the teacher asked about purpose and audience, 'Too often in schools, teachers own the work.

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Peer feedback prompts

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Reading like a writer with mentor texts

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Consider this first line of dialogue from Charlotte's Web (1952) by E.B. White:

"'Where's Papa going with the ax?' said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast."

What does this line of dialogue lead you to think?

How does it make you feel?

How does it draw you into the story?

Now, consider if the line of dialogue had read something like this:

"Hi, Papa!," yelled Fern to her dad as he walked past the door, carrying an ax.

What does this dialogue lead you to think?

How does it make you feel?

How does it draw you into the story?

How is it different from the previous example?

In the first example, the dialogue that the author included is more than just words that one character says to another. "Where's Papa going with the ax?" gives the reader a sense of setting and action, but it also helps create a mood. You can tell something is up with Papa and that his heading to the barn so early in the morning is not necessarily a good thing.

Dialogue, when used well, is the perfect writing tool to move a story forward without having to over-explain things. It allows the reader to use their own thinking to draw inferences, make predictions, and fill-in-the-blanks that enrich the reading experience.

When students add dialogue to their narratives, what kind of dialogue are they including? Most often, it is similar to the second example. They are adding dialogue just to have their characters speak, not to move the story forward.

Using mentor texts and your read aloud to read like a writer is the perfect tool for discovering how to effectively use dialogue when writing. Students need to see how other authors are using dialogue in order to understand how to use it correctly in their own writing.

Consider some other examples of dialogue:

From Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard (2015) by Rick Riordan:

"'Unbelievable,' said the girl, 'I want to strangle him.'...Her dad sighed. 'We should probably avoid killing him. He is your uncle.'"

From To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) by Harper Lee:

From Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing (1972) by Judy Blume:

As you are conducting your read aloud, take some time to point out the dialogue the author has included. Spend some time modeling for your students how you, the reader, reacts to the dialogue.

Then, ask your students to share what the dialogue makes them think, feel, infer, predict or conclude. Doing this together during the read aloud will teach students to pay attention to the power of dialogue.

After doing this, it is easier to transition students into including purposeful dialogue in their own writing.

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Reading Like a Writer: Dialogue That Does Something | Teachers as Writers | Teach Write LLC

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Consider this first line of dialogue from Charlotte's Web (1952) by E.B. White: "'Where's Papa going with the ax?' said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast." What does this line of dialogue lead you to think? How does it make you feel?

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I find it increasingly gratifying to witness teaching practice in the writing workshop that recognizes the importance of the pre-writing phase of the process. I see fewer and fewer cold starts where the topic, or writing task is presented to a class and they are immediately instructed to begin writing. -Just like that. No rehearsal- no warming to the task.
Cold start writing was a common practice during my primary school days, Teachers dished out the topic and we began scratching away with our pens. We scrambled for thoughts and ideas, denied the opportunity to mentally plan or prepare. We waited for the teacher to inform us about what to write and we were unable to prepare our thoughts and ideas prior to the writing. Sadly, this approach has not been totally eradicated from the pedagogical practices of some schools. I remain hopeful of its eventual extinction. Getting ready to write is the foundation for producing an improved product. It is a courtesy we extend to the inexperienced writer.
Research findings show that employing pre-writing strategies improves student writing in terms of content, organization, and voice. It also improves student's motivation and creativity towards writing. In order for pre-writing to be beneficial, it needs to be implemented in a variety of ways so students have the opportunity to find a pre-writing strategy that works best for their ability and their specific writing needs.
Pre-writing involves that critical time when thoughts are transformed into meaning and begin to be integrated into the writer's action plan. It is the gestation period for writing ideas. James Britten says, 'It is during pre-writing that the past experiences of the writer serve to colour facts according to the writer's point of view.' Sorting out, gives the writer a sense of direction.
So, what should be happening at the early stage of the writing process? Well, questions are critical. The writer needs to reflect on the purposes of the proposed writing piece.
What do I want to say here?
Why is it important to write about this? (the so-what factor)
How should I write this?
Who is my audience and what do they need from me?
Pre-writing can be further enhanced by employing listing and brainstorming to further tease out ideas for consideration. First, you try to create a wealth of possibilities, then you play around with those possibilities to determine what to work on, before moving into the writing. With these strategies, you aim to move from quantity to quality.

Research indicates that where students are allowed to draw as a pre-writing activity, writing outcomes are enhanced. The writing produced in the research by those students who drew before they were asked to write was generally superior to those students who just wrote.
We should never underestimate the power of talk and discussion as a prelude to writing. Talk assists the writer to identify the real purpose and direction for their writing. Talk is a clarifier. It removes the fog of indecision that may initially surround the writer. Talk is an integral part of the pre-writing phase for developing writers. To deny the inexperienced writer this vital opportunity endangers the quality of the writing that eventually emerges on the page.
Another pre-writing action might involve some 'fast/speed writing to activate prior knowledge. These fast writes could then be put away and revisited at a later date to allow the writer a fresh perspective on their chosen topic.

Pre-writing can involve looking at an experience from a different perspective. The writer might consider an alternative view point or purpose, audience or angle.

Pre-writing may involve experimenting with different leads, different genres, and different structures. Once students have had the opportunity to explore or consider different ways to organize their writing, they are better positioned to choose the form that best suits their individual writing goal. Time invested in pre-writing allows the student writer to make more informed decisions about their writing projections.
Alerting students to text structures and features of a particular genre and charting such discoveries is a pre-writing action that raises the writer's awareness of the pertinent aspects of a particular form of writing. Sharing models of writing provide the writer with greater certainty regarding expectation. This allows the writer to see real evidence of the type of writing they are about to attempt in their own writing.
Reading and research becomes an essential pre-writing activity when undertaking writing that aims to provide the reader with information. Young writers often lack a depth of knowledge about a chosen topic and it is critical to deepen the knowledge base before moving into the writing. This is an essential understanding for the student writer.
Pre-writing might also involve rereading older writing entries in order to find new writing ideas. This is a form of research, as well as recovery.
There will of course be times when students are just bursting to write. We should not impede their progress. It's about knowing your student writers well and understanding their writing needs. If a student informs you they just need to write, it is a sign that they have most probably engaged in some form of rehearsal, prior to the workshop. We must be flexible in our approach and accommodate such differentiation. Motivation to write is a magical thing. We must nurture it.

To know that there are choices when undertaking a writing task is empowering for the young writer. Placing the young writer in a position where they are able to make informed decisions is what shapes creativity.

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Pre Writing- A Vital Component of The Writing Workshop

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I find it increasingly gratifying to witness teaching practice in the writing workshop that recognizes the importance of the pre-writing phase of the process. I see fewer and fewer cold starts where the topic, or writing task is presented to a class and they are immediately instructed to begin writing.

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You may have heard that the writer's notebook is a very important tool for the writer. But why is that?

At its most basic definition, a writer's notebook is a place for a writer to gather their noticings and thoughts that they can use for future writing. It is a tool box filled with things that make the job of writing easier. The notebook holds ideas and inspiration until the writer needs them.

Just a flip through the pages of your written notebook and an idea you placed there can spark a writing idea.

Wondering what to put in a notebook? Here are a few ideas:

Record what you see and hear. The capture a scene in words. Write down something funny you overheard. Paint the brilliance of a sunrise using words.

Play around with words and ideas. Try out a new genre. Jot an opening line. Sketch a story.

Start a list. Story ideas can escape if they are not written down. Keep a list of fun words. Jot a list of what you see outside your window right now.

Tune into your senses. Describe the sound of the wind or the scent of burgers sizzling on the grill.

Write small. Try to be as specific as you can. Give words to the sound of laughter or the squawk of a bird.

Play. Don't worry about the bigger story. Focus on making one scene, one stanza, one sentence the best you can make it.

It is important to note that the notebook is no place for judgement. (This will make you want to give up your notebooking habit faster than you can put the cap back on your pen.) Don't compare your notebook to someone else's notebook. Your notebook needs to work for YOU, and only you.

I have several notebooks that each serves a different purpose. (Some people may think three notebooks is too much, but like I said, it's what works for me. :)

First, I keep ideas for blog posts in an Evernote file. I like that I have access to this file from all of my devices so it's easy to find and use.

I also keep a bullet journal. This goes EVERYWHERE with me. Here, I will write lots of lists -- writing ideas, daily goals, notes about books I'm reading, inspirational quotes, etc.

Finally, I keep a journal that I (try to) write in every day. Here, I record the happenings of my life. You never know when one of these memories will spark a writing idea!

Interested in building your own writer's notebook?

Join me in The Teach Write Academy this summer. Our course, "Building a Writing Habit" will help you build your notebook with creative, purposeful ideas that you can also take back into your writing classroom.

If you haven't already, I hope you will give keeping a notebook a try. As long as you remember that you make the rules when it comes to keeping a notebook, you'll probably find it's not as difficult as you think.

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Did you know that Teach Write is offering online writing workshops this summer? Let 2018 be the summer you make those writing dreams happen! More information can be found .

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Getting to Know the Writer's Notebook | Teachers as Writers | Teach Write LLC

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You may have heard that the writer's notebook is a very important tool for the writer. But why is that? At its most basic definition, a writer's notebook is a place for a writer to gather their noticings and thoughts that they can use for future writing.

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Anchor charts to ins

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Teaching Tools | Resources for Teachers from Scholastic

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Quick writes: short exercises to 'loosen the writing muscles' At the start of a writing session, in order to 'break the ice' and get some words written, it can be useful to provide short exercises...

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I vividly recall Georgia, a young writer, making a gem of a comment during a writing workshop session some time back. A comment that made my heart sing.

I had asked students for feedback concerning the writing they had just concluded, and offered the comment, 'The more I wrote, the more I remembered.' Not wishing to conceal my joy, I rushed to the whiteboard and wrote these special words in large letters; identifying as the person being quoted. 's words were a powerful reminder that given the right conditions the developing writer's ideas take flight!

Our little writing community had been focusing on developing greater writing stamina, going deeper into our writing if you like. In consultation with the teacher we had identified a lack of stamina in student writing and discussed the need for them to generate a greater volume of text and to do this we had to improve their 'writing muscles, in the same way we had developed their reading muscles and stamina. It was important to eliminate any potential roadblocks to getting the writing done. We spent quite some time ' getting ready to write' with a range of pre-writing strategies. Students talked, made decisions about the most appropriate writing from for their ideas, made drawings, lists, and developed flowcharts. They identified characters, settings, time and plot as part of their planning. The aim as always was to set the writing up to be successful.

I shared with them the revelation that sometimes I write in quiet places like my study and at other times I write in busy places like cafes. I told them, ' Today I'm going to play some music while we write. I want you to continue writing until the music stops. Let's see what happens when we devote all our efforts to trapping our wonderful thoughts and ideas on the pages of our notebook. Let's empty our minds of all other thoughts and distractions and see what happens to our pieces of writing as a result.' The music was used merely to act as a reminder to continue focus on writing and not be distracted or become a distraction. I explained that writer's don't always require music playing. on this occasion it was just to help them be aware of the objective in this workshop.

And so, for the next ten minutes they just wrote. Boy did they write! Words spread across their open notebooks, gradually covering the blinding whiteness of the pages. They wrote, paused, and wrote again; their energy for the task, palpable. They wrote in silence. They danced with their pens. Words poured and oozed onto pages. They came in fits and starts. They kept coming...

When the music stopped, there were audible sighs of disappointment from a number of students. One student, Christina remarked, 'I forgot where I was. I was lost in the writing.' This was another wow moment!

I invited the class to share their thoughts about what they had noticed about their own writing processes. Many of the students were pleasantly surprised by the amount of writing they had produced in the workshop. Their teacher also wrote and was amazed by how much she personally wrote as well as many of her students. They were proud of what they had achieved. 'It was easy to concentrate because there weren't any distractions,' a student explained. They now understand how talk had previously cut across their writing intentions. They now had tangible proof.
A number of students wrote more in that workshop session than they normally write across a week. I know, because they told me. Then came another magical moment when someone requested, - 'Can we keep writing? Can you play some more music?

-And away we went for another ten minutes of quality writing time. I left these enthused writers with the challenge of trying this at home, not just in school.

*The idea of going for ten minutes of intensive writing on a topic came from reading Natalie Goldberg's book, 'Old Friend From Far Away' in which the author regularly challenges the reader to write on given topics for ten minutes.

* The music I chose was Ribonare composed by Ludovico Einaudi from the album, 'This is .' Students thought it sounded like the kind of music you hear at funerals, but they also thought it very calming. I agree about the calming effect.
If we want kids to write 'longer' and develop writing muscles then we must remove impediments preventing their very best words from reaching the page.
Writing stamina must be fostered and supported in tangible ways. It is so important to discuss with them, the role of meaningful talk within the writing process. All young writers need to reach an understanding about how vital talk is before and after we write. They must further understand how it can inhibit the flow of words if it interferes with the composing stage of the workshop. I want student writers to understand what I mean when I tell them to 'Keep writing until you reach your best words.' I want them to respect the writers around them.

Discussion is also needed to unpack strategies for dealing with unfamiliar words, when they emerge in the course of writing. Help the inexperienced writer understood the folly of stopping for one word when hundreds of words are scrambling to get out and onto the page. Spelling is important, but ideas must be considered first. A smart writer knows where spelling fits and it is not before ideas. Have a go at spelling the word, underline it for later but try to keep your pen or pencil moving. Make your writing hand strong. Make it resist the doubt and reticence the mind may try to deliver.
For stamina to develop, tangible support and lots of quality conversation within the writing community of the classroom are required. You can't demand it. It must be nurtured and practiced.

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Fostering The Growth of Writing Stamina Among Student Writers

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I vividly recall Georgia, a young writer, making a gem of a comment during a writing workshop session some time back. A comment that made my heart sing. I had asked students for feedback concerning the writing they had just concluded, and offered the comment, 'The more I wrote, the more I remembered .'

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The text below is an excerpt from The Writing Teacher's Companion: Embracing Choice, Voice, Purpose & Play by Ralph Fletcher. This excerpt was reprinted with permission from Scholastic.

Conferring is simply a conversation with another writer.
Let's not make it more complicated than it needs to be.
- Ruth Ayres

The writing time is the most important part of the workshop. So what do you do while they're writing? You write for the first five to seven minutes, but then what? Sit at your desk and twiddle your thumbs while secretly checking your email? A better use of your time would be to move around the room and make yourself available for brief, individual writing conferences.

The writing conference is an essential part of the workshop, and I'm an enthusiastic proponent. A chance to work one-on-one with young writers on writing they have chosen to write about? Heck, yeah! That's what drew me to education in the first place.

The phrase writing conference may sound overly formal, but it's really no more than an ongoing conversation. A writing conference often begins with you asking an open-ended question like one of the following:

How's it going?

What are you writing about?

Can you tell me about any snags or problems you're running into?

Then: listen. The purpose of a writing conference is not for you to solve their problems for them; rather, you want to help them think it through so they can solve their own.

Imagine a young writer, a fourth-grader named Anwyn. Your conferences with Anwyn will evolve during the course of the year. At the beginning of the year you could use the conference to get to know her as a writer: preferences, books that influence her, subjects she likes to write about, how she drafts, the part of the process where she often gets stuck, and so forth. As the year progresses, you'll know when to nudge Anwyn during a writing conference. At some point you may want to have a goal-setting conference, a time when you give her something to shoot for.

During a writing conference, pay close attention to nonverbal clues. Does Anwyn seem like a confident or self-critical writer? What does her body language tell you? Getting a sense of Anwyn as a writer will help you ask better questions during your conferences and, as the year progresses, give her a strategic nudge or challenge.

Much has been written about the writing conference. Remember that there's no one way of conferring. Every teacher must find his or her own way. You will have to find a style/approach that fits your personality. Here are a few suggestions:

These interactions should be brief, no more than a few minutes. Don't feel like you have to solve all their writing problems. Learn to make a graceful exit: "Okay, I'll be curious to see about how you decide to end your story."

Don't expect to touch base with each student in your class. That won't happen. Conferring with one-third of your class per writing workshop is a realistic goal to shoot for.

Crouch or kneel next to students when you confer with them. A stool on rollers can be helpful for those of us with creaky knees or balky backs. In classrooms, teachers often confer with students at the teacher's desk, but I'd suggest you confer with students at their own desks. That way other kids in the vicinity get to hear rich talk about writing. These "second-hand conferences" can be surprisingly influential.

You don't always have to read the students' writing. You might opt to read one part. Or you could just talk about the piece.

Be flexible. Follow the conversation where it takes you.

During the conference you might refer back to the craft element that you taught during the mini-lesson, if that seems applicable.

Build on strengths. Make sure to find something the writer has done well, and point it out. I believe you can grow strong writers if you do nothing more than point out what they have done well, and name it for them. Once you name it, they can own it.

One teacher told me this: "When I confer with my students I try to give each one of them a glow (something they're doing well) and a grow (something I want them to work on)."

Although I generally endorse the sentiment behind this idea, I don't think it applies to every single conference. In some conferences we do no more than touch base, see how a student is doing, and move on.

Also, we need to be careful of the language we use in a writing conference. Often we phrase our comment like this: "You wrote a strong lead that really drew me in. I could really picture it! But it seems like you kind of ran out of gas in the middle of your story...."

But is the troublesome word here. But has a way of erasing whatever came before it. It makes the student focus only on what he or she needs to improve. A better way to phrase this might involve switching but to and. "You wrote a strong lead that really drew me in. I could really picture it! And I'm wondering if you could do the same thing in the middle of your story...." A subtle difference in your language can make it more likely the student will listen to you.

One more thing: Be sure to respond to their writing as a human being. If it's funny, laugh. If it's sad, let the student know you feel that sadness. First and foremost, writing is a form of communication. If you want to affect somebody, you have to let that person, and that person's writing, affect you first. Let him see that you are genuinely interested in what he's writing. When you do that you open his "window" a crack, and create space for a genuine dialogue.

About the Author:
Ralph Fletcher is a friend of writing teachers everywhere. He speaks at education conferences in the US and abroad, helping teachers find wiser ways of teaching writing. Ralph is the beloved author of many bestselling teacher professional books, including Writing Workshop: The Essential Guide; Craft Lessons; What a Writer Needs, 2nd edition; Boy Writers: Reclaiming Their Voices; and Breathing In, Breathing Out. Students know Ralph as the award-winning author of more than 20 books for children and young adults, including Fig Pudding, Flying Solo, Twilight Comes Twice, The Writer's Notebook, Marshfield Dreams: When I Was a Kid, Also Known As Rowan Pohi, and Guy-Write: What Every Guy Writer Needs to Know.

Photo (top) courtesy of personalexcellence.co

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The text below is an excerpt from The Writing Teacher's Companion: Embracing Choice, Voice, Purpose & Play by Ralph Fletcher. This excerpt was reprinted with permission from Scholastic. Conferring is simply a conversation with another writer. Let's not make it more complicated than it needs to be.

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A blog post with great tips

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This is an exciting time of the year.
In fact, this week is exciting.

It is the "Pre" week to PiBoIdMo which stands for
Picture Book Idea Month.

This is a month hosted by children's author Tara Lazar where picture book writers challenge themselves to come up with 30 ideas for 30 picture books in the month of November.

Because for me, this is one of the best parts of writing.

Idea time.

Creative time.

No rules.

No red pens.

No grammar, mechanics, or usage.

No spel chek. :)

Messy, messy, messy!

It's very freeing.

To let your mind wander.

To spend time discovering.

Discovering...like when you were a child digging in the dirt in your back yard, or the sand at the beach. And then finding something you weren't even looking for.

Discovering.

And I love that Tara has created this month.

I remember hearing about NaNoWriMo and thinking ugh...I'd fail on day one. I'd need NaNoIdOrPlOuYear (National Novel Idea Organizing Planning and Outlining Year -an entire year to figure out what I was going to say in that month I was supposed to be writing the actual novel. )

But you're giving me an entire month of just discovering ideas?

I Love You Tara! You'd make a great elementary teacher!

I've been on a soap box for a while now about what it takes to make kids great writers.

I'm not a genius, but I discovered this as a child.

When in class, the teacher would say "go" and I would get in trouble at the end of class for having nothing written except random notes, ideas, words, or pictures, when everyone else had completed a perfect five paragraph first draft.

I discovered this as an adult writer when I spent weeks and weeks planning, note-carding, researching, and outlining my ideas for a 30 page research paper and then found out that the actual writing only look me less than two days.

And I rediscovered this as a teacher when my own students were begging to write during recess simply because I had given them the time and resources to discover what it was they wanted and had to say.

People will often ask me, "How do we get kids to be good writers? How do we get them to not hate writing?"

I'm sorry to tell you America, but most kids don't hate writing.

That you tell them what they have to write about.
Teacher: Everyone write about your pet. Student: Um, what? Teacher what if I don't have a pet?

They hate those red pens!

They hate that you make them rewrite everything that is spelled wrong (on a rough copy!)

They hate that everything they write HAS to fit into 4 squares!

I'm sorry, but everything doesn't fit into a 4 square. Disclaimer: I am not claiming to be a 4 square hater. It can be an effective means of organizing one's writing.
But , it is not a magical box that's a cure-all for writers. And it is not a writing "program." When a graphic organizer is misused, it becomes a writer squasher.

Pre-writing and Brainstorming should not mean writing all my sentences completely into 4 squares.

And then recopying those sentences onto a sheet of paper should not be called a first draft.

And then recopying that onto a clean sheet of paper (after all the misspelled words have been slashed with red ink by a teacher a.k.a. revising) should not be called a final draft.

It should be called: How to Make a Kid Hate Writing.

You know what does make a kid become a great writer? (Um, besides actually studying the craft of writing?)

The first step is to give them time to discover what it is they want to say.

The next step is to give them time to figure out that they actually do have something to say.

And the final step is to spend an amount of time brainstorming ideas. (You know, like an entire month.)

Brainstorming stories, pictures, and thoughts without having to write them in complete sentences. Without having to spell every word correctly. Without making sure their handwriting fits perfectly on the lines and is in perfect print or cursive or whatever. the need to be perfect (all the time.)

Because, as adults, how would we react if everything new we were learning, had to be performed on the spot, for the first time, with perfection, every time?
We Would Hate It. We Would Quit!
So my point?

There simply isn't enough time dedicated to allowing kids to discover who they are as writers and what they want to say.

Wanna make them good writers? Give them the time to discover.

Wanna make them hate writing? Well, we don't want to go down that road again, do we?

Let's take a lesson from Tara and PiBoIdMo. Take an entire month just to find out what it is you have to say.

Discover with words, pictures, thoughts, snippets, ideas. And don't worry about shoving them all neatly into 4 squares (or wherever.) Be Messy! Let your students be messy!

Bring it on PiBoIdMo! I can't wait to start discovering.
Seriously.
I'm really excited.

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Discovering: The Neglected Step in the Writing Process

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This is an exciting time of the year.In fact, this week is exciting. It is the "Pre" week to PiBoIdMo which stands for Picture Book Idea Month. This is a month hosted by children's author Tara Lazar where picture book writers challenge themselves to come up with 30 ideas for 30 picture books in the month of November.

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Never Write About the Same Topic as Your Students-Except Sometimes

The cornerstone of writing workshop is that students get to choose their own topics rather than be assigned a topic by the teacher. If you are teaching informational writing, for example, students might choose any topic to write about: skateboarding, dogs, dragons, Pokemon, and ice cream would all be legitimate topics for a student to choose. If this seems crazy to you, read this post about uncomfortable topic choices and then come right back to read the rest of this.

Allowing for student choice of different topics is so engrained in the workshop model of teaching, in fact, that alarm bells go off in my mind when students "steal" my topic, instead of generating their own.

Once, in a kindergarten classroom many years ago, I demonstrated writing a book I titled "All About Goldfish." As part of my minilesson, I quickly sketched a few things I knew about goldfish. I drew a picture of a pet store on one page and gave it a heading ("Where to Get Goldfish"), a jar of goldfish flakes on one page ("What to Feed Your Goldfish"), and then, just to be kind of funny and memorable I gave the last page the heading "What to Do if Your Goldfish Dies" and drew a goldfish with X's for eyes. (Trust me, it was funny and cute, not nearly as morbid and weird as it seems).

This is a recreation of the original.

The kids soaked in my lesson, enraptured by my advice on what to do with a dead goldfish. I ended the minilesson by having them each close their eyes and think of a topic for their own books. I said, "When you've thought about what you want to write about, give me a thumbs up and I'll tap you on the shoulder to go off and get started on your own book." One by one, these adorable kindergarteners whispered to me their topics, a wide-range covering everything from sports to cooking to fingernail polish. They tiptoed off to their spots and got busy drawing.

There was only one problem. Can you guess what every single kid was drawing?

Yep. Dead goldfish. Everywhere.

First I sighed the sigh that only a kindergarten teacher truly understands. Then I did everything I could to encourage kids to choose their own topics. Eventually, they all did.

All except for one. We'll call him Josh. Josh stayed with the goldfish thing, despite my coaxing and cajoling to pick a topic of his own. "But I have a goldfish too," he said. Maybe this was true, maybe not. But he was drawing and writing a lot about goldfish. If he didn't have a goldfish at home, it didn't matter, because there was a fish tank right there in the classroom. Ultimately, I could see that drawing and writing about goldfish was important to him-and he was a student that did not usually want to write at all.

In my work, I travel from classroom to classroom, and school to school. Josh and the goldfish thing stuck with me for a long time, and I began to realize that I could harness the power of the teacher's topic. I started to match my topic to the topic of the most reluctant writers intentionally.

I can't remember when I first heard or read other people talking about using the teacher topic as a support for reluctant writers-for many years I was a full-time staff developer at TCRWP, so it could have been at a conference, a Thursday think tank, in a draft of a book, or all of the above. It mostly likely came from mentors of mine like Lucy Calkins, Kathleen Tolan, Kathy Collins, Shanna Schwartz or others. In any case, over time, matching my own teacher-chosen topic to the topic of the most reluctant writer has become a habit and I've found it to be incredibly supportive.

If you're integrating social studies or science, your students might choose a subtopic of their own related to the whole class topic, still allowing for plenty of choice within a whole-class study.

The subtopics and questions are a work in progress. C3 is new to us!

Often, teachers use a topic of their own to use in minilessons and conferences with students. During a Westward Expansion unit, I might use the Pony Express as my own topic to demonstrate on, while students write about other Westward Expansion topics of their own choosing, allowing students to transfer the writing strategies I demonstrate to their own pieces of writing.

Even in the upper grades, during a content area unit, I encourage teachers I work with to model with the topic their most struggling students are working on. This doesn't take work away from those students. Instead, it is incredibly supportive.

A few ways you can support students who need extra help by writing about the same topic they are writing about:

1. In your minilessons, you can use that topic as you demonstrate how to plan a draft, get started drafting, revising, and every part of the writing process. The students who are also writing about that topic will be familiar with the content-related vocabulary and concepts, so they can focus more on the writing strategy-instead of being bombarded with both a writing strategy AND an unfamiliar topic.

2. You'll be referring to parts of read-alouds and mentor texts that support your topic-which also happens to be the same topic as some students. These reminders might provide a little extra inspiration for what to write about.

3. Students' writing can mirror what you wrote. It's okay if they write their own version of essentially the same thing you just wrote-if the likely alternative is that they might write nothing at all. You won't allow them to simply copy, but using your writing as a close mentor can help them get over the hurdle of getting started.

4. When a student is writing about the same topic as you, your writing might be more easily understood by that student. It's easy to assume that your writing makes perfect sense to all the students-don't assume!

5. At every step of the way your struggling students' work can turn into a source of inspiration for you and the class. Since they are writing about the same topic, you can easily say, "So I got this great idea from so-and-so because we're writing about the same topic..."

6. Your ultimate goal is to encourage and nudge students to branch off and make their writing their own. In your conferences you will need to suggest different strategies to try, other sections or features to include, and ensure that the student is making decisions about their writing, not just copying.

There is just one very important caveat to all of this. The goal is independence and meaning. Always. Using your topic and writing as a springboard to get over a hurdle or a frustration is a starting point, but there has to be a plan for cutting back the scaffolds over time so that every student has the opportunity to do this work on their own-to make choices and decisions about what to write and how to go about it. Perhaps you change your topic after a few days or weeks. Perhaps you encourage the student to move on to a new topic. Maybe you become very intentional in exactly how much you physically write down in your modeling, and how much you just think aloud, leaving more of the writing for the students to imagine.

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Never Write About the Same Topic as Your Students-Except Sometimes

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The cornerstone of writing workshop is that students get to choose their own topics rather than be assigned a topic by the teacher. If you are teaching informational writing, for example, students might choose any topic to write about: skateboarding, dogs, dragons, Pokemon, and ice cream would all be legitimate topics for a student to choose.

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Using mentor texts to build interesting leads

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You've heard the saying, "Don't judge a book by its cover." But what about, "Don't judge a book by its first page?"

Is this even possible to do?

When we pick up a book, it is most likely the words on the first page that determine whether or not we will keep reading. We've all read a book or two that didn't capture our attention so we stopped reading.

Don't let this happen to you as a writer!

Those first few lines of writing are referred to as the "hook" or the "grabber" because of their task of capturing the attention of the reader and making them want to keep reading. There are a couple of writing techniques that grabbers use to do their job, including:

When we read a book with a writer's eyes, we should pay special attention to how the author captured our attention with their hook.

Check out some of these first lines and see if you can figure out which of the above techniques the author used. Do these lines make you want to read more? Why?

"Deep in the fridge behind the green peas

way past the tofu and left of the cheese,

up in the corner, and back by a roast,

sat Lady Pancake beside Sir French Toast."

In the classroom, you can pull virtually any book out of your classroom library to use as a mentor text for first lines that hook you. Discuss the first lines with your students. What did they like about them? Not like about them? Did the grabber make them want to keep reading? Why? What specific techniques did the writer use? How might the effect been different if another technique was used?

Spending time in conversation will help your student-writers see the connection between writing a strong first line and the experience the reader has while reading (or not reading).

As a writer, it is important to pay special attention to the grabber during the revision phase, not the drafting phase. Some students may get so caught up with writing the perfect grabber that they loose steam for developing their draft. Revision is where we fine tune our writing to make it better so this is the perfect time to work on the grabber.

Using the tool such as the one below, students can try on different grabbers to see how they work before choosing one they like. Or, they can pull a favorite book off the shelf, read the first line, and let it inspire the grabber revision.

Either way, mentor texts are the perfect tool to use for writing powerful grabbers! Adding a little fun to the revision process, your student-writers (and you teacher-writers!) will find one that works for you and keeps your reader reading.

If you'd like to download a copy of these sheets for your own use, you can download the Fiction Grabber sheet and the Informational Grabber sheet .

Subscribe to to have all of our updates delivered directly to your inbox

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Fantastic First Lines {Reading Like a Writer Series} | Teachers as Writers | Teach Write LLC

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You've heard the saying, "Don't judge a book by its cover." But what about, "Don't judge a book by its first page?" Is this even possible to do? When we pick up a book, it is most likely the words on the first page that determine whether or not we will keep reading.

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10 Things I Believe About Teaching Writing | Teachers as Writers | Teach Write LLC

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What are your beliefs on teaching writing? Give it some thought. These are the 10 things I believe. Would you agree?

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Great reminders

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I'm in the middle of running the Writing Traits Masterclass at the moment (and LOVING it!) and I've had lots of questions about planning for genre instruction.

So, here's my 5-step guide for planning for effective genre instruction (with a little treat at the end).

Before you begin ANY genre planning you need to spend time collecting samples of writing in that genre.

These samples don't all have to be published texts either. They can be samples of student writing, magazine articles, newsletter items, website pages, podcast interviews, flyers spotted in the community or even examples from teacher reference books, such as Lori Jamison-Rogg's The Write Genre.

You want to collect as many samples of the genre as you can to help you develop clarity on what the genre can look like.

That's right- what is CAN look like, not what it 'DOES' look like!

You see, contrary to what many school writing programs tout, there actually isn't a one-size fits all model for each genre.

Take persuasive writing for example; if you go out looking in the real world for examples of persuasive writing, you'll find that the classic three-paragraph essay 'hamburgered' between an introduction and a conclusion is actually not the only way to write and effective persuasive piece. Who knew!?

We need to be telling our students the truth about writing and that means approaching genre from a much broader perspective than simple one-size fits all recipe for each genre.

Once you've collected a bunch of different samples of writing in the genre, you should discuss these with your colleagues; compare and contrast each sample in order to find the common features of effective pieces of writing in that genre.

Your focus here is developing absolute clarity about the different elements that are unique to the genre you'll be teaching. What makes one piece more effective than another? What insights can you gain that might be useful when working with your students?

Once you've used these texts to help build your content knowledge, you'll be able to put them aside to use them as mentor texts with students as well.

Don't even THINK about scrolling past this step!

You absolutely MUST do this.

Why?

When you write in the genre yourself, you'll gain invaluable insight into both the genre and writing in general.

You'll no longer be a bumbling imposter.

After writing just one piece yourself you'll be able to teach the genre with confidence, credibility and nous.

Questions to consider as you are writing

How this will help with your teaching

How did you come up with your idea for writing?

This will enable you to speak with authority to students about how they can come up with their own ideas.

What knowledge did you draw on when you were writing? Eg. knowledge of the structure of the genre, topic knowledge, knowledge of language features or even writing process knowledge.

This will give you a heads up on the knowledge your students will need to be equipped with in order to write successfully. It'll also give you a better idea about when this knowledge would be most helpful in the writing process.

What were the challenges of writing in this genre?

This'll assist you to preempt challenges your students might have and help you to provide both preventative and just-in-time measures to support them.

What would have made the task of writing in this genre easier/more successful?

Your responses here will form the considerations you have in mind when planning and teaching your unit.

You don't have to make your writing piece perfect and it doesn't even need to be published.

You just have to force yourself to sit down and have a go.

A couple of tips for this:

1. Don't skip this step.

2. Composing a piece of writing in your mind while having a shower is NOT the same as writing it down. (Fine, you can brainstorm in the shower, in fact I highly recommend this, but you MUST follow through by putting your pen on the paper and actually writing.)

3. This step needs to be done BEFORE you start planning your genre unit. The lessons you learn from this should guide what and how you plan.

4. Don't skip this step.

As Mem Fox says:

"If we are not writers ourselves, we will not know, we will not be able to understand, we will not remember that writing is a process, a slow process, an arduous process at times, requiring draft upon draft. And we might therefore teach in an asinine fashion, making ridiculous demands such as: I want this handed up by tomorrow."
(Cited in Turbill, Barton & Brock, 2015)
What's a cold-write?
It's when you ask students to have a go at writing a piece in the new genre before you've given them explicit instruction in that genre. It's used as a way of giving you information about what they already know about that genre and about writing in general.

Before you start planning the teaching that will happen as part of your genre instruction, you need to work out what the students in this year's class actually need you to teach them.

What do they already know?

What DON'T they need you to teach them?

In which areas can you strengthen their writing?

Too often, teacher planning for genre instruction happens without consideration for the needs of the current students.

Unfortunately, this is a common problem across all areas of teaching, with one researcher finding that 50-60% of material taught in a lesson is already known by students (Nuthall cited in Hattie & Clarke, 2019).

50-60%!

You can easily remove yourself from being part of that statistic by spending time learning the strengths and stretches of your students BEFORE you start planning your teaching.

You'd think it goes without saying but...once the students have completed the cold-write, you need to read their writing. All of it.

You are looking for recurring patterns as well as individual needs.

Here, I suggest jotting your observations on a two-column chart:

What don't we need to teach them
(i.e what do they already know?)

Where could we nudge them forward?
(i.e what do they need to know now?)

Using the information from your two-column chart, I suggest you create a list of 4-6 goals for your unit.

Consider: What do you want to see MORE or LESS of in their warm-write at the end of the unit?

Remember: you can't teach them everything there is to know about the genre in one writing unit.

You need to do less and do it well!
Some examples:
By the end of the unit students will have developed their capacity to:

add specific detail to their writing to create a strong picture in their reader's mind

craft a relevant and engaging lead

include specific technical vocabulary to show their knowledge on the topic

experiment with the use of compound and complex sentences

The goals that you create will give you the focus for your teaching across the unit.

Because these goals direct the focus of all the lessons you take in the unit, they can help cure any bouts of "this-looks-like-a-fun-activity-itis" (when you plan your teaching based on 'fun activities' rather than by focusing on achieving overarching goals).

Basically, if a teaching suggestion or activity won't help you and your students to achieve the goals you've set, it needs to be crossed off the planner (irrespective of how 'fun' it would be!)

(It's all about clarity!)

With knowledge of your genre, students and unit goals in hand, you're well placed to consider how you will assess students' growth across your genre unit.

Don't be tempted to print off someone else's premade rubric or assessment criteria here.

Effective assessment is about measuring the growth and development gained as a result of the teaching and learning throughout the unit.

The assessment therefore needs to be crafted to measure students' progress against the specific unit goals you set in step 4.

It doesn't make sense to teach students all about developing strong leads and adding clarifying details if your assessment rubric is focused on assessing their ability to use synonyms and adverbs.

Alignment is critical.

A word on mentor texts

Mentor texts provide students with the "show don't tell" of writing: "Oh, that's what it looks like in real writing! NOW I get it!"

A hot tip on finding mentor texts: The piece you wrote yourself will be one of the BEST mentor texts you can use with your students:

1. It makes the students think you know what you're on about.

2. It helps the students to think that if you (a mere mortal) can write like that, maybe they can too.

Another way of finding good mentor texts is by putting a call out on the Oz Lit Teacher Facebook group. As has been demonstrated time and time again in this group, ask for assistance and you'll be surprised with the generosity and helpfulness of all the other members.

Finally, I've just updated the mentor text list available for people who sign up to my email list. This has been a HUGE amount of work (but a complete labour of love).

I've reviewed 95 (mostly Australian) texts and provided suggestions on the writing traits and reading comprehension strategies they would be useful for teaching.

The best thing about this updated list is that I've now separated the books into both year level and genre to make it easier for you to find good quality texts (and help reduce the reliance on American books in Australian classrooms).

To get your hands on a copy, just head over to the sign up page. (Already on my list? You should have received a link to download the list in this week's email update).

References

Hattie, J., & Clarke, S. (2019). Visible Learning Feedback. Oxon: Routledge.

Turbill, J., Barton, G., & Brock, C. (2015). Teaching Writing in Today's Classrooms (pp. 8-9). Norwood: Australian Literacy Educator's Association.

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How to Plan for Effective Genre Instruction - Oz Lit Teacher Narissa Leung

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I'm in the middle of running the Writing Traits Masterclass at the moment (and LOVING it!) and I've had lots of questions about planning for genre instruction. So, here's my 5-step guide for planning for effective genre instruction (with a little treat at the end).

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Three Reasons Spelling Lessons Aren't Transferring into Writing Workshop-and What You Can Do

I have always loved bicycling-when I lived in New York City I had a bike and pedaled everywhere around our neighborhood. I have never been much of a runner, and going to the gym has always been a chore for me, but bike riding or spin classes have always just been pure fun. Something I never had to think much about while doing it.

A few years ago, when I moved to Vermont, I started mountain biking on single track trails. These are trails that are steep and winding, usually up and down the sides of mountains. These trails are full of roots and rocks, wooden bridges, and obstacles-these trails were not like any other kind of bicycle trail I had ever been on. I found myself having to think, hard, about strategies for getting up and over each section of the trail.

Mountain biking, it turns out, is not at all like other kinds of bicycling. Very little of what I knew from road biking, spin classes, or biking as a kid transferred over to the new kind of mountain biking that I was doing. Even when I took a mountain biking clinic and practiced isolated skills-I couldn't do any of the things we learned when I really needed to on the trail. Only after a few years of practice with actual mountain biking did things start to "click."

When kids are trying to spell words, or edit their own writing for spelling, I see a similar struggle. The same kids who are super successful with a spelling pattern during word study time are sometimes not applying that spelling pattern to their independent writing. Kids can sort words, go on word hunts, manipulate words with magnetic tiles, and find spelling errors on worksheets when the only thing they are concentrating on is spelling. But when they are in the midst of writing a story and their mind is on multiple things at once... the spelling patterns they've been studying are much more challenging to remember and use.

Here are a few observations about spelling during writing workshop that could guide our thinking about transfer:

MULTITASKING IS HARD-FOCUSING ON JUST ONE THING IS EASIER

During writing workshop, students are doing many things at once. They are generating ideas, planning what they want to say, physically doing the writing by hand or by typing. They are thinking about who will be reading their work, who they are sitting next to, and what they had for lunch that day. And, perhaps, they are also trying to spell words using all that they know about spelling.

WHAT CAN YOU DO ABOUT IT?

One thing you can do to support students with this is by helping them break down spelling into bite-sized pieces. Instead of coaching students to "think about spelling" in general while writing, you can remind students of specific spelling patterns they've recently studied, and focus just on those. You might say, "Today many of you studied words that double the consonant when you add certain endings-don't forget to keep that in mind as you work on your writing today!"

You also might leave aside one minute at the end of each writing workshop for editing, and editing alone. Then, during that time, coach each student to edit for just one thing each day. Instead of saying "Everybody edits for everything! Spelling, punctuation, and handwriting! Go!" try saying "Today, pick just one thing from your editing checklist and just check for that one thing."

2. OPPORTUNITY FOR PRACTICE MAKES A DIFFERENCE

One of the (many) reasons it's important to carve out time for writing workshop each day is to be sure that every student has plenty of opportunities to practice all the things that make great writing-including using what they know about spelling patterns. The challenge is that on any given day, depending on what the student is writing, they may or may not have the opportunity to apply the spelling patterns you've been teaching. So if writing time is scarce, or infrequent, the opportunities to apply what they know about spelling to their authentic work could wind up being few and far between.

WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT IT?

If students have the opportunity for extended time for writing each day, then they will have much more of a chance of encountering words where they can apply their new spelling skills as they write new words, or edit for new spelling patterns they've been learning. The more time students have for writing and the more pages or lines they write, the more opportunity they have to use what they know about spelling.

3. DO KIDS REALLY UNDERSTAND WHY SPELLING MATTERS?

Too often, students are taught that spelling and mechanics are primarily connected to certain "rules" that writers have to follow. This is problematic for several reasons. First, it simply isn't true. Writers don't truly follow the same set of rules from situation to situation, or from writer to writer. The English language is highly variable and is changing all the time. Second, even if some rules do hold true some of the time, this doesn't provide very meaningful or compelling feedback for students to improve their spelling. Saying, "You should fix the spelling on this because that just a thing that writers do," just isn't very motivating for most children.

Luckily there are two things that are motivating: a real, authentic audience, and a real, authentic purpose for writing. Without these two things kids see right through all the reminders, rules, cajoling, and coaching. There isn't a true reason to use everything you know about spelling unless it matters to you that real people will be reading your writing. And all the minilessons regarding editing and spelling in the world will fall short of improving student spelling during writing workshop, unless kids have a real purpose for working on it.

WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT IT?

The feedback we give students regarding spelling can be much more meaningful if we tie our work to those two things that matter to students:

Who will be reading my writing? Will they be able to read it very easily?

Why am I writing this? Does this piece of writing have a clear purpose that matters to me?

Over time, you might grow a repertoire of phrases that help you to give feedback more effectively. Some phrases and language you might find helpful, starting out:

"Is your writing as easy to read as it could be? What could make it easier to read?"

"Checking for ____ spelling pattern will make your writing easier for ____ (name an actual person) to read."

"Your story will really make people laugh! (Or think, learn, cry, etc) But when it's hard to read, it's harder for people to see how funny/interesting/beautiful it is."

"When people read, sometimes they can get distracted by a spelling mistake-then they aren't thinking about what you wrote anymore. Let's check for _____ spelling pattern so that doesn't happen to you."

Back to the mountain biking. It's been a few years now since I've taken up the sport. One coach recently suggested to a group of us that we set an intention for each bike ride. So each time I ride, I pick just one thing to focus on. Yesterday, I focused on my breathing. A few days earlier, I focused on staying on my bike-even over the tricky rocky parts that I usually have to walk my bike down.

In writing workshop, sometimes it helps to think about one intention at a time. Sometimes the focus can be on using everything students have learned recently in spelling. Support them with visual support in the form of charts and editing tools, coach them by reminding them of the specific spelling patterns (not just spelling in general), and give them a structure like an editing minute a the end of writing workshop to manage the many tasks that are involved in creating their best work.

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Three Reasons Spelling Lessons Aren't Transferring into Writing Workshop-and What You Can Do

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I have always loved bicycling-when I lived in New York City I had a bike and pedaled everywhere around our neighborhood. I have never been much of a runner, and going to the gym has always been a chore for me, but bike riding or spin classes have always just been pure fun.

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The biggest gap between a student's attempt at writing a personal narrative and a fictional narrative is a really strong character.

In a personal narrative the challenge of creating a believable main character is a nonissue, of course. You are that character. And whether you show yourself through your writing or not, you are there. You are real.

But in a fictional narrative, you have to fill that hole. So not only must you tell a story, but you must do so with a character that your audience can believe in, relate to, connect with. And as teachers, it's very difficult to help students "fix" their character while they write their story. Like putting air in your bicycle tire while you ride to the park.

Starting in third grade, Common Core breaks down each of the three "Text Types and Purposes" into several subsections. Within the Narrative Writing standard, students must use dialogue and description of actions, thoughts, and feelings... to show the response of characters to situations (CCSS.W.3.3.b) Grade four and five's parallel standards have very similar wording too.

Okay, so I'm presenting two challenges here that I think we need to focus more attention on with students: developing a character, and then showing that character.

Let's tackle the first one, developing a character, in this post, because if students can better create a character before writing a story--a character with texture, depth, and background, one students know vividly, intimately even (yeah, I said it)--then showing that character to their audience during a story becomes more manageable.

Your first task is to break the common misconception that a main character needs to be perfect to be a strong character. Faults and weaknesses are important ingredients in making a character believable. If a student's main character is flawless, it's harder for the reader to relate to her.

So you've got to get students to value the bad and the ugly as well as the good. You've got to convince them that a character with a weakness doesn't mean they have a weak character, that these seemingly negative qualities strengthen their character, makes them more realistic, and will almost always add more layers to the conflict in the story.

A great way to do this is with a mentor text or two. Call it a "character case study." If you read a novel aloud to your class, analyze the main character within it. If not, try using a picture book by Patricia Polacco or Eve Bunting.

My favorite characters to use in this situation are Marty, from Shiloh, Opal, from Because of Winn Dixie, andDespereaux, from The Tale of Despereaux (you really can't go wrong with a Kate DiCamillo book).

Discuss with students the chosen character's strengths and weaknesses, likes and dislikes. For example, with Opal: she's loving, she has a soft spot for the unfortunate, she's fair, she's feisty, she's stubborn, she can even be rude at times. Then move outward a bit to the character's home, her family, and her past: Opal lives in a trailer, her mother abandoned her, she has trouble connecting with her father, and she has very few friends (at least at first).

Once students realize their favorite book characters aren't perfect, and they buy-in to the idea that those very imperfections are an important factor in why we like those characters so much, you're ready to lay some groundwork.

LAY THE GROUNDWORK

Creating a character is difficult, and to lead students on the path of doing it well, lay out some loose guidelines before beginning:

Now that students know their characters shouldn't be perfect, be sure students don't head towards the other end of the spectrum and unintentionally create an evil villain! Together, come to an agreement that, while there is no formula, a strong main character has many strengths and desirable qualities, as well as a few weaknesses, rough spots, or undesirable circumstances.

Stress the importance of consistency. If you create a character who loves all living things, be sure you don't have him dumping toilet cleaner into the nearby river. In other words, the traits a student chooses for his character cannot be ignored when it comes time for the character to act, talk, and think. So let's not go off willy-nilly throwing together a million qualities. Let's be sure we choose carefully.

Be sure students understand they are about to build a character, not a story. While there may be story ideas "shaken loose" through the creation of a character and his/her backstory, our main objectives here are to create a character and then get to know that character deeply.

CREATING A CHARACTER

If students already have an idea for a story, they may have a general sense of their main character. For example, a boy about their own age, or a rabbit who ran away from home. But if they are starting from scratch, here are some ways to get off to a good start:

Choose two real people you know and mash them together into a brand new person, taking some traits and details about one person and some from the other. For example, maybe you mash-up the drive-thru cashier at McDonald's with the pitcher that struck you out four times last season, or your cousin from the city and your neighbor who walks her dog by your house every afternoon.

Think about yourself. Then create a character who is the opposite of you in several ways. Choose a few qualities about yourself, a few interests, a few circumstances. And then flip them. For example, I'm quiet, procrastinating, interested in watching sports and playing golf, and I live in the suburbs. So maybe I make a character who lives downtown, is assertive, organized and on top of things, loves going to the opera, and doesn't even own a television.

Imagine you had a friend from your preschool days that moved away, but now that friend is back. What is she like? How does she act? Where did she live? Why did she move?

Whether from magazines, some obscure book, or images from the public domain, a photograph of an interesting person can be an inspiring spark for a character.

DEVELOPING A CHARACTER

Developing a character into someone strong and believable takes some imagination and some time. Here are some activities to help those characters take shape:

Creating a family tree is a good place to start building a background for a character. Use this template to add siblings, parents, cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents. Give students freedom to cross out and/or add other boxes. A character who has 13 overbearing aunts or a character who is an only child living with a widowed grandfather is rather interesting, after all.

Encourage students to briefly describe each person with the type of relationship each one has with the character (strong? annoyed? loving? resentful? jealous?), and maybe an interesting fact about each one.

Another valuable base for developing a character is to draw a map of the character's neighborhood. In what type of setting does the character live? In what type of home? Does he have a backyard? Does he have neighbors? Is it a busy street? What is located up the street? Is there a park nearby? A factory? A railroad track? An ice cream shop? Brainstorm some suggestions with students, since giving them a blank piece of paper can be overwhelming.

Have them start in the middle of the paper with their character's home, be it a house, apartment, heck, even a cardboard box would be fascinating. Then have them slowly build out from there. Tell them to be on the look out for story ideas hiding around the neighborhood too!

Brainstorm a list with students of important events they would put on a timeline of themselves. Record the topics on the board, like: birthday, sibling births, getting a pet, losing a pet, divorces, broken bones, lost teeth, first sports games, recitals, ceremonies, moves, deaths, vacations, etc. Then have students make a timeline for their character, using the list as inspiration of possible events.

Have students split a notebook page into several sections. In each one, give them a topic to make a list of answers on their characters' behalf. Here are a bunch of suggestions:

3 hobbies

3 life goals

3 dream jobs

3 fears

3 favorite foods

3 biggest strengths

3 weaknesses

3 words to describe appearance

3 words to describe personality

3 words to describe bedroom

3 interests

3 most prized possessions

3 favorite places to visit

3 best friends

Ask students if they ever had an imaginary friend. Tell them they are going to pretend their character is visiting for the day. The characters will have pretend chairs and will sit next to their students in class, walk next to them in the hallways, play with them at recess, eat with them at lunch, you name it. Just surrounding students with their characters will help students think more about them, get a feel for their reactions and moods. If they latch on to the idea, try having students keep an observation log of their characters' imaginary behaviors.

You may remember giving this task to students at the beginning of the year, where you give each student a brown paper sack to take home and fill with objects (photos, mementos, awards, etc.) that remind them of special memories. Then each student shares their items and the class gets to know each other better.

Try doing the same activity, but where students fill the bag for their character. They might borrow some of their own chachkies but change the memories that are attached to them. They might cut out pictures from magazines or even draw a few.

Try having students record the answers their character would give to some thought-provoking interview questions, like the following:

What is your proudest moment?

What is your greatest accomplishment?

What is a secret you've never told anyone?

What do you hope to do with your life?

What is the biggest obstacle of doing this?

What do you feel most guilty about?

If you could re-live one day, which day would it be?

If you could change one day, which day would it be?

What would you say to a room full of people your age?

What would you do with a million dollars?

What is your greatest regret?

You know the game, especially if you have children. It goes something like this: your child asks you a question; you answer the question; your child asks the follow-up question: why?; you try to explain; your child follows up again with: why?; and it goes on until you yell: because I said so!

The Why? Game can get students to drill way down into a character's background, forcing students to think about the motivations and reasons a character might have for doing certain things.

Start with a simple, very general, action that all students' characters will hypothetically perform, and then ask, "Why?" Give students time to write a reason, then tell them to ask, "Why?" to what they just wrote, recording the next answer like a flow chart, until they track as far back as they can go. This is a good activity for students to do with a partner, to help prompt each other with the appropriate "Why?" question (e.g. "Why did he do that?" vs. "Why would it happen that way?" vs. "Why would he say it so rudely?"...adjusting the phrasing can spark more responses).

Here's an example you could use with students, modeling three separate characters so that students start to see how different the responses can be.

Starting Action: "Your character throws a rock. Why?"

Here are some other starting actions that might produce some interesting results:

Your character laughs out loud. Why?

Your character throws up. Why?

Your character takes a walk alone. Why?

Your character skips school. Why?

Your character picks a flower. Why?

Your character dresses in nice clothes. Why?

An idea that combines elements from several of the exercises above is to create a scrapbook. The student completes the scrapbook as if she is her character. The scrapbook you see in the photographs below comes from my writing center, Character Scrapbooks, which is part of my second pack of "Keep It Fresh! Writing Centers." Click the link above to see it in my TeachersPayTeachers store.

When I used this center with my third graders, they loved creating new characters. I had them keep their finished scrapbooks in their writing folders so they could refer to them whenever they needed a new character for a story or to even inspire an idea for a story.

If you are interested in learning more about this resource, click for details.

I'm not suggesting to have students complete all of these activities every time they want or need to write a story. But what will start happening is the thinking students put into these sort of activities will naturally carry over into future characters and stories. Of course, students may want to reuse the same character a few times, especially if a lot of work went into developing one. No problem here! But even when they are creating a new character, or even supporting characters, the depth they put into their previous characters will surely not be totally forgotten.

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Developing a Character for Fictional Narrative Writing

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The biggest gap between a student's attempt at writing a personal narrative and a fictional narrative is a really strong character. In a personal narrative the challenge of creating a believable main character is a nonissue, of course. You are that character. And whether you show yourself through your writing or not, you are there.

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Narrative suggestions

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This year our 1st grade team has transitioned to using Mentor Texts to teach and guide students through our writing genres. It's my first year knee-deep in mentor texts and I am in love! Mentor texts offer students a 'real' perspective on a genre and give students a 'real' author to model. Making writing concrete is a priority for me and mentor texts help me do this.

In October we wrapped-up our Narrative Writing unit, and I wanted to share with you some of our favorite mentor texts (with Amazon Affiliate links for easy shopping). I pull my mentor texts for the unit, and place them in a book bin above my desk until we read them as a class. Once we've read the mentor text, it goes on our classroom bookshelf for students to re-read and use in their own writing.

As we read each of our mentor texts, our class creates an Anchor Chart. On the chart, we include what we could learn from the author/what the author did really well, as well as, how the story made us feel. I chose "feelings" for narrative writing because I wanted students to know that narratives don't always have to be exciting and upbeat, they can also be suspenseful, scary, or sad. Writing has power, and intentional teaching helps students see this power.

When students write and when student share writing with the class, we love pointing out which authors the friend is becoming - "Oh, I love how Jon used dialogue in his narrative just like Bob Graham in Roller Coaster!" "Pat did a great job of including 5-sense details when writing about the hospital just like Julie Brinckloe in Fireflies."

Generating Writing Ideas

Our first writing unit is Narrative Writing and our first mini-lesson was all about "What do I write about?" I was introduced to Ralph Tells a Story through Instagram and will forever use it. Ralph is an adorable little boy who has zero writing ideas and he does all kinds of things to avoid writing - breaking pencils, using the bathroom, helping friends, getting drinks of water, etc. Then, with the help of his friends and a push from his teacher, Ralph learns that stories have been all around him the whole time! It's precious, hilarious, and hit home for so many of my littles.
Then, during our writing mini-lesson, using a pre-cut heart, we brainstormed stories that are all around us. As students shared their story ideas, I wrote their ideas and quickly included a picture. Not all of my friends are readers yet, so we definitely need picture supports right now!

Zooming Into Small Moments

After a few minutes of hands-on zooming-in practice, we used the Mentor Text Roller Coaster to see how a famous author zooms into a story. This is a *PERFECT* text for small moments. Marla Frazee takes the reader all through the roller-coaster process (waiting in line, seeing the carts arrive, getting nervous and wanting to leave, being buckled in, etc.). Plus, she uses some great text/writing features that students love to emulate - using dashes to stretch out words, using CAPITAL letters to place emphasis on words, using sound words.

As a teacher, these are all features I pointed out as we read. I would write examples on the board and as a class, we practiced reading these phrases with and without those special features. What a difference they make!

This friend loved the sound words and the starching of words that Marla Frazee used in Roller Coaster and couldn't wait to include them in his swing narrative. You'll notice the swing going w-a-a-y too high and the SWOOSH of the wind.

Building Suspense

The Shortcut is a very simple narrative and very accessible to students. My 1st graders could relate to the group of friends, loved how the author built suspense, and loved the predictable train sounds. Plus, the author (Mr. Crews) throws us into the action, which was a just-right skill for us!

This friends loved the idea of starting the action right away and wrote about our Place Value Bootcamp experience.

Sgt. W came in yelling at us. "Get in your places!" Sgt. W made me do ten pushups. We felt tired...really, really tired. I am three times sure that it was Ms. W not Sgt. W. I am still asking my Mom why she signed me up.

With mentor texts, I love seeing my friends make us parts of the original text in their own writing. Before we publish a piece, we are careful about changing out these parts but for many students it's a just-right starting place. You'll notice this friend loved the suspense that the first page created with shorter sentences. (Note - this was a very first draft and we have not looked at punctuation - ha!)

Including Dialogue

"Let's Get a Pup!" said Kate is the text I chose for highlight dialogue-use in narratives. Although many other narratives could be used, I love Pup because it is written mainly in quotation marks. It recounts the story of Kate and her family going to the animal shelter and eventually having two new dogs in their home!

After a quick video from BrainPop on dialogue, my friends were ALL about quotation marks. Pretty soon our stories were launching with quotation marks, our word work sentences were littered with quotation marks, and we were even rocking the air quotes during daily conversations. #blessthem

Adding Sensory Details

Fireflies is the perfect text to talk about why zooming in matters. After reading the book, our class wrote what the story would sound like if we didn't zoom-in. "I was eating dinner. Then, I got a jar and went outside. We all caught fireflies. Then, it was time for bed. Before they died, I opened the jar and let the fireflies go." <insert 1st Grade GASP> My friends all agreed that this was not nearly as wonderful of a story as the one Ms. Brincklow wrote. We read it again, this time with our eyes closed, so we could make a picture in our mind.

Below is a page from a five-page narrative about a friend's trip touring a navy ship. Words in parentheses are sounds from the ship.

Katie King ( Queen of the 1st Grade Jungle) also highly recommended Saturdays and Teacakes. Oh friends, all the tears. This is one of the most poignant memoirs I have read and it was truly a special moment in our classroom. Recounting a Saturday routine full of special moments between a Grandma and her grandson. As my sweet L said after reading it, "Ms. W, my heart feels really full writing now."

Friends, I have definitely fallen in love with mentor texts and my 1st grade friends love having 'real' models to follow when writing. We are just wrapping-up how-to writing and I can't wait to share the texts we've been reading together! Until then, I would love to know what your go-to books are for narrative writing? Any books I need to add to my collection? If you are interested in other FREE classroom ideas and resources, you can sign-up here for teaching freebies to land in your inbox every month.

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Narrative Writing Mentor Texts - The Brown Bag Teacher

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This year our 1st grade team has transitioned to using Mentor Texts to teach and guide students through our writing genres. It's my first year knee-deep in mentor texts and I am in love! Mentor texts offer students a 'real' perspective on a genre and give students a 'real' author to model.

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Using Picture story books with older children

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Using Picture story books with older children

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great ideas for linking to writing (and reading) and why we should use picture story books with older kids

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I have written extensively about the use of picture books within our classroom and yet there are still questions that keep coming up. No worries as I realized that I had yet to make a central blog post about picture books and how I use them with older students and so while this post may be long, I hope it is helpful. Note that really everything I write here about using picture books with older students also goes for using them with younger kids because as we all know there no is no too old for picture books.

I have written before of why I use picture books with my middle school students, the changes it has created for us as we build our community of readers. I have shared lists upon lists of our favorite books as well, hoping to help others find the very best value in the books they bring in, hoping to inspire others to make them an integral part of their classroom.

How Do I Know Which Books to Get?

I am connected. I am a proud member of the Nerdy Book Club and through Twitter I am connected to many picture book loving people; teachers, librarians, parents, and all of the other amazing people out there. I follow hashtags like #WeNeedDiverseBooks #Titletalk, #pb10for10 #classroombookaday and #nerdybookclub to stay in the know. And I tweet out asking for recommendations all of the time.

I keep a written list handy. I have a journal book with me at all times, and while I often add books to my wishlist on Amazon, I like having the list in my bag. I am always adding to it and will cross out as I either purchase or reject. This also makes it easy for me to recommend books to others that they may not know about.

I read them beforehand, most of the time. Many times we will wander to the nearest bookstore so that I can browse the books before purchasing them. How do I know that this will be a great one for our room, well there are few things I look for...

Do I react to it in any way? A picture book doesn't always have to have a deep message for me to react to it; was it funny, did it make me think, did it leave me with questions? All of these are things that I look for.

Is it easy to follow? Sometimes it takes more than one read to really get a book and while I love those books too, most of the time, I am looking for a book that my students will get rather quickly. At least most of them. However, I do purchase picture books to use with smaller groups that have layers we can peel away.

Is the language accessible? Yes, I teach 7th graders but their reading development levels range from 2nd grade to high school, so can all students access the text or will I need to "translate" it?

What purpose does it have? I often look for picture books that can be used as community builders, self-connections, or conversation starters. We also use them as mentor texts as we develop as readers and writers throughout the year. But I also look for picture books that will make my students laugh, make them reconnect with being a little kid again, or help them get out of a bad mood. I try to get a balance of all of these types of books in the hands of students.

Will we read it more than once? Because I buy most of the picture books in my classroom, I look for enduring books that we will return to again and again. Different things make books repeat reads; the illustrations, the phrasing, the story. Bottom-line: it is a gut feeling most of the time.

Do we have other works by the author? My students feel closely connected to the picture book authors and illustrators whose books we love so I try to expand our favorite collections as often as possible. Some of our favorites are Jackie Woodson, Julie Flett, Peter Brown, Mo Willems, Peter H. Reynolds, Ame Dyckman, Jon Klassen, and Amy Krouse Rosenthal.

How Do I Organize our Picture Books?

Every hardcover picture book is stamped on the inside with a custom-made stamp from Amazon, which has been easily one of the best purchases I have ever made.

They are then also labeled with the first letter of the author's last name on their spine. That way as long as I know the author's last name, I can quickly pull the book from that section.

Picture books are typically not checked out by students as they are easy to lose, however, others teachers borrow them freely.

Picture books are shelved together in our classroom but not organized by theme or author. I simply do not have room for splitting up the groups, so I try to display the picture books by theme in our classroom instead. For example, whenever it is a new month or after a break, our display is always changed out. I want students to want to read them as much as possible and a fresh new display helps entice them.

How Do I Select the Book to Use?

I first identify the purpose of the lesson of course and then go through either my lists of picture books or simply flip through our stacks. As our collection has grown, I have started keeping a better eye on picture books that can be used for more than one purpose.

Which book I choose to share depends on the lesson. I treat it much like a short story in what I want students to get out of it so it has to suit the very purpose we are trying to understand. I introduce the concept by sharing a story and then I ask my students to come as close as they can to the rocking chair in our corner. Once settled, whether on the floor, on balls or on chairs, I read it aloud. We stop and talk throughout as needed but not on every page, it should not take more than 10 minutes at most to get through an average size picture book. If it is a brand new concept I may just have students listen, while other times they might engage in a turn-and-talk. I have an easel right next to me and at times we write our thoughts on that. Sometimes we make an anchor chart, it really just depends on the purpose of the lesson. Often a picture book is used as one type of media on a topic and we can then branch into excerpts from text, video, or audio that relates to the topic.

Because I teach the same class multiple times in a row, I often switch out the picture books I use with the different classes. There are some that you can still love reading after 4 times, while others get to be a bit tedious, so I adjust as needed. This is why having a lot of great picture books to choose from is something I am committed to.

I do not have multiple copies of really any picture books, I don't see it as needed. Instead, I pick the picture book to read aloud and then find "companion books," other picture books that share the same concept, for example easily identifiable themes. These are spread out on tables, waiting for the students to select them. This way, when I ask students to work with them they are truly testing out the skill and not just whether they can spot the same things that we just practiced together. Often times, students can choose to work with a partner as they explore their self-selected books.

What Are Different Concepts You Can Use Picture Books to Teach?
Thematic statements
Using a picture book as an example, we read one aloud and work through the example together. While many of my students can easily pick up on the theme "word" (Death, love, freedom), they have a much harder stretching that into an actual thematic statement. So rather than just death, they have to write something along the lines of "In the picture book, Ida Always, the text is used to illustrate that the fear of death should not stand in the way of creating lasting bonds." While this may seem hard at first, the idea of doing this work with a picture book, rather than a longer book, alleviates some of the stress that my students have with the analytical work being done. After we write our thematic statement and turn it into a full paragraph, the students are then given a stack of picture books to choose from to practice on their own. This is, therefore, a way to assess their understanding without having to use a common text. Students can then either hand in their thoughts as a written piece of work or choose to discuss it with me or record it using their device.
Writers Craft
The writing skills used in a great picture book are worthy of our close analysis. I love finding a stack of small moment picture books and then having students really take the writing apart. How did the author move the story along with such few pages? If we were to remove the images would the story still stand on its own? Why? Other questions can be:

How does the author transition time or setting?

How does the author situate us?

How is the character described?

How are the words further explained through the illustrations?

How does the illustrator deepen the message?

How are words repeated?

How do we pick out symbolism and what does it signify?

How can we introduce all of the Notice and Note signposts through picture books?

These are just a few examples of separate lessons that can be done through a lense of writer's craft.
Plot and Small Moment Stories
While my students can write stories, they do not always write good stories. Sometimes they get bogged down in too many details, other times they have too few or their story is simply not interesting. Using picture books we can study the art of plot, as well as how to encapsulate an entire story in very little language. These are great primers for students to think of their own story craft.
Non-Fiction Focus
We have written nonfiction picture books in the past and one of my greatest joys is to get students read some of the incredible nonfiction picture books we have in our collection. I think of books like Pink is for Blobfish, Growing Up Pedro, Gorillas, Giant Squid, or How to Be an Elephant. These authors breathe life into their nonfiction texts and so I ask my students to study their craft. How did they take all of this research and create something so accessible yet information-filled? It is wondrous to see the lightbulb go off for my students when they can see what I mean right in the text.
Fluency and Expression
One of our favorite units of the year is when all of our students perform plays based on Mo Willem's Elephant & Piggie books. It is incredible to see these sometimes very cool 7th graders, truly connect with their silly side and go for it in their performance. Reading aloud picture books, performing them, and putting your heart into it helps with all public speaking skills.
Introductory texts.
In order for us to go deeper with text analysis and discussion, I need my students to sometimes gain some confidence. Picture books are not scary. They are inviting to kids. So as we begin the year with an introduction or reminder of the signposts as discussed in the book Notice and Note, I use picture books to introduce every single signpost. (To see the lists go here). It helps me break it down simply for kids, to give them confidence, and then also to be able to transfer it into their own reading.
Inferring.
One of my biggest tools for boosting inference skills is to use wordless picture books. After all, it is hard to read books like Unspoke n or The Whale and not have an opinion on what just happened. Another reason I love wordless picture books is that it levels the playing field for a lot of our kids. They don't have to decode the words to get to the story but instead have to decode the images. I have found that some of my most vulnerable readers are incredibly good at this as this is one of the reading survival strategies they use daily.
Introducing Hard Content
There are incredible picture books that discuss topics such as death, jail, suicide, war, and even drug abuse and so we use these picture books to broach harder topics with students. Seeing their stories or stories that are incredible foreign to them played out within the pages of a short book really allows for us to open up a discussion as well as connections to the pages.

As you can see, picture books are not just for show, and yet, even if they were, I would be ok with that. After all, how many times does a child just need to fall into the pages of a picture book to remember the magic that reading itself? What an incredible gift all of these authors and illustrators give us when they decide to spill their ideas into a picture book.

How Do you Assess Skills and Strategies Through a Picture Book?

Because we are a classroom driven by self-selected reading, it can be hard to figure out what students really know. Picture books are again a central tenet of this. Whether I have introduced a brand new skill or simply done a review, I can quickly assess students' knowledge and use of the skill through the pages of a picture book. All I have to do is gather up the picture books that all have the skill in them such as character development and then have students read them. After that, they can either write, discuss, or record a response to show me their understanding. That way I do not have to know the independent book they are reading but I can still see what they can do.

What Comes After the Reading?

Picture books are not just something we read, we write them ourselves in our epic nonfiction picture book project. We study them. We speak about them. We get ideas and inspiration from them. We carefully protect the time we have to read them. They are the mentor texts we shape our instruction around.

What Are Some Current Favorites?

And because I cannot write a blog post about picture books and then not share a few favorites, here are some that I love at the moment. For "live" recommendations follow my Instagram account.
Drawn Together by Minh Le and Dan Santat Heartbeat by Evan Turk I'm Sad by Michael Ian Black and Debbie Ridpath Ohi Prince & Knight by Daniel Haack and Stevie Lewis The Day You Begin by Jacqueline Woodson and Rafael Lopez
So there you have it, a little further explanation of how picture books are used in our classroom. They become part of the tapestry of our room and something the students search out for solace when they need to feel like they are readers again. As one child told me after I had shared our very first picture book, "Picture books make you remember your imagination again." And I knew that these kids got it. That they knew that this wasn't just me having some fun, but that picture books will teach us some of the largest lesson this year. That picture books are not just for little kids and laughter. They are for readers of all ages, and in particular, those who have gotten lost.
If you like what you read here, consider reading my newest book, Passionate Readers - The Art of Reaching and Engaging Every Child Also consider joining our book club study of it, kicking off June 17th. This book focuses on the five keys we can implement into any reading community to strengthen student reading experiences, even within the 45 minute English block. If you are looking for solutions and ideas for how to re-engage all of your students consider reading my very first book Passionate Learners - How to Engage and Empower Your Students. Also, if you are wondering where I will be in the coming year or would like to have me speak, please see this page.

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Using Picture Books With Older Students - A How-to Guide

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I have written extensively about the use of picture books within our classroom and yet there are still questions that keep coming up. No worries as I realized that I had yet to make a central blog post about picture books and how I use them with older students and so while this post may...

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Our role...

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I continue to hear the term 'reluctant writers' when educators describe certain students. It's a term that causes me a fair degree of discomfort. The real challenge is to change the pictures in the heads of students who regard their writing as somehow, unworthy. Rebuilding the self-image of these writers can be a slow, often protracted process. Writers like John are often inexperienced as writers and need time to develop their writing abilities. It requires a large dose of support and acceptance for their efforts as writers, in order for confidence and trust to develop. We must present as brave writers ourselves in order to show how this kind of
When teachers talk of young writers in this manner, they pull up some way short of the mark. The question needs to be asked, why is this student behaving in a way that has them shying away from writing? Asking 'why?' is a key to finding out more about that particular young writer and hopefully what is inhibiting their full participation in writing- their connection to writing.
Invariably, what is impeding the writer from experiencing a stronger connection to the writing task is confidence- or rather a lack of it. And if we dig a little deeper it is frequently connected to a poor self-perception in relation to spelling. It may also be the challenge presented by the physical task of writing due to a lack of a fluent writing style. Sometimes it is related to matters of sight or hearing.
I try hard not to acknowledge the existence of reluctant writers. I have encountered a number of writers over the years who lacked confidence when it came to writing and therefore approached the task with a fair degree of trepidation. They wanted to participate in writing just as surely as their fellow writers. They merely lacked the confidence, experience, or the writing tools to launch themselves confidently into the great unknown.
Watch a toddler keenly make marks on paper with a marker or crayon. Such action occurs quite naturally. They exhibit no inhibitions about the task of scribing. It's natural and immediately rewarding.
Sadly something happens to many of these young writers. Something, or someone convinces them that writing is not for them. Messages and demands from adults usually conspire to make them believe that writing holds nothing that is desirable. They begin to opt out or shutdown their output as confidence declines.
Many years ago, I met a boy named John. He was about to enter Grade three and I was going to be his teacher for the year. The very first thing I recall him saying was, 'Hi, I'm John and I'm not a very good speller.' I was saddened by his opening remarks, so I told him, 'Let's see if we can work together to change that. Have we got a deal?' He smiled and shook my hand. Over the next two school terms of that semester, I noticed that while John's spelling relied heavily on phonetics he had great ideas and interesting stories. He was a whizz with all things technical and articulate and confident in his explanation of anything mechanical. His initial writing efforts were hesitant and somewhat brief. We worked on building volume and learning a range of word attack skills to exercise greater influence over the spelling of the words he wanted to use. I encouraged him to be brave and he took up the challenge. We placed ideas ahead of spelling and correctness. His peers were supportive. While recognizing his strengths and talents they supported him in dealing with his challenges.
In time John was writing more, and his writing samples showed his spelling accuracy was improving. His ideas continued to shine through. His intent as a writer was obvious. His confidence was slowly returning. Then one day near the end of the first semester John approached me and informed me he would like to share his writing piece with the class. This was a watershed moment, He had never volunteered in this way previously. He stood next to me and read his piece to an audience of his peers. They also sensed this was a rather special moment and responded in a most supportive way by spontaneously clapping when he finished reading. From that moment on John was well truly back in the game. He was never reluctant, it was more about diminished self-belief and a lack of confidence.

risk taking brings discoveries and rewards. We must be a model of what we want, in time for them to become. This requires the most proficient writer in the classroom to reach out a hand and we cannot under any circumstances be, 'reluctant.'

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Slice of Life Tuesday- Let's Stop Calling Them Reluctant Writers

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I continue to hear the term 'reluctant writers' when educators describe certain students. It's a term that causes me a fair degree of discomfort. The real challenge is to change the pictures in the heads of students who regard their writing as somehow, unworthy.

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some great starting ideas

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From turning snakes into spaghetti and clouds into cotton balls, writing poetry is absolutely magical! Students use their five senses and figurative language to create poems that break all the rules (punctuation, capitalization, directionality) they've been learning all year & make something is truly magical.

Our Poetry Promise

Kicking off our unit, we took the Poetry Promise. In reality, poetry swiftly 'undoes' every single rule we teach students about writing - punctuation, capitalization, directionality, spacing, etc - throughout the year. So, I explained to our friends that poetry is magic because you can 'break the rules' that you have been taught ALL year long...but in order to do that, our friends must use their new power responsibly. To promise to do this, our friends stood, raised their right hands, and repeated after me as I read the Poetry Promise (in a very serious voice, of course!). 🙂 Grab your free Poetry Promise here.

Exploring Our Senses

After our initial kick-off day, we began a weekish exploring our senses to write awesome poetry. During this week, we smelled candles, listened to Duke Ellington (click here to read more about this), felt our room, tasted marshmallows, and observed Picasso's Woman with a Flower. This week was all about incorporating the arts and we listened to must-know artists [as classified by ME] while we wrote. We listened to Mozart, Beethoven, Yo-Yo Ma, Chopin, and Duke Ellington via Teacher Tube. 🙂 On our first day of writing poetry, one my friends produced this treasure in response to Mozart - "When I hear the flute, it flows through my ears..." Wow!

As students explore their senses, we took five days to learn about adjectives associated with each sense. Having students explore concrete objects and then, write about them was a perfect way to start. Plus, our class anchor charts quickly became a fabulous resource while students were writing. I ended up taking pictures of each anchor chart and students glued copies into their writing journals as a reference!

Exploring Figurative Language

Our second-thirdish weeks have been spent on learning about different types of figurative language and then, students applying them to their current poems. We specifically focused on alliteration, personification, onomatopoeia, simile, and metaphor. During this week we read some awesome poems. My favorite is The Cafeteria which was written by a group of elementary students. My friends loved the idea that the cafeteria was a jungle and they were the wild animals! 🙂 As we studied similes, we also read Quick as a Cricket and as we studied alliteration, we created our own very silly name poems!

Exploring many different types of figurative language, I created a set of mentor poems. Each poem zooms in on one type of figurative language so students have an explicit model.

Poetry is Crafting Words

Then, in our third week, we focused on fine tuning our poems noticing things such as line breaks, removing extra words, adding powerful -ing verbs, and poem vs. story. Poem vs. Story has definitely been our toughest battle. One morning, I handed each table group the same set of words and asked them to make a poem. Very simple instructions; a very cool task. Students worked for 20-30 minutes as groups deciding the just-right places for words and line breaks. It was so fun to hear my friends ask "What if I do want to use 'a'?" To which I said "Throw it out!" They felt like real poets making important decisions about word choice and placement. After all the poems were finished, friends practiced chorus reading and then, at the end of the construction block students shared their poems with the class. It was really neat to hear 5 totally different poems and hit home the idea that word placement and line breaks matter! [My only caution to you when doing this activity would be to use few words. I choose to use 25 words and it was A LOT! Next time, I would definitely try 10-15].

Additional Resources

Throughout the week, we also kept some great books by our side. Here are some of my favorites and Amazon affiliate links to just a few of the mentors texts that we used: I Am the Book, I'm Still Here in the Bathtub, Super Silly School Poems, and A Stick is an Excellent Thing.

Of course, no unit of study would be complete without one of my favorite resources - Brain Pop Jr. We really gave it a workout and spent some quality time with Annie and Moby learning about Poems, Similes, and Our Senses. If you do not use Brain Pop or do not have a subscription, start lobbying now that your district or school buys a subscription for next year!

In the video realm, we listened to Shel Silverstien read his Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout and Spoiled Brat on YouTube. Plus, make sure to check out this cute onomatopoeia video that Katie King ( Queen of the First Grade Jungle) shared on her Facebook Page!

Well, friends. I hope you have collected some ideas for teaching poetry. If you have already covered poetry, feel free to pin any of these resources so you can grab them next year. If you enjoyed the posters and organizers you saw, click here to grab your copy of Poetry is Magic! 🙂

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Poetry in 1st and 2nd Grade - The Brown Bag Teacher

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From turning snakes into spaghetti and clouds into cotton balls, writing poetry is absolutely magical! Students use their five senses and figurative language to create poems that break all the rules (punctuation, capitalization, directionality) they've been learning all year & make something is truly magical. Our Poetry Promise Kicking off our unit, we took the...

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ideas for mini-lesson/mentor texts

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Consider this first line of dialogue from Charlotte's Web (1952) by E.B. White:

"'Where's Papa going with the ax?' said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast."

What does this line of dialogue lead you to think?

How does it make you feel?

How does it draw you into the story?

Now, consider if the line of dialogue had read something like this:

"Hi, Papa!," yelled Fern to her dad as he walked past the door, carrying an ax.

What does this dialogue lead you to think?

How does it make you feel?

How does it draw you into the story?

How is it different from the previous example?

In the first example, the dialogue that the author included is more than just words that one character says to another. "Where's Papa going with the ax?" gives the reader a sense of setting and action, but it also helps create a mood. You can tell something is up with Papa and that his heading to the barn so early in the morning is not necessarily a good thing.

Dialogue, when used well, is the perfect writing tool to move a story forward without having to over-explain things. It allows the reader to use their own thinking to draw inferences, make predictions, and fill-in-the-blanks that enrich the reading experience.

When students add dialogue to their narratives, what kind of dialogue are they including? Most often, it is similar to the second example. They are adding dialogue just to have their characters speak, not to move the story forward.

Using mentor texts and your read aloud to read like a writer is the perfect tool for discovering how to effectively use dialogue when writing. Students need to see how other authors are using dialogue in order to understand how to use it correctly in their own writing.

Consider some other examples of dialogue:

From Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard (2015) by Rick Riordan:

"'Unbelievable,' said the girl, 'I want to strangle him.'...Her dad sighed. 'We should probably avoid killing him. He is your uncle.'"

From To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) by Harper Lee:

From Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing (1972) by Judy Blume:

As you are conducting your read aloud, take some time to point out the dialogue the author has included. Spend some time modeling for your students how you, the reader, reacts to the dialogue.

Then, ask your students to share what the dialogue makes them think, feel, infer, predict or conclude. Doing this together during the read aloud will teach students to pay attention to the power of dialogue.

After doing this, it is easier to transition students into including purposeful dialogue in their own writing.

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Consider this first line of dialogue from Charlotte's Web (1952) by E.B. White: "'Where's Papa going with the ax?' said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast." What does this line of dialogue lead you to think? How does it make you feel?

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exploring craft

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If you conduct an online image search for "writing process," you'll find many charts that lay out the steps - brainstorming, drafting, revising, editing, publishing - in a nice linear fashion. It's as if these visuals assert, "We brainstorm on Monday, draft on Tuesday, etc."

However, professional writers don't check off the steps of the writing process as they move through it. As any experienced writer will tell you, the writing process is recursive, not linear.

Sometimes teachers oversimplify the writing process.

And yes, I'm guilty of it too. It is important for students to know the steps of the writing process (i.e., collecting, developing, drafting, revision, editing, publishing, reflection). But it's also important for them to know that these steps aren't orderly. For instance, a student might be collecting a seed idea in his or her writer's notebook, but when they confer with their teacher, they revise. This is part of the process.

Let's look at one of the hardest lessons for students to learn : editing. Editing shouldn't be something writers save for the day before publication. Remind your students that writers are constantly editing. Yes, they're polishing their writing by proofreading it before taking it to publication, but editing is a daily task.

Process logs can help.

One way to help students better understand the "messiness" of writing is to have them reflect on their writing process daily . I like to use "process logs," a tool that encourages students to log their process and decisions as they go through a specific piece of writing.

Process logs don't have to be detailed. Students can quickly log what's easy, what's hard and/or what strategies/tools they used as a writer on any given day. At the end of a unit of study, students can return to their process logs looking for patterns and stating what they noticed. This helps each student identify a process that works best for him-/herself. This matters because children who understand how they work best as a writer can replicate their writing process again and again across genres.

Before tasking students with keeping a process log, it helps to have tried one yourself. Pay attention to yourself as a writer for a while. Once you understand yourself as a writer, you'll not only come to understand your process, you'll be equipped to have meaningful writer-to-writer conversations with your students about the writing process.

The writing process is deeply personal.

As you're encouraging young writers, it's important to let them personalize their writing process as much as possible. I believe that as long as a student's published piece of writing communicates meaning, uses genre knowledge, structures her writing, writes with detail, gives her writing voice, and uses conventions (Anderson, 2005, 17), then it does not matter how she traveled though the writing process to arrive at her final piece.

I often use an image like the one above to remind students just how messy the writing process can be. Sharing a visual like this is freeing since it helps kids understand that while we may occasionally move through the writing process quickly and in a linear fashion, it's more likely (and perfectly okay) for the steps to become messy or muddled.
Do you use process logs in the classroom? How do you talk about the writing process? Please share in the comments.
WORKS CITED: Anderson, Carl. 2005. Assessing Writers. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

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The Writing Process Isn't Linear. Let's Stop Telling Students That It Is.

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If you conduct an online image search for "writing process," you'll find many charts that lay out the steps - brainstorming, drafting, revising, editing, publishing - in a nice linear fashion. It's as if these visuals assert, "We brainstorm on Monday, draft on Tuesday, etc."

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4th Grade

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Definitions and descriptions

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Simple overview

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How well do you know this student-centered framework for teaching writing?

Just as students learn to read best by reading, writers learn best by writing. To make the most progress, kids need ownership of their own writing, guidance from an adult writer, and the support of a community of fellow learners. Writing workshop (or writer's workshop) gives kids the time to write by streamlining instructional moments. Ralph Fletcher and JoAnn Portalupi's Writing Workshop: The Essential Guide provides a primer to get teachers going. Here's how they describe the four components of a writing workshop.

1. Minilesson (5-10 minutes)

Minilessons looks closest to what we associate with traditional teaching. They are short, focused, direct. They typically fall into the categories of classroom procedures, the writer's process, the qualities of good writing, and editing skills.

2. Writing (35-45 minutes, depending on your schedule)

Here kids are writing for sustained time about topics of their choice. They are drafting, planning, rereading, revising, proofreading, and talking with other writers about their pieces - doing the real work of writing.

During independent writing, the workshop teacher is moving about the room, taking a couple minutes at a time to check in with students as they write. These moments are opportunities to differentiate instruction by working one-on-one with a student. They are also chances to gather informal assessments of writers' progress. Based on these assessments, a teacher can plan what to teach in a future minilesson. Or they can pull a small group together to address a common area of need.

4. Share Time (10-20 minutes)

This is a special time when writers can share their writing with the whole class. It might be a completed piece. It might be a draft that the student wants help problem-solving. It's a time when students learn to give and receive responses to one another's writing in a public setting.

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What are the 4 Components of Writing Workshop? - Heinemann Publishing - Medium

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Just as students learn to read best by reading, writers learn best by writing. To make the most progress, kids need ownership of their own writing, guidance from an adult writer, and the support of a community of fellow learners. Writing workshop (or writer's workshop) gives kids the time to write by streamlining instructional moments.

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How to Plan a Minilesson from Scratch

Minilessons are actually really easy to plan, and fun to teach. What? You don't believe me? Let me show you, right now, how to do it.

First, take this little quiz to see if this post is for you:

1. Have you ever spent more than a half hour to plan for a minilesson that (in theory) should only take ten minutes to teach?

2. Are you afraid to write your own minilessons, preferring to read straight from your Units of Study books, using them like a script?

3. If you do plan your own minilessons, do you sometimes have this sinking feeling that you're doing something wrong? Like your lessons just aren't going the way you'd like them to?

4. Are your minilessons too long? (Remember, the longer your minilesson, the less time kids have for actually writing!)

If you answered yes to any of the above, then you are in the right place.

First thing you need to know: Every minilesson can pretty much go the same way. Sure, there are lots of fancy innovations and methods you can incorporate, but there is a basic architecture (based on research, by the way) that you can fall back on time and time again.

It goes like this:

Connection: Remind kids of something familiar. Perhaps remind kids of some prior knowledge, or a story from your classroom, or an anecdote from your own personal life that will connect to today's teaching point.

Teaching Point: Tell the kids exactly what you are going to teach them today. Don't be mysterious. Don't make them guess. Be explicit and direct. Just tell them!

Demo: Demonstrate the teaching point with one very clear example. Use your own writing, or a piece of student work, a class story, or a published mentor text-but not all four! That will take too long, and shouldn't be necessary if you demonstrate very clearly. Act out all the steps of your teaching point, do some actual writing on paper, and think aloud as you do it.

Active Engagement: Make sure every kid tries the teaching point before you end your lesson. Invite them to try something quick and small. Just a sample is enough. Plan that this will take no more than one or two minutes.This is the one and only time all your kids MUST try it. After this, today's teaching point will become one of many choices your kids can pull from as they work on their own independent writing. If there are a handful of kids having trouble, jot down their names and pull them together as a small group after the minilesson to follow up or make accommodations.

Link: This is where you make it very clear to kids what the choices are for their ongoing work. Today's teaching point is now just one of the many strategies they can choose from. Often, you'll add today's minilesson teaching point onto a chart, so that kids won't forget it come tomorrow.
Yeah, yeah, you say. I know all that already.
Great, I say! Now try this:

1. Think of something familiar that you are constantly reminding or teaching someone to do. For example, in my house, I am constantly reminding and teaching my daughter to put her dirty clothes in the hamper. I also do a lot of reminding about turning out lights. And then there's hanging up her coat instead of dropping it on the floor in front of the door... my list could go on and on.

2. Now try this. Use the chart below to just say aloud a minilesson that teaches something silly and familiar. Just use the sentence starters and see what happens.

My minilesson for teaching my daughter to hang up her coat would go like this using the scaffolding language on the chart:
"Now Lily, remember yesterday when I tripped on your raincoat when I was walking in the door? That was pretty scary for me! I almost dropped all the groceries I was carrying!" Teaching Point: "Today I want to teach you how to help keep our house nice and neat by hanging up your coat on a hook every time you come through the door." Demo: "Watch how I hang up my own coat as soon as come in through the door." I put on my coat, and walk outside to the garage. Then I open the door. "Hmm... I'm taking off my coat. I'm thinking maybe I'll just drop it right here on the floor. What do you think?" (Lily giggles, of course) "Nooo! That would be messy. Plus someone could trip on it! I'll hang it up on the hook. See?" I hang my coat on a hook. "Did you see how I thought about dropping it on the floor, but then I stopped and decided it would be better to hang it on the hook?" Active Engagement: "Now it's your turn to hang your coat up as soon as you come through the door. Go ahead, put your coat back on and go back outside to try it." Lily puts her coat on, and we step outside the door together. "Okay, time to take off your coat!" She takes off her coat. "Where will you put your coat this time?" She hangs it on a hook. I noticed that you Link: Today and every day, for the rest of your life, you can always hang your coat on a hook when you come in the house. Don't forget, you can also put your shoes on the shoe rack, and your hat in the basket too! didn't just toss your coat on the floor-you hung it on the hook!
How long did it take you to plan a minilesson for an everyday, silly, teaching point? Not long, right?

Now, you see, minilessons aren't that complicated after all. The consistency of the architecture and the scaffolding language is a tool that you can use for planning. Now try it with a reading strategy, or a writing strategy, and off you go!

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Minilessons are actually really easy to plan, and fun to teach. What? You don't believe me? Let me show you, right now, how to do it. First, take this little quiz to see if this post is for you: 1.

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How Many Stars? Tools for self-assessment and goal-setting

When my daughters were first learning to dive, they spent a lot of time practicing, and they recruited me to be their judge. "On a scale of 1 to 10?" they'd say over and over again. If I doled out an 8, they'd want to know why. "Your knees were bent," I might have said. Or maybe their toes weren't pointing. (Maybe I wasn't watching, and I made something up, but don't tell them...) In any case, they knew what constituted a perfect dive, they had a source of feedback, and they had opportunity after opportunity to approximate it.

Maybe if I were trying to teach my girls diving now instead of a decade ago, I'd use the power of video, so they could see a 6, a 7, an 8, 9, or 10. I think the more we show learners what the work looks like at different levels and the reasons for that level, the better they are able to self-assess, set goals, and improve. Therefore, I've been making many learning progressions that I use in my work within elementary writing classrooms.

Kate Roberts and Maggie Beattie Roberts describe how to make a micro-progression in one of their videos that accompany DIY Literacy. As Kate states in the video, "Micro-progressions help students to zoom in on one skill and do it better." While their example demonstrates how to analyze a piece of text , the strategy of making a progression can be done for any skill. For me, I've created templates of stars. Sometimes, I use three columns, sometimes four, and sometimes even five-it depends how specifically I feel like I can define the skill.

You name it, and I can create it using a one star to five star model.

Some examples that have been popular with the teachers in my district are ones that have to do with conventions since those are always a struggle.

I have linked the document, but here's also a screenshot of the capitalization rubric.

Students can look at their writing side by side this rubric, and they can make decisions as to what column describes their work. Most students who use a tool like this one are motivated to move across the lanes and are able to make immediate improvements.

I debated over whether to repeat the skills across the columns, and for now, I do think it helps students to see all of the skills when we are expecting them to hold onto the skills from previous columns. I have created other progressions that don't feel as redundant for writing:

Introductions of opinion and introduction texts

Conclusions of opinion and introduction texts

Beginnings of narrative stories

Ends of narrative stories

Productive use of independent writing time

Variety and explanation of evidence within an opinion paragraph

While you can make a micro-progression using a digital template like the one I've shared, you can also make one by folding a piece of paper into fourths. Here's one I made this morning with a kindergarten teacher:

I need to work on my picture of a turtle-here's a chuckle for you: when we first started this micro-progression, I was going to draw a rainbow, but then I realized the color wouldn't show up when we made copies, so we made my rainbow into a turtle. We also talked about how many of the students will outgrow this progression quickly, and that's fantastic for them. We can make another chart that starts with "trtl" in the 1-star column and progresses from there. Remember that there's something to be said for showing children a chart where they feel instantly successful.

A particularly high level progression I created for a fifth-grade classroom during an information writing unit showed students how to move their writing from just an enumeration of facts to a more reactive, analytical explanation of facts combined with thoughts. I am including a screenshot, and you can access the document here. This document is different from the conventions in that it shows samples of writing as opposed to bulleted descriptors that function more like learning targets. When looking and analyzing the work, there's the additional step for students of naming the skill.

This particular progression has worked really well as a small group inquiry where I challenge students to notice and note the differences between the three writing samples.

As you can see, micro-progressions work for many developing skills. Kate and Maggie are amazing to watch, and I highly recommend watching a video of the two of them designing a micro-progression. There are also many examples of micro-progressions that are showing up on Pinterest. However, the strongest ones for you will be the ones you create yourself. Here's how I thought about the work as I designed the samples I've shared in this post:

1. Envision and describe the way you want the skill to look at its best for students in your classroom. I try to picture one of the stronger writers and create my 5 star version of what that student isn't doing yet.

2. Break down the skill into developing steps, thinking about what it looks like just a little less, just a little less, just a little less...

3. Write descriptions of those skills or write samples that reflect those skills. Keep in mind that if you write the skills as opposed to the samples, you make it a little simpler for students to use. You can differentiate your progressions to reflect the abilities of your students.

4. Do not worry about perfection! My turtle is FAR from perfect, but it would serve its purpose, and that's what matters!

I would bet that if I could have shown my daughters videos of their dives that they could compare to a calibrated series of scored samples, they would have been motivated and quicker to improve, thus giving me more time to read on the side of the pool. For any developing skill, it helps to see it done well and understand what has to be done in order to emulate it.

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How Many Stars? Tools for self-assessment and goal-setting

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When my daughters were first learning to dive, they spent a lot of time practicing, and they recruited me to be their judge. "On a scale of 1 to 10?" they'd say over and over again. If I doled out an 8, they'd want to know why.

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Lisa Burman

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I recently had the pleasure of conducting a workshop on Wordplay and its important role in growing writers. Here are some of the messages I was able to share with participants. Trust they add to your thinking around the teaching of writing...
Wordplay is such an omnipotent thing. It is unavoidable. Conversation, songs, TV shows advertisements, literature , greeting cards, brochures magazines and newspapers all employ word play abundantly. Everywhere we go, it leaps out at us.

In many schools however the study of words, has over time, been shrunken down to mean little more than reading and vocabulary knowledge. And yet, I still recall my teachers encouraging me to play with malapropisms, oxymorons, listen for tautology and wonder at the mystery of invented words in Lewis Carroll's poem 'Jabberwocky.' I recall the fun we had creating rhyming couplets and discovering palindromic words. At home, my father regularly engaged me in wordplay and riddles. There were also a fair smattering of what we term, 'Dad jokes.' A lot of it stuck. To this day, it serves me well.

Wordplay is motivating

Wordplay is central to a word rich classroom

Wordplay encourages meta-cognitive reflection on words

Wordplay requires word rehearsal

Teachers are able to foster word consciousness in a variety of ways:

When they model interest in words and precise use of vocabulary (Graves, 2006).

When they encourage students' interest in words.

When they consciously share books about words.

When they call students' attention to words by highlighting words of the day, posting words on word walls, and having students collect words from books they're reading.

When they validate wordplay by sharing riddles, jokes, puns, songs, and poems and encouraging students to experiment with words and use them in new ways.

To sharpen the meaning

To create surprise

To make the words sound more melodious

To provide particular emphasis

To be playful for its own sake

To be clever and creative

To inject humour

To be irreverent or subversive

To make the reader pay attention

To keep yourself alert and engaged

As wi th any new skill- to become proficient with language and word play requires consistent and deliberate practice.

Playing with language is a sophisticated endeavour because knowing how to break a rule requires you to understand the rule in the first place.

'We become more skilful not merely through work and study but also through play.'

The writer's notebook is the place where these experiments are conducted. In this personal space the writer can:

Fraternize with words

Establish an identity as a writer

Improvise and invent

Engage in regular play

Use language explicitly and mindfully

Prepare to surprise

Notice attempts at wordplay and share them

Model wordplay - puns, jokes, your own playful writing

Generate conversations about word use

I have personally learned about wordplay by:

Listening actively to everyday conversations.

Noticing it in books written by authors I respect.

Experimenting with it in my own notebooks. I have noted over many years how prevalent word play is in my notebooks. Multiple examples exist where words are collected, applied, invented and enjoyed. wordplay has informed a lot of my writing, particularly my writing of poetry.

That's simple,-because it's fun

Fun leads to ownership, engagement and flow. So fun matters a great deal for writers.

We MUST encourage young writers to explore the possibilities with wordplay that potentially lifts their writing, above the ordinary.

Try This:
Share notebook wordplay examples with your students
Encourage your students to indulge in wordplay in their notebooks
Make time to share your notebook entries where word play is featured.

'There's no reason to believe there's a perfect word waiting for every storytelling need. When the occasion arises and the right word isn't in the dictionary, make one up. We custom make suits and chilli and tricked out cars- so why not words?'

'We do think in words and the fewer words we know, the more restricted our thoughts. As our vocabulary expands, so does our power to think.'

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I recently had the pleasure of conducting a workshop on Wordplay and its important role in growing writers. Here are some of the messages I was able to share with participants. Trust they add to your thinking around the teaching of writing... Wordplay is such an omnipotent thing. It is unavoidable.

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Conferring with Young Writers

I am working with a brilliant first grade teacher during her writing workshop. Mrs. B.'s writing workshop runs like a well-oiled machine and is the kind of workshop you read about in professional books. When Mrs. B. approached me for a coaching cycle, I wasn't surprised. She is the kind of teacher who is always looking to refine her craft. Mrs. B. wanted to improve her writing conferences with kids. We are using Carl Anderson's book, How's It Going? A Practical Guide to Conferring with Student Writers to guide our learning. In Chapter 3, Carl writes about the importance of teaching students their role in a writing conference. He recommends several minilessons to help students understand their conference roles.

Mrs. B. and I began by doing a fishbowl conference in front of the entire class. During the fishbowl, I played the role of the teacher while Mrs. B. played the role of the student. We sat in the middle of the carpet and role-played a conference while the class gathered around us and watched. Afterwards, we made a chart to record their observations:

After we discussed each of these observations, Mrs. B. and I modeled a non-example of a conference. Mrs. B. played the role of an inattentive, unprepared student who barely talked about her writing. The first graders immediately noticed the difference and were quite amused by this "student" who was not taking her writing seriously! With this minilesson in mind, we sent the kids off to write while we conferred individually with several writers.

Mrs. B. and I knew we wanted to teach into the chart; we wanted to capitalize on their observations and build on them. We decided to turn their observations into learning targets. For example, our next minilesson centered on the idea that "I can talk a lot about my writing." We spent a few days exploring this idea. What does it sound like when a writer talks a lot about their writing? Mrs. B. modeled this kind of talk for them using her own writing. They practiced talking a lot about their writing with a partner. We even videotaped Mrs. B. conferring with a student during writing time, and we used the recording as the minilesson for the next day. "Wow! Listen to Charlotte talk a lot about her writing!" we said to the kids.

We also turned the last observation on the chart into a minilesson. "I can try what my teacher teaches me right away" became our next learning target. We told the students that during a writing conference, the teacher will teach them something about writing, and it is their job to try that thing right away. "For example," we said, "yesterday we taught Joshua that writers of informational books sometimes use pictures to explain an idea to their readers. Today, Joshua is going to try to do that in his writing. We'll check back in with him during our reflection time to see how he tried it right away." Sure enough, during reflection time Joshua proudly shared his illustrations showing the differences between gorillas and monkeys.

Mrs. B. and I are both pleased with how her students are taking ownership for their own learning during writing conferences. We have noticed they are talking about their writing more than they ever have before. They are eagerly trying our teaching points as we walk away from a conference. These students know they have an important role in a writing conference.

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I am working with a brilliant first grade teacher during her writing workshop. Mrs. B.'s writing workshop runs like a well-oiled machine and is the kind of workshop you read about in professional books. When Mrs. B. approached me for a coaching cycle, I wasn't surprised.

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Show don't Tell - great craft for narratives (links with inferring as well)

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Show don't Tell - great craft for narratives (links with inferring as well)

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I am increasingly aware there exists in some classrooms, a confusion over exactly what is meant by the term, show, don't tell, and how to present it to student writers...

This type of writing tells the reader something, but it doesn't show. The words used don't create a clear enough picture in the mind of the reader. The immediate question is, 'What did the boy do to indicate he was angry. Anger can show up in many ways. 'How did the boy display anger?'
As curious readers, we want to know.

'The little boy balled his fists into tight little bullets, clutched at his side. When he spoke it was more of a hissing than a regular voice.'

'Show don't tell' is a strategy that can be used effectively during the revision stage of writing. The writer needs to be encouraged to ask the question, 'Are their places in my writing where I am telling instead of showing?'

Show,Don't Tell as a Revision Strategy

It assists the reader to activate their senses and visualize the scene, rather than just being told.

I had to force open the door because a football and a backpack blocked it. How am I ever going to find my football jumper in that mountain of clothes on the unmade bed?

Using Show, Don't Tell with characters

When writing about a particular character, try to show that character in action.

Joe had lived through eighty summers. His face was shriveled like a walnut and he relied heavily on his faithful walking stick when moving about.(SHOW)

A Great Example of 'Show, Don't Tell'

He shivered, He shook. He sneezed. His teeth chattered. He longed for his handkerchief. He grabbed hold of his tail (it took a long frightening moment to even locate his tail, so absolute was the darkness) to have something, anything to hold on to. He considered fainting. He deemed it the only reasonable response to the situation in which he found himself, but then he remembered the words of the threadmaster: honour, courtesy, devotion and bravery.

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'Show Don't Tell' -Providing the Power to Improve Student Writing

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I am increasingly aware there exists in some classrooms, a confusion over exactly what is meant by the term, show, don't tell , and how to present it to student writers... This type of writing tells the reader something, but it doesn't show.

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Mentor texts - how to get kids to try craft

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Mentor texts - how to get kids to try craft

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"I would never sign my kids up to learn swimming with a teacher who doesn't swim," Kelly Boswell stated in an NCTE session that had to do with mentor texts. She reminded us that using mentor texts is optimally a three step process, citing Kelly Gallagher as the originator of the "he go, I go, you go" mantra. Most of us forget the middle step. Even though I'm a writer, I'm also a rusher, and in the haste to get students off and writing when I am demonstrating a lesson using mentor texts, I have not always emphasized that critical second step of being a writer in front of students.

Shortly after NCTE, one of our third-grade teachers asked about teaching a lesson together about the importance of establishing setting in narrative work. With the "he go, I go, you go" mantra in mind, she and I planned the lesson.

Her class has been using Owl Moon by Jane Yolen and C'mon Rain by Karen Hesse as mentor texts throughout the unit. I don't like to use books as mentor texts that students haven't already read, so I made copies of the first pages of those two picture books. For Owl Moon, I only needed the first page; for C'mon Rain, I needed the first three pages.

For my connection, I suggested what it might feel like to be placed into an unfamiliar setting with a blindfold on. We would all want to know where we were. In general, people want to know about their setting, whether it's real life or reading life. I shared the chart I'd created and stated the teaching point, and then I gave every student a copy of the first page of Owl Moon for the "s/he go" part of the mantra.Each student had a clipboard, and I had them notice and note the ways Jane (and I said Jane) let her readers know about the setting. At first students just underlined the text, but I pushed them to write down what they would call the writing move. There wasn't a wrong answer, and I repeated that several times. "Use your own words to describe what Jane is doing as a writer," I kept saying.

We charted the responses, and then we moved to the "I go" step of the mantra. Their teacher shared her own writing, and she tried out some of the craft moves students had named from Owl Moon, as well as some others.We added Mrs. J.'s name to our chart. When I sent students off to their own writing-the "you go" step-, I asked them to add their names to the chart as they tried and showed us moves.

Whether it was the act of marking up the text, watching their teacher write, or getting to add their names to a public chart, everyone was writing and working on making their settings clearer for their readers.

Yes, that middle step took an extra few minutes in the minilesson, but engagement was high, and the payoff was big.

I am the Writing and Social Studies Coordinator in Simsbury, CT, and I love what I do. I get to write and inspire others to write! Additionally, I am the mom to four fabulous daughters and the wife of a great husband. View all posts by Melanie Meehan

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"I would never sign my kids up to learn swimming with a teacher who doesn't swim," Kelly Boswell stated in an NCTE session that had to do with mentor texts. She reminded us that using mentor texts is optimally a three step process, citing Kelly Gallagher as the originator of the "he go, I go, you go" mantra.

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A Short & Sweet Minilesson Formula

In this post, I'm going to share a handy strategy for planning short and sweet minilessons. But first, a disclaimer.

I have, on several occasions, had the experience of being timed while teaching a minilesson to young children.

"Sure! No problem!" I always say when asked. And then I quietly freak out.

It's not that teaching a ten minute lesson is so difficult, it's that folks carrying stopwatches make me nervous!

Years ago it wasn't uncommon in a few parts of New York City for administrators to walk the halls with stopwatches, checking to see how long the minilessons were taking. Maybe this still goes on in some schools. While this was part of an effort (with good intentions) to lift the level of instruction across whole schools, it isn't hard to see how this sort of thing lead to negative feelings toward minilessons and workshop teaching in general. To this day mention of stopwatches in a writing workshop gives me anxiety.

Stopwatches, generally speaking, put the emphasis on the number of minutes instead of student engagement, or understanding, or choice, independence, or any number of other important qualities of strong teaching that I might be aiming for.

A much better gauge of how long a minilesson needs to be would be to watch the kids. When they are looking away, distracted, or disengaged, then the minilesson is too long. Unfortunately in my experience, folks with stopwatches were not even looking at the students during my minilessons. It was all about the minutes.

While I do have some tips for reducing the amount of time kids are sitting, whole-class, for a minilesson, the minutes aren't really the point. It's about engagement, understanding, student choice, crystal clear teaching, and independence.

If you're familiar with the Units of Study for Teaching Opinion/Argument, Information, and Narrative Writing or the U nits of Study for Teaching Reading (by Lucy Calkins and Colleagues), then you are familiar with the architecture of the minilessons in the series (Full disclosure: I am a coauthor on both series of books).

Connection: Remind kids of something familiar. Remind kids of some prior knowledge, or a story from your classroom, or an anecdote from your own personal life that will connect to today's teaching point.

Name the Teaching Point: Tell the kids exactly what strategy you are going to teach them today. Be explicit and direct in naming it.

Demo: Demonstrate the teaching point with one very clear example. Use your own writing, a piece of student work, a class story, or a published mentor text. Act out all the steps of your teaching point, do some actual writing on paper, and think aloud as you do it.

Active Engagement: Make sure every child tries the strategy. Invite them to try something quick and small. Just a sample. Plan that this will take no more than one or two minutes.

Link: This is where you make it very clear to kids what the choices are for their ongoing work. Today's teaching point is now just one of the many strategies they can choose from. Often, you'll add today's minilesson teaching point onto a chart, so that kids won't forget it come tomorrow.

You are also probably well aware that many of these minilessons take 15-20 minutes minimum, just to read, straight from the page. There are some very good reasons for why the written version of the minilesson includes more detail than the version you might deliver to children - including clarity for all who might be reading the units. But the side-effect of all that detail and elaboration is that if you were to teach the minilessons exactly as written to a meeting area full of wiggly, squirmy kids, there is very little chance of doing that in less than ten minutes.

Time and time again my colleagues and I urge the teachers we work with to adapt the minilesons that are published in the books. "Make them your own!" we say. "Use your own examples, put your own spin on them!" For some educators, adapting the minilessons comes naturally. For others, especially those who are newer to workshop teaching, it's a challenge to figure out which parts to keep, and what's okay to change.

There is a formula that I use, time and time again, to adapt my own minilessons. Yes, this formula helps me keep my minilessons to about ten minutes and makes planning more streamlined, but more importantly this formula helps me with one of my personal goals as a teacher: student engagement.

Connection: I review the anchor chart. I literally ask the kids to read the anchor chart aloud together as a remind for students of what they've been doing for the past few days. This takes one minute.

Teaching Point: I name today's new strategy very clearly and explicitly. One or two sentences max. Perhaps, I hold a finished example or mentor text of this strategy in my hands as I say this as visual support.

Teach/Active Engagement: In this modified version of the "classic" minilesson architecture, I skip the teacher-centered demonstration, and invite the kids to help me practice the strategy on a familiar piece of writing - once. (If they need extra practice, I can always do a mid-workshop interruption and repeat the active engagement, once they are off the carpet and at their writing spots).

Link: I add today's strategy to the anchor chart and remind kids of all the choices of strategies they might choose from - today, and everyday. (Again, this is basically rereading the anchor chart. One minute.)

Note on one more adaptation: I aim for anchor charts with very little text, and picture clues to support the meaning - at every grade level. This often requires adapting the chart used as an example in the published unit.

Voila. That's it. It works for almost any minilesson in any unit, for any grade.

I continue to work at keeping my minilessons brief and engaging because I know that less time in the minilesson leaves more time for actual writing. I also know that most kids seem to have about a ten or fifteen minute window for the length of time any whole-class instruction is going to truly hold their attention. And most often, the shorter my minilesson, the clearer and more explicit my teaching becomes. Not only that, I find that when my lesson plan is short to begin with, I can teach at a comfortable pace, with no need to rush. Rushing makes the kids anxious, and changes the entire classroom climate - not for the better.

When I've planned a brief, concise version of the minilesson, there's no need to break out the stopwatches and race against the clock. Instead, I can focus my attention on the kids.

P.S. Shorter minilessons aren't always better! I write about minilessons often. Here are a few other posts to help you plan and teach minilessons to meet the needs of your particular students:
How to Plan a Minilesson from Scratch Top Ten Ways to Keep Minilessons from Turning into Maxilessons Minilessons: It's All About the Link There are More Ways than One to Teach a Minilesson

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There is a formula that I use, time and time again, to adapt my own minilessons. Yes, this formula helps me keep my minilessons to about ten minutes and makes planning more streamlined, but more importantly this formula helps me with one of my personal goals as a teacher: student engagement.

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Changing Tack: Learning from a Writing Conference
Changing tack: To change the direction of a sailing vessel
Amidst a quietly humming seventh grade writing workshop last week, I sat down next to Brandon. At my elbow was my colleague, whose professional goal is to improve her conferring with writers. "What can you tell me about your writing today, Brandon?" I began. As I peered down at Brandon's table, I could see multiple pages of a flash draft spread out before him, as well as a text set of articles about competitive sports his teacher/my colleague had provided. In my hands, I held my trusted writer's notebook (which doubles as a demonstration notebook sometimes). In my head, I held some predictable feedback. The setting for demonstrating a conference was idyllic. Until it wasn't.

"Well," responded Brandon, "I'm working on my argument piece."

"Can you say more about that, please?" I prompted.

"Um, well, I think sports are good for kids, so I'm writing about why I think that." I glanced at Brandon's introductory paragraph and jotted a quick note on my conferring post-it.

"Great, so what are you working on specifically today?" I prodded. This conference had begun to take on a familiar arc. I quickly placed my index finger on the mentor text I was about to show Brandon. I had a teaching point in mind already!

"I think sports help kids be healthy, so I'm looking to add some evidence from these articles. I'm not quite sure what that should be, though." Silence. Bam! I was ready to move this conference forward.

I began with a compliment about the clarity of his claim, couching my affirmation in language I wrote about in my a few weeks ago.

Fast forward now to the "Can I give you a tip, Brandon?" Brandon nodded his head. I then launched into the teaching portion of my conference with great confidence, explaining with an example (from my demonstration) notebook how writers use a variety of evidence to support their reasons and claims- facts, statistics, quotes, examples, etc. Having put my preset feedback into motion, I must admit I was feeling pretty great about this interaction so far.

Then it happened.

"So, Brandon, let's take a look at your argument piece here...how might you try this?" I pulled up my sleeves and refocused my eyes on Brandon's draft. "Can you show me the section in your paper where you're writing about the health benefits of competitive sports?" Slowly, Brandon began scanning with his finger, a bit aimlessly, around on his flash draft. First page...nope, not there. Second page...hmm...not there either.

Then: "I haven't written that."

Uh oh. I regrouped.

I cleared my throat. "Okay, so Brandon...what do you think your next step might be for today?" Brandon instantly told me he thought his next step was to write that body paragraph, the one about how sports help you stay healthy. I concurred, linking the conference to his writing life by reminding him that when writers have done a lot of smart thinking and research about their arguments- like he had- they sometimes must check to be sure that thinking got into their draft.

What I did right: I arrived at my conference with Brandon that day "prepared," having brought something I knew would be supportive to most writers. And my compliment was solid.

When conferring on the run like this, I need to be sure I'm working to be What I would change: truly present to each individual writer. In my effort to demonstrate a "good conference," I over-relied on a preconceived idea I had brought with me. And this works- sometimes. But my real take-away is that while being prepared is valuable, so is being present to the writer. In writing workshop, we teach the writer, not the writing. So being present to each unique writer is essential if we are to move each of them forward.

Here's a quick list of tips I generated after this experience (please add your own in the comments section!) for remaining present to writers:

Management - Establish a no-interruption culture. We can't be present if there are three kids occupying our peripheral vision or sitting with hands raised. A simple chart like this can help:

I was lucky to be working in a room with Brandon that day where the conferring culture was solidly in place. Writers were working independently.

Someone once told me we were given Listen- two ears and one voice for a reason. What is the writer really saying? Lean in, make eye contact, let them know you're really hearing them.

Get a sense of the writing - for those of you who can split your brain a little, take in some of the writing. Maybe have the writer read a little aloud, or take a moment to do so yourself ("Let me have a look," or "Would you show me where you tried that? Let's take a look...").

Another point here is that conferring, like life, can be messy. It doesn't always go perfectly. It definitely didn't for me that day with Brandon. Sometimes we are forced to change tack. Being prepared and being present are two different things. I learned that from a student, a student who unknowingly helped me outgrow myself as a teacher and coach that day. Which, I suppose, is not a bad thing at all.

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Changing Tack: Learning from a Writing Conference

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Changing tack: To change the direction of a sailing vessel Amidst a quietly humming seventh grade writing workshop last week, I sat down next to Brandon. At my elbow was my colleague, whose professional goal is to improve her conferring with writers. "What can you tell me about your writing today, Brandon?"

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useful to start to notice different narrative craft techniques

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Tags

As an educator, I've come to believe it's important to know a small collection of books intimately. Not only does this make sense financially, but having a handful of mentor texts you know well allows you to use them with students for many purposes.

When I was selecting fiction and nonfiction texts to feature in Craft Moves: Lesson Sets for Teaching Writing with Mentor Texts, I looked for exquisitely written picture books. While searching for the fiction texts, I looked for books that represented a variety of races, cultures, and sexual orientations since I believe all students deserve to read mirror books, in which they can see themselves, and window books, in which they can learn about others ( Bishop, 1990). If we make conscious choices about the mentor texts we present to students - in terms of showcasing impeccable writing and a range of human experiences - then we broaden children's perspectives while helping them become better writers.

Nearly every picture book could serve as a mentor text to help students become better writers. However, some books offer more value than others. Typically, I examine picture books through a lens based on the qualities of good writing: meaning, genre, structure, detail, voice, and contentions (Anderson, 2005). Over the years, I've come up with ten power craft moves for books that are based on the things I hope to see in children's writing, to help me determine what I can teach young writers from picture books. Every picture book I adopt as a mentor text must have at least six power craft moves. With six or more power craft moves, I can use each of the selected picture books in a variety of conferences, small group strategy lessons, and mini-lessons.

There are hundreds of teaching possibilities for narrative writing in the following ten mentor texts. Here are several possibilities for each book:

Clever Jack Takes the Cake by Candace Fleming and G. Brian Karas

Craft moves you can teach kids from this text: dialogue advances a story; surprise ending; take a reader into the past lead; punctuation to create voice (e.g., hyphenated words, dashes); repeated phrases; show, don't tell; specific details (e.g., character, setting); structure (e.g.., beginning-middle-end, movement of time); varying sentence lengths to create rhythm and emphasis.

Eat, Leo! Eat! by Caroline Adderson and Josee Bisaillon

Craft moves you can teach kids from this text: code switching; dashes; accomplishments/discovery ending; introducing the characters through a splash of dialogue lead; sensory details; movement of time; turning point

Happy Like Soccer by Maribeth Boelts and Lauren Castillo

Craft moves you can teach kids from this text: dialogue advances a story; circular ending; compare/contrast lead; power of three; show, don't tell; sensory details; movement of time and place

Henry Holton Takes the Ice by Sandra Bradley and Sara Palacios

Craft moves you can teach kids from this text: dialogue advances a story; ellipsis points; accomplishments/discovery ending; meeting the characters lead; show, don't tell; character details; rule of three; movement of time; turning point

Knuffle Bunny Free: An Unexpected Diversion by Mo Willems

Craft moves you can teach kids from this text: speech bubbles; punctuation to create voice (e.g., cadence, ellipsis points, parentheses); including precise information; rule of three; beginning-middle-end structure; turning point

Last Stop on Market Street by Matt de la Pena and Christian Robinson

Craft moves you can teach kids from this text: dialogue advances a story; hyphenated words; lesson learned with dialogue ending; internal thinking; appeal to the senses lead; repeated phrase; show, don't tell; specific details (e.g., character, setting); unfolding the heart of the story bit-by-bit; turning point

Mango, Abuela, and Me by Meg Medina and Angela Dominguez

Craft moves you can teach kids from this text: code switching; internal thinking; wraparound ending; character snapshot lead; punctuation to create voice (e.g., dashes, hyphenated words, vocative case); show, don't tell; setting details; unfolding the heart of the story bit-by-bit; movement of time

Stella Brings the Family by Miriam B. Schiffer and Holly Clifton-Brown

Craft moves you can teach kids from this text: dialogue advances a story; action lead; character details; rule of three; structure (e.g., beginning-middle-end, movement of time); varying sentence lengths to create rhythm and emphasis

Trouper by Meg Kearney and E.B. Lewis

Craft moves you can teach kids from this text: final action ending; sharing a secret lead; punctuation to create voice (e.g., dashes, parentheses, semicolon); repeated word or phrase; show, don't tell; including precise information; pacing; turning point

Yard Sale by Eve Bunting and Lauren Castillo

Craft moves you can teach kids from this text: dialogue advances a story; internal thinking; lesson learned ending; meeting the characters lead; commas; show, don't tell; character details; movement of time; turning point; varying sentence lengths to create rhythm and emphasis

I've written lessons for each of the craft moves in the above-mentioned picture books in Craft Moves: Lesson Sets for Teaching Writing with Mentor Texts. The lessons serve as models to help teachers expose students to craft moves in a variety of texts. Seeing as it might take some children multiple exposures to add a skill to their repertoire (e.g., using dialogue to advance a story, movement of time, varying sentence lengths) there are several lessons for each of these craft moves. This means you can study a craft move in depth with a student, across several picture books, over a few weeks until s/he masters that skill and adds it to his/her writing toolbox.

Picture books are ideal for reading to elementary students. They deliver a full story in a short amount of time, thanks to the way in which most authors economize their word count. It is my hope that using picture books as mentor texts will help your students not only read as writers and write with joy but also become writers who can effectively communicate meaning, structure their writing, write with detail, and give their writing their own unique voice.
Stacey Shubitz is an independent literacy consultant, an adjunct professor, and a former elementary school teacher. She's the author Craft Moves: Lesson Sets for Teaching Writing with Mentor Texts and the co-author of Day by Day: Refining Writing Workshop Through 180 Days of Reflective Practice. She blogs at Two Writing Teachers and can be found on Twitter @sshubitz.

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10 Mentor Texts to Lift the Level of Students' Narrative Writing by Stacey Shubitz

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As an educator, I've come to believe it's important to know a small collection of books intimately. Not only does this make sense financially, but having a handful of mentor texts you know well allows you to use them with students for many purposes. When I was selecting fiction and nonfiction texts to feature in...

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PUBLISHING STUDENT

A young teacher approached me during a break in my presentation about Writer's Notebooks yesterday to ask, What about publishing? She was projecting ahead and it set me to thinking more deeply about this important issue. Young writers need to experience every phase of the writing process and yet it is publishing that frequently gets squeezed or curtailed. Either that, or it gets the 'fast food' treatment and every child's published work looks alarmingly the same. Publishing and the student writer are short changed. It would therefore be easy to lose sight of the purpose of the Writer's Notebook. The Notebook's primary function is to provide a place for writing to
With so much emphasis on gathering entries in the Writer's Notebook there is a further danger it will begin to establish itself as the primary focus for writing both in the minds of teachers and students.
begin. The notebook is to the writer, what the sketchbook is to the artist.

Across the pages of the notebook we gather writing ideas - experiment, trial, and start to play with words. It is the place where potential writing projects find their humble beginnings.It is where the writer first breathes life into a writing piece. Let's think of the notebook as a launching pad, rather than an end in itself.

Young writers need to publish some of their writing projects to experience the entire writing process. This is how they learn to more deeply understand the significance of pre-writing/rehearsing, drafting, revising and editing their work. This is where the 'polishing' of their rough diamonds takes place.

It is in publishing that we most effectively teach our students to appreciate the importance of grammar and conventions. Publishing provides authentic opportunities for students to work through the revisions and editing of their work and prepare it for their intended audience.
These process steps provide genuine purpose to the work being undertaken. By engaging in this process, writers display increased critical awareness for making their message as clear as possible. Their writing gradually assumes a 'reader friendly' shape.

Editing must be seen as a separate action from getting their thoughts organised and detailed. It must take place after adequate time has been devoted to those critical changes made during revision. Editing will not improve the content of the writing. It will improve the surface features.

Rereading Notebook Entries.

Young writers need to be shown the value of their notebook entries. Rereading their earlier writing 'closely' is an important skill that benefits every writer. They need opportunities to ask themselves, - Which of my notebook entries jump out at me?

This is the place where possibilities for publication emerge! It is therefore important for teachers to demonstrate and promote this strategy. The goal is to help students discover buried treasure within the pages of their notebooks. Rereading shines light on the writer's words and ideas. The more entries, the more choices the writer has to choose from.

As the writer rereads, they ask themselves questions, such as:

What stands out?

What can I imagine spending some extra time on?

What deserves my attention?

The decisions writers make about potential publishing projects are enormously enhanced when shared as a class. Making these project ideas public enables students to briefly outline the ideas they are considering and why they consider a particular piece worthy of further attention. Hearing the writing intentions of others, helps the less confident writer make decisions.

Reason for Choosing A Particular Publishing Idea to Pursue

In consultation with the teacher, students may develop a set of criteria for rereading their notebooks. At this point students will benefit from support that encourages their thinking and decision making. This can be achieved by providing a list such as the one that follows:

Some Reasons for Beginning a Publishing Project:

You believe an entry is important and you have already written a lot about it.

You believe an entry is not your best writing and you know you have more to say about that topic, subject, or idea.

An entry sounds like a genre you are familiar with and you believe you can develop and revise it for publication

You have a series of entries about a topic/idea and you can see the potential to join them into a single piece of writing.

You have an entry you believe is well written and you think you can improve it even further with some revision.

You think you have a story that readers will find interesting because it deals with an issue in which others are interested.

You notice a theme threaded through your writing pieces and you believe it is worth developing.

You have a question in your notebook you would like to answer.

The final decision in identifying a piece of writing worthy of more attention can be guided by asking students:

Does this piece deserve more of your writing time and will you look forward to working on it?

Who do you see as an audience for this piece of writing once you lift it from your notebook?

What literature and what writers (mentors) will support you if you choose to publish this particular piece of writing?

Students will produce writing pieces at different rates across the course of the year. However, once they have completed their first publication, they often require less assistance and guidance the next time they undertake a project. This is because they now have experience with the process. The writer has an increased sense of direction and ownership. Their vision of the publishing process is sharper. They are travelling down a familiar track the next time they wish to publish.

Once the decision has been made about the focus of their publishing project, we assist students by moving the writing from the notebook to a writing folder, where the piece is further developed on paper or a computer -or both. This enables the writer to experience the freedom to move the text around, craft the texts, cut and paste, sequence events and generally reshape the words. Eventually they may work with a mock up book should they decide to publish their work in book form. This redrafting and revising phase is where the writing is seriously reworked.

In some schools teachers have developed a step of moving young writers from the writer's notebook to another book called the 'draft book.' This appears to be a containment measure. I suspect the teachers are fearful that students will be unable to manage the various pieces of paper that may develop as the writing progresses. The draft book is neat, tidy and contains the spread of words and paper. On the other hand, writing is sometimes wild and unpredictable in its development and requires time and space to reach its full potential. The 'draft book' has the effect of limiting the writer, acting as a halter. It makes more sense to teach students to manage this phase of their writing and therefore encourage the best possible development of the writing they produce, than to keep writing safe.

The important thing about lifting writing out of the notebook and pursuing publication is that writing needs to reach a real audience -otherwise the desire to write will be difficult to sustain. Writers need readers to respond to their words and ideas.It is through publication that writing becomes powerful and influential.

Hindley, Joanne (1996) 'In the Company of Children', Stenhouse

Fletcher Ralph 'Writing Workshop, The Essential Guide, 2001 Heinemann

Judy & Hill Sharon, 'The No Nonsense Guide to Teaching Writing', 2003, Heineman

Fletcher Ralph 'What a Writer Needs', 1993, Heinemann

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Moving Student Writing From the Notebook to Publishing

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A young teacher approached me during a break in my presentation about Writer's Notebooks yesterday to ask, What about publishing? She was projecting ahead and it set me to thinking more deeply about this important issue. Young writers need to experience every phase of the writing process and yet it is publishing that frequently gets squeezed or curtailed.

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A while back, I compiled a list of narrative, opinion/persuasive, and informational mentor texts for primary students. A bit of time has passed, so I've decided to update that list and include additional awesome books that I've found!

In today's post, I'll share a list of outstanding mentor texts, grouped by genre. I'll also share five important tips for using mentor texts to teach writing in the primary grades, so be sure to read to the end of the post!
Photo credit: Tiplyashina Evgeniya, Shutterstock
The books listed below are best for use with Kindergarten, first, or second grade. The ones that are most appropriate for Kindergarten are *starred* (not to say that any of the books would be inappropriate for Kindergarten, but having taught this grade, I know that some books are a little too long for the little ones!).

Within the lists, I've linked to these books on Amazon, so you can quickly and easily add them to your cart or wishlist!

Narrative or Personal Narrative Writing Mentor Texts:

Salt Hands (Picture Puffins) (Jane Chelsea Aragon) - personal narrative

* Fireflies (Julie Brinckloe) - personal narrative

* Bigmama's (Donald Crews) - personal narrative Shortcut (Donald Crews) - personal narrative

Oliver Button Is a Sissy (Tomie dePaola)

Roller Coaster (Maria Frazee) - can be used to teach personal narratives, but not told from 1st person perspective

* Kitten's First Full Moon (Kevin Henkes) - fiction

* Amazing Grace (Mary Hoffman) - narrative

* The Leaving Morning (Angela Johnson) - personal narrative

* Peter's Chair (Picture Puffins) (Ezra Jack Keats) - can be used to teach personal narratives, but not told from 1st person perspective

The Snowy Day (Ezra Jack Keats) - can be used to teach personal narratives, but not told from 1st person perspective

* Whistle for Willie (Ezra Jack Keats) - narrative

* Kitchen Dance (Maurie J. Manning) - personal narrative

One Morning in Maine (Picture Puffins) (Robert McCloskey) - narrative

Mirette on the High Wire (Emily Arnold McCully) - narrative

My Rotten Redheaded Older Brother (Patricia Polacco) - personal narrative

Thank You, Mr. Falker (Patricia Polacco) - narrative / personal narrative

Thunder Cake (Patricia Polacco) - personal narrative

The Relatives Came (Cynthia Rylant) - personal narrative

When I Was Young in the Mountains (Cynthia Rylant) - personal narrative

Too Many Tamales (Gary Soto) - narrative

* Can I Play Too? (An Elephant and Piggie Book) (Mo Willems) - fiction

* Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Tale (Mo Willems) - realistic fiction

* A Chair for My Mother (Vera Williams) - personal narrative

* Owl Moon (Jane Yolen) - personal narrative; great for teaching descriptive details

Opinion or Persuasive Writing Mentor Texts:

* One Word from Sophia (Jim Averbeck)

* Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type (Doreen Cronin) - can also be used to teach letter writing

The Best Part of Me: Children Talk About their Bodies in Pictures and Words (Wendy Ewald)

Dear Mrs. LaRue: Letters from Obedience School (Mark Teague) - can also be used to teach letter writing

Hey, Little Ant (Phillip Hoose)

Should We Have Pets?: A Persuasive Text (Sylvia Lollis)

I Wanna Iguana (Karen Kaufman Orloff) - can also be used to teach letter writing

I Wanna New Room (Karen Kaufman Orloff) - can also be used to teach letter writing

The Perfect Pet (Margie Palatini)

Earrings (Judith Viorst)

* Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! (Mo Willems)

* Don't Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late! (Mo Willems)

Informational / How-To / Nonfiction / Expository Writing Mentor Texts:

* All About Sharks (Jim Arnosky)

* Surprising Sharks (Nicola Davies)

Solids, Liquids, And Gases (Rookie Read-About Science) (Ginger Garrett)

* How a House Is Built (Gail Gibbons) - how-to book

The Bicycle Book (Gail Gibbons)

* The Pumpkin Book (Gail Gibbons) - one page has a how-to

* Make a Valentine (Book shop) (Dale Gordon) - how-to book

All Kinds of Habitats (It's Science!) (Sally Hewitt)

Chameleons Are Cool (Martin Jenkins)

The Abcs of Habitats (Abcs of the Natural World) (Bobbie Kalman)

Boy, Were We Wrong About Dinosaurs! (Kathleen Kudlinski)

* What Is Weather? (Ellen Lawrence)

* How to Make Salsa (Jamie Lucero) - how-to book

What Is the World Made Of? All About Solids, Liquids, and Gases (Kathleen Weidner Zoehfeld)

All of these texts can be used with my Kindergarten, first, or second grade writing units or writing bundles, which you can find here:

Five Tips for Using Mentor Texts

Now that I've shared some of my favorite mentor texts, let's talk about how to use them effectively in the classroom! Here are five things that I do when working with writing mentor texts:

1. Before utilizing a book as a mentor text, I read it aloud to students for purposes of enjoyment and comprehension. Students need an opportunity to understand, enjoy, and discuss a text before they are asked to think about it as writers. I always read aloud the mentor text a day or two before I use it in a writing lesson.

2. I use modeling and clear, explicit language to teach students how to "read as writers." I explain that people read books for many purposes - for pleasure, to learn, and to grow as writers. I like to read a familiar book aloud to students and think aloud as I "read it as a writer." I comment on what I notice about character development, how the author introduces a problem, the author's word choice, the author's use of punctuation marks, how the illustrations complement the words, and so on.

3. I use the same mentor text for multiple writing lessons. While it's helpful to expose students to many different mentor texts, you can also use a single text for multiple minilessons. In my second grade writing workshop curriculum, for example, I use the book Amazing Grace (Mary Hoffman) to teach students how to include a problem in a story, write a strong ending, and incorporate dialogue. This saves us time, because students are already familiar with the text so we can dive right into the teaching point of the minilesson.

4. I use mentor texts to guide my own planning. When I sit down to plan a writing unit, I sometimes struggle to determine what, exactly, I want my students to be able to do as writers of the genre we're working on. When this happens, I spend some time carefully examining mentor texts on my own. For example, if I'm planning a nonfiction unit, I take out a couple of children's nonfiction books and pay attention to how the authors convey information. Are examples given? Does the author provide definitions of important works? Is the information organized into categories - and if so, how? These are all strategies that I can teach students to use as they learn nonfiction writing.

5. I teach students to learn about writing from the books they read independently. I show students that, as they read, they can also grow as writers. You might have students keep a list of interesting words they find in books, and then encourage them to share these words with the class and try them out in their own writing.

Do you have any favorite mentor texts or tips for using them? Please comment below - I'd love to hear your thoughts!
Disclosure: Amazon affiliate links are included in this post.

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Writing Mentor Texts for Kindergarten, First, and Second Grade - Learning at the Primary Pond

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In today's post, I'll share a list of outstanding writing mentor texts, grouped by genre. I'll also share five important tips for using mentor texts to teach writing in the primary grades, so be sure to read to the end of the post!

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Teaching it in context - some good tips!

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Powerful Punctuation!

Punctuation can be a pesky problem. Third grade students often forget their punctuation, writing an entire story without a single period in sight. As I launched writing workshop this year, I've been looking for ways to show my students that punctuation can add voice and meaning to their pieces of writing. Here are some lessons I've tried:

Morning Message: Each day, I've been writing a morning message for my students, which we read at the end of the Morning Meeting. I've been using different types of punctuation and bold words to show that writers skillfully place punctuation so readers will read the piece a certain way. I talk with the students about my punctuation choices and the reasons behind it.

Mentor sentences: Based on Jeff Anderson's work, I've been selecting a sentence for our class to study, explore, and imitate. The Legend of Rock Paper Scissors by Drew Daywalt includes many examples of clever punctuation that adds voice to the book. We charted the different types of punctuation we found on a page in the book.

Punctuation gallery walk: Love Monster, by Rachel Bright, is one of my favorite books to read! Parentheses, ellipses, dashes, and commas really direct the reader to read the book in a specific way. For our gallery walk, I hung up pages from the book and asked students to work with a partner and jot down what they noticed regarding punctuation. After the students explored the different pages, we made a list of the different types of punctuation found in the book and how it helped us as readers. I emphasized that students could do the same thing in their own writing! Students were invited to go back to a piece of writing and revise it with punctuation to create voice or interest. Students could also start a new piece and incorporate punctuation skillfully.

There are a few books I plan to read to my class to continue emphasizing the power of punctuation. The Girl's Like Spaghetti, Twenty Odd-Ducks, Punctuation Takes a Vacation, Eats, Shoots, and Leaves are books that will help students realize the importance of punctuation. I also plan to help students find punctuation marks when writing digitally. A student asked me where the period was when my class blogged for the first time the other day and I never realized students might not know where to find punctuation on the keyboard! It was a a big "A-ha!" moment for me.

Two Writing Teachers has explored punctuation many times. Here are some posts to check out! How do you help students realize that punctuation need not be a pesky problem, but can be a tool to help them craft powerful pieces?

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Punctuation is a pesky problem. Third grade students often forget their punctuation, writing an entire story without a single period in sight. As I launched writing workshop this year, I've been looking for ways to show my students that punctuation can add voice and meaning to their piece of writing.

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Balancing Writers workshop and choice writing (for JP students)

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Balancing Writers workshop and choice writing (for JP students)

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Lots of practical tips

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Work on Writing vs. Writer's Workshop

While our Writer's Workshop and Work on Writing are often closely aligned, they are two distinct mentor texts to model writing traits. (You can read more about our Writer's Workshop here.) During Work on Writing, my students love applying our Writer's Workshop learning to their own writing journals. BUT... during our Work on Writing time, students have complete choice in what and how they write. This choice allows students to explore what they love, develop writing stamina, and find a way to make writing work for them. During this time, students might be writing a thank-you letter to a custodian, sharing about the new location of their elf, creating a secret code for our class to solve (thanks, Jigsaw Jones!), reflecting on what we are learning in class, writing about a book they have recently read, or adding the perfect illustration to their narrative. I trust my students and I value their ideas. Our Work on Writing time helps communicate these ideas to the students. Whatever they are writing about (Minecraft, becoming a candy-maker, etc.) matters.

What's in Our Writing Center

With this flexibility, the materials at our Writing Center change a lot...depending on what my friends need and want. In the second month of school, this was our writing center. I have a word wall to the right of our center for words we are continually spelling-out (school names, teacher names, favorite sports, etc.). In this picture, you see two anchor charts - these change based on what we've learned about in writer's workshop. You can read more about the rating's scale and grab the materials to make your own for free here, and you can read how I launch narrative writing (the heart) here.

Last March, you see that our focus was with Opinion Writing and Time Order words (from How-To/procedural writing).

You can snag some of our first Work on Writing papers for FREE here!

On that same left side where the writing trays are located, I also use my favorite magnetic hooks to hang writing prompts. While I prefer students generate their own writing ideas, some friends have days where they need a little extra spark. I only put out the prompts for the modes of writing we have covered. Right now, you'll find the inform/explain, how-to, and narrative writing prompts hanging!

In the middle of our writing center, you'll find our special writing implements. These are special because you can ONLY use them at this center. My friends know we only use the black writing pencils here, the yellow highlighters are for highlight 'because' in our writing, and the crayons are switched out monthly so they are just-right for adding illustrations. Keeping these supplies specials tells my students how important this choice is to me!

Our classroom mailbox stays on the corner of our writing desk. When mail needs to be deliver (via me during planning) the red flag is put up. Our class writing journals are for shared experiences and stay in our classroom from year-to-year. I'm a *little* late introducing them this year (#oops) and am hoping Monday is our day. 🙂

Providing Support to Writers Who Struggle

One of the most important caveats to Work on Writing is that is must be independent. While I love reading a student's writing and providing immediately feedback, this isn't the time. While students are writing, I am meeting individually with students or in guided reading groups. During this time, I do have a few go-to supports: graphic organizers (pictured above), word rings, writing folders, and pencil/paper alternatives. (To read more about how I build writing independence, check out this blog post.)

While we love writing in our writing journals, students also keep a Blue Writing Folder of work. This folders include any graphic organizers, prewriting, and random writing collections. In a clear, sheet protector in each folder we keep Michelle Oake's First Grade Helper in the middle. This is an amazing resource that includes how to spell months, colors, days of the weeks, numbers, and on the back is an editable word wall. All of our sight-words are on there for our reference. This solves so many of our writing woes.

While the writing resources really support my writers, I still have one friends who STRUGGLES. He has grown so much this year, but writing is physically and emotionally exhausting (for both of us!). Still, writing is such an important part of 1st grade and I do expect this friend to make his Work on Writing choices like every other student. I've found that Work on Writing via Whiteboard and Dry Erase marker to be an amazing accommodation. My friend LOVES using the whiteboard, it's less intimidating because it can easily be erased, and the dry erase markers are easier to hold. The week after Winter Break, my friends wrote this ALL BY HIMSELF!

I got a gummy maker. I wanted a gummy maker so much.

Our entire class was so proud, and we loved celebrating him. This friend, his writing, and his toothless smile were captured in a picture and immediately emailed to Mom and Dad. So, yes, we are slowly making the transition to paper, during independent writing time, a whiteboard works.

Value Novelty

One of the reasons, my friends love Work on Writing is the number of choices they have. I do believe in keeping our Writing Center novel. Last year, my friends were ALL ABOUT Mo Willems and Pigeon. So, much of our writing and ideas were directed at Pigeon.

This year, I have quiet a few Future Spies. Enlisting the help of a spy-in-disguise (i.e. a parent) we have loved learning and writing about spies. We have developed secret codes, writing letters, write opinion pieces about not stealing national monuments, etc. It has been so much fun and has captured the hearts of my writers!

I'm so thankful that this parent is willing to share a few moments with us each week. My friends have developed such a sense of voice and expression in their writing!

Dear Mr. Jason, I told people about what you did to the Statue of Liberty. And you won't get away just like that. The key is safe at school so you won't get it. But I'll get the master key, I'm sure of it. Be prepared. Good luck not getting arrested. Ha, ha, ha. -C

We also love writing about the events going on in our school. From touring the science room, to looking at the pictures in the 6th grade hallway, to visiting the Character Pumpkins in the library - our school offers so many great writing topics. Plus, it's a way to connect to other grades and remind my students where they will be one day!

My 1st graders also LOVE Story Cubes. Each set of cubes has a different theme (verbs, ways to move, places to visit). Students role 2-3 of the dice and combine them into a story. These dice are perfect for adding excitement and novelty to writing!

Acknowledging New Literacies

While pencil-to-writing is a critical part of 1st grade, I also acknowledge that our 1st graders live in a world where they are SO many forms of writing literacy. From emails, to blogs, to digital books - we must start to develop students who are able to adapt and use many different writing modes. Slowly throughout the year, I do introduce many different ways to write. Around November, our 1st grade team introduces MyStory - an easy-to-work-with digital publishing app. Students can easily share their own writing in an e-book form and then, store it on our 'Class Bookshelf'. These soon become some of our favorite stories to share during Listening to Reading. (Read more about how we use this app here.)

Mid-year, I also start to teach students to type their pieces. This is a HUGE motivator for my students and they feel so 'big' opening a Word Document and typing. (Note - I also have 6 iPads, so students will also type using Notes and then, email the file to me.)

When we start publishing pieces with Word, I teach 1 student from each of my reading groups how to do it and they are responsible for teaching their friends. This keeps my focus on Guided Reading! (Note - the writing below is not a perfect paragraph...but for independent 1st grade writing, I'll take it.)

So, friends, tell me - what does your Work on Writing time look like? Is it one of your students' favorite choices? How do you mix-it-up and to keep students engaged and writing? I'd love to hear your ideas!

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Work on Writing Ideas - The Brown Bag Teacher

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Since coming to 1st grade, I've adopted a Daily 5 style to our Reading Block. I have shared dozens of posts about how Daily 5 works in our classroom (click here to read more) but I've never shared about Work on Writing. Honestly, it is the choice that makes me the most nervous and is...

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Ideas for planning Small Group Instruction

Small Group Instruction

At this point in the year, many of us have gotten a sense of our students as writers, and we can begin to see common strengths and growth opportunities. It's a time when small group instruction becomes an effective tool for maximizing instruction since minutes are precious.

Small group instruction is highly effective when a group of students will all benefit from instruction on a specific skill. Groups of 3 to 4 students can be formed based on common strengths or weaknesses as determined by student writing or some other form of assessment.

Students can be brought together while the rest of the class is working independently, and the teacher should be clear about the reason for bringing them together. Just as a teacher states the teaching point during a minilesson, a teacher should state the teaching point during small group instruction. In fact, the format should follow the basic architecture of a minilesson with the teaching point, the active engagement, and the link. While students are practicing the new skill, the teacher may even have time to walk away from them and have a conference with another student.

A question I frequently encounter is around how to form groups. Small group instruction involves planning and goal setting, both on the part of teachers and students. Below are some ideas for making the most of this important instructional time.

Some ways to form groups:

Do a quick sort of student writing and ask yourself what teaching point would help these students?

I like to create categories which may be revised over the course of the year as students grow and genres change. To begin the year, I usually sort students into categories that include:

A simple table is a wonderful tool for seeing where some of the strengths and growth opportunities are in your classrooms of writers.

2. Ask students to set goals.

You can start with some ideas for them, as you may get a lot of blank faces when you first make the suggestion. Here are a few to get a classroom of writers thinking about goals:

1. Having a clear beginning, middle, and end

2. Using transitional phrases to help readers follow what is going on

3. Creating interesting leads that

4. Balancing dialogue with description and action

5. Including thinking within writing

6. Stretching out important parts

This is only the beginning of a list. You could think about it with your class or even have it serve as an inquiry lesson.
3. Having students sign up for seminars.
You can offer a selection of seminars based on the needs you're seeing. In a current fourth-grade classroom where I've been working, we have identified some classroom trends, so we've created some specific seminars.

Once students make their choices, you have a collection of small groups. This strategy is especially great because the concepts of goal setting and seminars are really appealing to students!

A word about the seminars: I hear teachers ask what if students sign up for a seminar that isn't the one they really need. My advice is to let them. If they feel like they need it, they'll be more open to learning and more invested in the concept of seminars. Give them time-they can "attend" another seminar, and it may well be the one you would have suggested, but their choice in the matter may offer you a much more invested student!

I have a future post planned about some of the tools to have on hand to make instruction go more smoothly, so if any of you have ideas to share, please do!

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Ideas for planning Small Group Instruction

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At this point in the year, many of us have gotten a sense of our students as writers, and we can begin to see common strengths and growth opportunities. It's a time when small group instruction becomes an effective tool for maximizing instruction since minutes are precious.

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Reminders about the Place of Writers Notebook

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Reminders about the Place of Writers Notebook

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I was recently approached to comment as a critical friend about how a school was using the writer's notebook to develop the writing of students. They had experienced some confusion around how this valuable resource should be viewed. One view was described as follows:

'Students use their writer's notebook to create any writing piece they want, in any style, for any purpose, however they wish, whenever they wish, at all times? (E.g. Everyone in the class is writing completely different things, depending entirely on their own desires.)'

While this position most accurately aligns to the vision of authentic writing approaches, it doesn't quite cover what actually needs to be taking place in the classroom and beyond. It would be erroneous to think the role of the most experienced writer in the classroom is supplanted by this pedagogical stance. It is critically important for teacher- writers to play an active role in the writing lives of students.

It imperative for teachers to be actively teaching strategy lessons (small group and whole class) where students practice an aspect of writing. The teaching approach is based soundly on assessment of writing samples, writing behaviours and knowledge of the developing writer gleaned from writing conferences.

Writing demonstrations across different genres must be shared regularly. When teachers use their own writing and model how they choose a particular genre when writing about specific topics, young writers are better informed about choice and what influences it.

What do you want to write about?
How do authors normally write about this?
What research do you need to do before you write?
Are you thinking about using more than one text type in your writing piece? (Hybrid texts)

Exposing the developing writer to potential mentors is central to the teaching role with which we are entrusted. So, a deep and abiding knowledge of literature is essential to performing this role most effectively.

Tuning in lessons should be informed by student writing samples. The writing students pursue should be nourished continually through lessons that highlight matters of task management, convention (grammar, punctuation, spelling)
craft and process (revision, editing, publishing). While student writers are making decision we want these decisions to be informed decisions.

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I was recently approached to comment as a critical friend about how a school was using the writer's notebook to develop the writing of students. They had experienced some confusion around how this valuable resource should be viewed.

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A Writing Workshop Learning Walk

As much as I try to flatten the walls of my classroom using technology, the truth is there are still walls. It is me and 25 third graders, and most recently, a fabulous student teacher. Still, the walls are there and often I don't get to see other teachers in action.

Last month, I had the opportunity to remedy that problem for a day. I was a participant in a Learning Walk, focused on Writing Workshop. A Learning Walk offers participants the chance to observe other teachers and students around a focus question. Participants use nonjudgemental language to share what they noticed and wondered. After the classroom visitations, the participants come back together to note patterns of what they observed and discuss the findings. Then, participants decide on next steps to put their learning into practice.

For this Learning Walk, our question was: "What evidence do we see that students are engaged in their writing and write with stamina?" The participants included our literacy coach, who facilitated the day, two first grade teachers, an ENL teacher who pushes into first grade, a second grade teacher, and me (third grade teacher). We spent about 11 minutes in each classroom and then spent 5 minutes debriefing in the hallway, sharing our noticings and wonderings, before traveling onto the next classroom.

I loved visiting each classroom and having the chance to see the way the other teachers approached their minilessons, the tools they used, the charts, the small group work, and the sharing. In one first grade classroom, the students were able to say what they worked on as a writer that day, which really impressed our group. The teachers visited my room as part of the rotations and I taught a lesson on generating ideas for our nonfiction writing unit. I carried my Interactive Demonstration Notebook, which I've been trying to utilize more often, especially after reading Melanie's post about her chart notebook. This started a conversation about DIY Literacy and all the resources shared by Kate Roberts and Maggie Beattie Roberts in their book.

We had a follow-up professional day to share more resources and ideas inspired by our Learning Walk. Each teacher received a copy of DIY Literacy and we spent some time watching the videos and creating our own Interactive Demonstration Notebooks. We discussed student choice and creating learner centered classrooms. Our literacy coach recommended a TED talk by Alan November, entitled "Who Owns the Learning?" It led to conversations about how we can provide opportunities for students to take more ownership over their learning and their writing. In the TED talk, November quotes a students who was writing fan fiction with a huge following, but not competing assignments for her teacher. The student said, "Do I write for my teachers or publish for the world?" The student chose to publish for the world. This led to a discussion about the writing our students do and who their audiences may be. Are we teaching students to write for authentic reasons? The conversation continues!

When teachers get together, the sharing naturally happens. During this follow-up day, I had the opportunity to discuss my passion for blogging and two of my colleagues started their own blogs! They both wrote about our professional day of learning. Katie Fernandez, our literacy coach who organized the day and facilitated it, wrote about our experience here. Angela Gross, currently a first grade teacher, described the experience on her new blog, too!

I am grateful for the opportunity to participate in a Learning Walk that focused on writing workshop. I loved visiting my colleagues' classrooms and observing different grade levels. It is important to know where students are coming from as writers. I previously taught kindergarten but seeing first and second grade writers helped me see the bridge from emergent writers to the third graders I work with now. I appreciate our literacy coach organizing this day for us and the supportive community that we had among the participants. I am also grateful that my school and district value collaboration and teachers learning from each other. Teaching can be lonely and can feel isolating unless you find ways to connect with other educators. While there are many online ways to do this, there is something to be said, too, for face to face collaboration and sitting in another teacher's room, witnessing the magic teachers cast, first-hand.

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As much as I try to flatten the walls of my classroom using technology, the truth is there are still walls. It is me and 25 third graders, and most recently, a fabulous student teacher. Still, the walls are there and often I don't get to see other teachers in action.

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the importance of being a mentor writer...

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the importance of being a mentor writer...

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Just Like You, I'm A Writer

Do your students know you as someone who writes? Do they see you write? If you someone who writes, your students deserve to see your writing in action! It's something you need to share. Trust me, writing for and with your students makes a huge difference to the writing your students turn out. When a teacher come to be viewed as a writer, the dynamic in the classroom changes. The teacher too faces the challenges that arise in writing. You become a credible mentor. You understand that writing is essentially a problem solving process. Your actions around writing validate it as something pursuing. You can share writing craft secrets with these curious learners. You have made a definitive statement.
Just like you, I am writer.
If your students keep a writer's notebook, then you should have one too, Share with your students some of your entries This will enable you to confidently discuss your writing process. They will have questions for you about where and when the writing idea was sparked.

Being a mentor to your students begins right here. Ralph Fletcher in his latest book, 'Pyrotechnics on the Page- Playful Craft That Sparks Writing' writes, 'Keeping a writer's notebook is like dragging wide net through the world.' Your notebook entries show your students one writer's 'catch.' - the myriad observations, memories and thoughts a life presents.
This sharing allows you to show how your notebook shapes ideas that might eventually be written about in greater detail. It also allows you to show them how you keep a writer's notebook with you at all times.-how it becomes an extension of you, the writing and reading teacher. Such an approach will enable you to teach your students the very important message that writing ideas don't just visit you inside a classroom. They arrive from everywhere. You just have to be ready to catch them.
Writing alongside your students makes you a partner in learning. Your writing program has thus gained the potential to reach a higher level of excellence. Writing with your students can mean the difference between being an okay writing teacher and an exemplary writing teacher. It's far more powerful to find yourself living inside the writing community you are trying to create.
If you want your students to write in a particular way, show them examples that you've written. Talk about your pre-writing behaviours. Talk about where you struggled while writing; where you felt your writing really worked well, and where you captured your ideas most effectively. This is curriculum. This is a resource.This is valuable teaching! There is so much here for the developing writer to take away.

If you ask students to share their notebook entries, be prepared to share yours. The entries you share don't have to be written during that day's writing lesson. If your students know you value your own writing, then you can reasonably expect them to value theirs. -and isn't that one of our teaching goals?

'A highly visible reading and writing life is an essential part of being an effective teacher.'

Igniting Writing- When A Teacher Writes, Alan j Wright

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Do your students know you as someone who writes? Do they see you write? If you someone who writes, your students deserve to see your writing in action! It's something you need to share. Trust me, writing for and with your students makes a huge difference to the writing your students turn out.

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A teacher laments how students struggle to think of topics for their writing. 'They never seem to come up with much, they can't think for themselves, so that's why I have to give them sentence starters.' The words jar in my ears.
I have had this kind of exchange numerous times over the years...

Teachers coming from this paradigm frequently ask. 'Could you demonstrate how writers get their ideas?' I find myself wondering if the teacher has ever considered this same question?
I get the distinct feeling I am expected to fix these young writers in some way. I feel strongly that the answers lie elsewhere. Had any inquiry taken place? Had those young writers been asked to explore this same idea? Had they been asked- what makes a good idea for writing? Where do writers find ideas? How do they prevent ideas from drifting away?
Demonstrating and modelling how we connect to the world around us is a vital lesson for our students. We need to demonstrate how we see the potential in things for writing each and every day. We need to demonstrate how we harvest ideas and how we excavate memories. Listing, brainstorming, discussing, questioning, wondering, sketching, mapping, musing, and taking note all form part of that critical pre-writing part of the process we need to share. This is where thinking gets its spark. Ownership of ideas begins to flourish. We stop telling kids and begins to nourish their thinking around potential writing ideas. Energy returns to the writing classroom.
If we teach with expectation that lacks support for thinking and linking, ideas will find it difficult to flourish. Instead of a brainstorm, we'll be lucky to get 'isolated drizzle!' If writing is a magic act we need to take our students back stage and show the tricks that are hidden up the magician's sleeve.
Nothing influences a child's attitude to writing more than the choice of topic. If the child has chosen it and if the teacher shows genuine interest in it, then there's often no limit to the effort the child will make. Young writers who are given this power become confident in choosing topics for themselves.
I compare this with the approach of my own fifth grade teacher who owned the topics we wrote about. She merely threw them at us each Thursday afternoon. There was little confidence building in that approach. It did, no doubt influence the attitude of many of those students in the opposite direction to writing. When the teacher owns the topic then rehearsal and essential thinking prior to writing cannot take place. Cognition will not take place where the young writer perceives the notion of topics resides solely with the teacher.

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A teacher laments how students struggle to think of topics for their writing. 'They never seem to come up with much, they can't think for themselves, so that's why I have to give them sentence starters.' The words jar in my ears. I have had this kind of exchange numerous times over the years...

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video prompts for writing and creative thinking

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video prompts for writing and creative thinking

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Video prompts are sketch-note animation videos that inspire students to think creatively. These include maker challenges, STEM prompts, and creative writing ideas.

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form 2 writing teachers

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Plan Boxes as Management Tools

Last week, I received a request from Sarah Columbus to help her fifth-grade students get started with plan boxes at the end of the mini-lesson. Sarah had heard me tout the benefits of plan boxes during a PD session I led last month. I questioned the timing since we're approaching winter recess and it often takes two weeks for students to get good at crafting plan boxes. (By the time two weeks would roll around, the kids would be ready for winter recess.) However, Sarah wasn't concerned about the timing since she's the kind of teacher who will reteach something if she knows it will maximize instructional time.

I didn't have much time to plan before teaching Sarah's fifth graders about plan boxes. I needed to connect the plan boxes to something students would understand. I recalled a photo of a to-do list I created for myself in early November. I projected it onto the interactive whiteboard to show students that people make plans to help use their time efficiently.

Next, I explained plan boxes. I told students these tools could be used to help self-manage their independent writing time. I explained how they could take the information provided in (the link of) each day's minilesson, along with all of the strategies they've learned about writing well, and they could create a plan each day to help them determine the order in which they would complete their work. Next, I provided students with a sample plan they might create. Finally, I turned it over to students so they could have-a-go creating their first plan box.

Sarah and I reviewed every student's plan box before they went off to their focus spots. (We did this to ensure each student's plan was specific and robust enough to occupy their entire independent writing time.) As expected on the first day of something new, many students' plans were sparse. Other students created plans so similar to the sample I created on the easel that Sarah and I sent them back (to revise their plan) so it was specific to what they were working on as writers.

Plan boxes are game changes since they allow students to have some ownership over their work time. They're also excellent for managing the class since kids who make plans regularly know exactly what they need to accomplish. In addition, if you notice a student off-task during independent writing time, you can ask the child: "What's your plan? Are you working on it?" or "How's it going with your plan?" Usually, that's enough to get an off-task student back to work.

Interested in implementing plan boxes in your classroom so you can maximize the amount of time you have to confer and meet with small groups? Here's a chart you can use with your students to help them get started with plan boxes:

Would you like more assistance getting started with plan boxes? Below are two excerpts from (Used with permission from Stenhouse Publishers.), which will provide you an overview of plan boxes, a challenge, reflective practice questions, and student samples of plan boxes:

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Do you struggle with students working -- rather than socializing -- during independent writing time? If so, here's a solution to keep your kids engaged as writers so you can maximize the number of students you meet with during independent writing time.

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Powerful teaching - read the text type before writing

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Powerful teaching - read the text type before writing

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MINDFULLY USING LITERATURE TO TEACH WRITING

The very best way to learn to write in any particular form, is to read the kind of writing you are hoping to write. If my wish is to write poetry, I must read poetry. If my wish is to write memoir I must spend time reading memoir in order to gain insight about this type of writing.

If we wish to teach our students about a particular form of writing we must first become readers of that kind of writing ourselves. We read like writers. We learn to notice the craft moves writers employ. This is where curriculum begins.

We must seek out all those powerful examples representative of what our students are likely to write. The important work we do in our writing workshop lessons is thus filled with these various kinds of writing. The inexperienced writers needs to view such writing and read such writing in order to better understand how it works.

Everything we (and our student writers) need to know about writing resides in these gathered texts. The answers we are seeking reside here in the written works of other writers. It is also to be found in our own writing. We must use these rich text examples to teach the purpose of writing. The authors we know and trust assist us to teach more effectively. We are highlighting the potential of these selected texts to increase understanding about the way writing actually works. We are shining a light on the writing craft. The curriculum arises from looking closely at writing that has been done well. Writing we admire for its literary qualities. Authentic examples in authentic contexts.

Look at this fine example of an author building the tension before finishing with a killer last line. It comes from a short story called 'The Lock Out' from esteemed Australian author, the late Colin Thiele's book, 'The Rim of the Morning.' -A long held, personal favourite of mine.

Thiele writes about the predicament Jim Bear, the main character finds himself in when he puts his Grandmother's cat outside one winter evening.:

'As he turned to slip back inside again, the breeze stirred; the hibiscus swayed by the steps and the shadows moved in the streetlights. Then gently, very gently the front door swung shut and the latch sprang into the lock with a soft click. Horrified Jim ran to the door, pushing and heaving. But he was too late. He was locked out. Locked out of his own house, at midnight, and without any clothes on.'

This piece of text has much to recommend it as an exemplar. The author pays close attention to small details. This assists the reader to build a clear picture of the scene. The writer uses words in the same way an artist uses colour to create an image. The author employs sentences of varying length to add interest. Note also the clever use of commas in the final sentence to separate the elemental parts of the sentence. Imagine the rich conversations that might flow from closely examining such writing with your students. Imagine the potential of such writing to influence how they might begin to write moving forward.

The conversations we have with developing writers in such situations are vitally important. When we talk consistently and mindfully about writing; when we consistently use the language associated with writing, students are more likely to adopt and understand writing with a deeper appreciation.

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MINDFULLY USING LITERATURE TO TEACH WRITING The very best way to learn to write in any particular form, is to read the kind of writing you are hoping to write. If my wish is to write poetry, I must read poetry.

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When teachers look closely at the writing students produce; when they understand how writers operate, the forward planning they undertake endeavours to focus on the point of need for each writer.

Take for instance, the craft strategy, 'show, don't tell,' -should it only be introduced or taught at a particular grade level? Some schools have determined it should not be taught before Grade 3.

· Have I used the formative and assessments identify the current needs of my writers?
Can I describe my vision, focus, objectives, and student needs?
Is my plan for teaching aligned with standards, objectives, and guidelines?
Is there a balance of teaching strategies, learning strategies, and authentic tasks that engage and meet the needs of diverse learners?
Have I developed plans, methods, and processes?
Have I sequenced the learning clearly?
Have I Identified resources I need to support my teaching?

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Planning For Writing, Let's Make It Count

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When teachers look closely at the writing students produce; when they understand how writers operate, the forward planning they undertake endeavours to focus on the point of need for each writer. Take for instance, the craft strategy, 'show, don't tell,' -should it only be introduced or taught at a particular grade level?

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Many visual and video prompts with writing invitations for students to write

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Welcome to The Literacy Shed - the home of visual literacy. Here at Literacy Shed we aim to provide teachers with high quality films and animations that can be used in the primary classroom to enhance the teaching of reading and writing. All of the films on the site we think are suitable for primary aged children although some films may not be suitable for younger children. We urge that teachers watch any films before showing them to children.

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A website for teachers filled with ideas for literacy teaching using visual resources such as film, animation, photographs and picture books.

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You've sharpened pencils, honed your story and are ready to begin sketching the pages of your dummy. How do you make your picture book stand out from others on the shelf? What ingredients can you add to the mix to lift your illustrations from the mundane to the sublime? In one word - Drama!

Picture books communicate with both words and with pictures, one of the key ways to enhance illustration for children is an understanding of how to dramatise your artwork. This list is by no means comprehensive, but here are ten things to ponder.

The way you depict body proportions and physical features can be developed to compliment the tone of the text, the setting and the mood of the story, resulting in a book that works visually on several levels. Sometimes a strong character alone can establish the narrative and tie the pages together. Expression and body language can emphasise emotional states and the connection between characters on a page. Think of details of dress and appearance as the
credentials of the character, their properties or history. Do they interact with the surroundings? Characters may be the core of the story with the background sketched in, or they can appear as players in a landscape, intimately part of the world around them. Sub-characters can be great for secondary plots, little extra visual stories running alongside the main narrative.

Viewpoint, composition and the arrangement of space can powerfully enhance the message of an image. Be a film director, think of the scene as a stage or through a camera lens, consider how it would look as a panorama / from a high angle / low angle / close up / pan back. Each viewpoint creates a different dynamism, carries a different message. Consider compositional rhythms and focal points. What geometric shapes naturally appear in the image? Can these shapes be emphasised to create compositional structure for greater effect? Design the pictures so that you control how the viewer's eye wanders across the image. Where should the eye rest? think of the page corners - they are the gateways to the next page.

Tension is created from what you show, but also sometimes what you
Sometimes you don't need to show everything. Areas left blank on the page may resonate with areas of detail or give a sense of lightness to the page (quite apart from providing space for text!). In picture books, as in comics, you can have very minimal settings, provided the character and key story elements are clear. don't show (what's left to the imagination).

As storytellers know, the journey is often more compelling than the resolution. Expectation is more powerful than delivery, the pursuit of something more satisfying than the final reward.

Think how you might be able to use details and elements in a picture to enrich that journey and push forward the narrative. Consider the time of day, the weather and other supplemental details. Think of how visual clues can add depth to the narrative - symbolism, surrealism, sub-plot details that may add an extra element to the story, or offer small visual comments that run parallel with it. Use these details to push the narrative forward to the next page or conversely introduce a contrast that forces a pause. When planning a series of spreads create waves and crescendos through the book - fast paced images, then sudden stops at showpiece spreads. Use small panels for detailed text and conversation, larger panels for tension build-up, full page bleed for shock and resolution.

Movement is one of the best ways to establish narrative flow. Body language can show action, even if the character is not actually moving! Even small things like a hand gesture adds dynamism. If you've a completely static image then consider introducing a supplementary detail that might animate the scene - a bird in the sky, a cat walking across the background, a breeze that bends grass, lifts a few strands of hair or a curtain, even slight movement instils a sense of time and action.

Use light and shadow or pale vs strong colours to create mood, depth and dynamism. Sketch your image in black and white, establish tonal contrast. Look at the image through half-closed eyes, does it still resonate? Think of the picture as a theatre stage with spotlights and shadows. Characters can be highlighted by contrasting against darker shadows, which in turn can hide suggested detail and mysteries. Consider background, mid-ground and foreground, and how contrasting tones can add depth to the image. Mood is created by the weight of the air in your image. Shadows work on the imagination of the viewer, and can also create patterns, texture, and provide form for potent compositions.

Astute use of colour is a great way to create resonance in illustration. Think of complementary colours - search for combinations of colours that correlate together and anchor your image on those colours.

Try using a limited palette - choosing a narrow range of colours can produce dynamic and harmonious illustrations. If you have access to Photoshop or similar graphic software, try loading an illustration file and playing with the Hue/Saturation tool and the channels mixer to explore different colour scheme possibilities. Here's a useful colour chart that might be helpful in considering limited colour schemes, and also a very good article on choosing harmonious colour.

Texture can create depth and anchor characters and backgrounds to a believable world, as well as establishing mood and setting. Texture can be minimal, geometric, a few simple pen or brush strokes, or a heavily decorated, detailed image, or a rough tactile surface with lots of grainy 'noise'. An image filled with a "wallpaper" of fine details and repeated patterns can add story elements unspoken in the text, populate a scene, make the world more of a reality and attractive to the eye. Pared down simplicity with broad expanses of empty space can establish a world with minimal expression, the reader fills in the blanks. Contrasting areas of localised texture with open or flat space can be dynamic.

Twist elements of the image to enhance the flow and movement or emphasise a point. Distorted architecture and landscapes can suggest confusion or reinforce a compositional pattern. Distortion of figures can accentuate emotion and character. Also think of distorted colour. Skies do not necessarily have to be blue!

Käthi Bhend illustration above, combine frames with vignettes on the same spread, try mixing coloured images with black and white. Use the gutter as a compositional dividing line. Consider how the placing of type, it's size and font affect the page design. Can type be used to enhance the dynamism of the image?
Experiment with graphic devices like having elements that break out of the frame as in the

Pathos, humour, fear, joy, excitement - this is what makes a powerful image. So identify what kind of sentiment you want to convey in the image and use all the elements - pose, setting, layout, details, mood and colour to work together towards this. Don't be afraid of melodrama and pathos. Building emotion into pictures is like a cook seasoning a dish, think of the aroma of the story, how do details in the image harmonise to convey the flavour? How does the colour, size and texture affect the way we perceive the world of the picture. If your illustration was food, how would it taste?

When you contemplate a story to illustrate for the first time, jot down the strongest first impressions on paper, immediately. The most dramatic place is your imagination, first impressions can be powerful. If you have an idea, sketch it quickly with a tiny thumbnail, capture the initial emotion, build details within the picture to enhance that first impression.

Keeping with the food analogy, it's very easy to "over-egg" an illustration, throw in too many ingredients, to go too far. But used adroitly, adding some of these elements can enhance the storytelling experience, and reach silent communion with the reader through the dramatic power of the image!

He's illustrated over 40 books for children, many of them published in Japan where he lived for many years. His latest title John Shelley is the Illustration Feature Editor of Words & Pictures and current Central East Network coordinator. The Stone Giant is out in Japan now, and will be released in English by Charlesbridge in the US in Spring 2014. www.jshelley.com

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Picture Book Basics - Pace, Drama, Action!

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You've sharpened pencils, honed your story and are ready to begin sketching the pages of your dummy. How do you make your picture book stand out from others on the shelf? What ingredients can you add to the mix to lift your illustrations from the mundane to the sublime?

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Once upon a picture - great website with lots of visual resources - also great for inferring!

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Once Upon a Picture - Images to Inspire - Teaching Resources

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Once Upon a Picture - Images to Inspire - Teaching Resources

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Using Google Education in Writer's Worksh

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Using Google Education in Writer's Worksh

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some great ideas in this podcast

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Edu On Air: Improving Writing and Research with G Suite

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Google Suite for Education offers a variety of features to support writing skills. In this session we will explore using G Suite, Add Ons and Google Chrome extensions that allow teachers to not only give critical and timely feedback, but also leverage additional features and tools to enhance peer editing and collaboration, improve research skills and cite sources.

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do we foster this

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Over the last three months the Craft of Writing team, (Debra Myhill and I, Becky Swain, Becky Coles and Sara Venner) have been recruiting schools to this new project. Funded by EEF and the RSA, it's a partnership study between the OU, the University of Exeter and Arvon and a rare opportunity for deep, sustained CPD in the teaching of writing. The project, which involves teacher residentials at Lumb Bank (Ted Hughes' old home) and CPD days, focuses both on writing standards and children's motivation and engagement as creative and effective writers.

Whilst the recruitment process has been hard work and we're not there yet, it's this rich combination of outcomes and engagement that seems to have been the key to the 91 primary schools who've signed up so far (we need 100 - all are welcome!) I've spent many early mornings listening to head teachers' concerns about their young people's disaffected attitudes towards writing. The way in which they 'assiduously go through the motions but don't really engage' as one head described it, or in the words of another 'follow the steps to success but don't really succeed because the heart's not in it - so they'll never achieve greater depth'. This week one senior leader characterised several young writers in his upper Key Stage Two as the 'I don't care - it's nothing to do with me brigade'. This disinterest chimes with some recent primary phase research by Dobson and Stephenson (published in the UKLA Journal Literacy) and not only does it represent a clear cause for concern, it calls for action.

Young people can feel distanced from the act of writing, particularly if teachers retain too strong a grasp on the curriculum reins and construct writing as a technical exercise in compliance at the expense of developing children's desire and agency as authors. I've drawn parallels before with the reading for pleasure agenda, and they are worth revisiting here since those who read for pleasure choose to do so; it's a volitional act, one which is undertaken in anticipation of some satisfaction gained through the experience and/or in interaction. Likewise in writing, whilst writing 'for pleasure' may not be an accurate description for many, children and adults can find the experience of expressing one's views, exploring one's identity, and deploying one's craft knowledge and skills to achieve authorial intentions very satisfying. Much depends on issues of ownership and control. Are children positioned as authors - writers with rights? Or are they positioned as pupils, obliged to play the 'school game called writing' in the current ideological context?

It seems a shift in the locus of control is urgently needed in order to foster an enhanced sense of autonomy and authorship in the young. Space, time and more choice need to be made available to help children exercise their right to write about what is meaningful to them, at least some of the time. If they are personally committed to a self-chosen subject, this will help them persist and tolerate the emotional and cognitive demands involved. In exercising their authorial agency as writers, they need to be enabled to decide:

what they want to write about (content),

what their writing is seeking to achieve (purpose)

who will read their writing (audience)

what form might be appropriate (form)

As teachers we cannot offer free choice all the time, but it is possible to negotiate options, enable the children themselves to generate possibilities and make more of their own authorial decisions as increasingly independent young writers. Through enhancing the real world relevance of writing, offering more space to Just Write and more choice, we can increase children's intrinsic motivation to write and their agency as text creators (whether working alone or in collaboration). This will surely help them recognise that writing is something to do with them. Their identities as writers, their rights as writers and their authorial intentions should count.

Teresa Cremin
Professor of Literacy in Education
The Open University

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Do children have agency as authors? - Teachers as Writers

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By Teresa Cremin, Professor of Literacy in Education, The Open University Over the last three months the Craft of Writing team, (Debra Myhill and I, Becky Swain, Becky Coles and Sara Venner) have been recruiting schools to this new project. Funded by EEF and the RSA, it's a partnership study between the OU, the University of Exeter ...

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Tips to build Stamina

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A priority for any writing program should be to progressively build the stamina of young writers, enabling them to sustain their writing efforts for extended periods. The aim is for the writer to reach a stage where the ideas flow freely and the blank page surrenders easily to a flow of words.

The more students write, the more likely they are to improve as writers. The answer lies in the act of writing. Daily writing for sustained periods of time will contribute to this essential development. It will help the young writer to develop the ability to remain focused on the task, and also build the kind of stamina necessary to keep returning to the task each day. -And return with the determination to produce powerful words for others to read.

Frequently young writers get hung up on perfectionism. They censor and edit in their heads. Consequently, the words have trouble making it onto the page. They allow the flow of their writing to be halted for the sake of a single word. A solitary word that may be unfamiliar to the writer, hijacks the natural flow of the writing. Hundreds of words may in fact, be held up for the sake of a single word. It is important to discuss this kind of scenario with young writers. They need options to overcome this writing issue.

The inexperienced writer can be assisted to deal with this problem if we ask:

'What can you do to allow all those exciting words in your head to reach the page instead of being held up by a single word?'

'What might you do if this situation arises in your writing?'

'What strategies might you use to deal with that unfamiliar word so that you can move on with your writing?' (circling, underlining, leaving a space)

The student writer must be helped to understand that's okay to return to a word that is concerning them at a later stage in the process. They should give it their best and then move forward with the task of trapping their words on the page.

When young writers are choosing their own topics and genres, they tend to write more. The ownership of the task increases engagement and commitment to the task. They have been released from dependency on the teacher for ideas/topics. They are more able to envision possibilities. Making decisions independently about the writing means less time is lost. More time opens up for the writer to apply to the important task at hand.

Here are some other ideas for pumping up the volume of writing in your classroom:

You could ask students to keep a track on their daily word count. Some teachers also use speed writing as a way of encouraging young writers to become more aware of their individual writing volume. 'How much can you write in 5 minutes about your chosen topic? At the end of five minutes conduct a word count. Provide speed writing opportunities across the week to allow students to track the writing volume of their work.

We must teach young writers -every stop is a place to start! They need to see how writers finish one piece of writing and then move onto a new one without too much hesitation. After they have written, reread, and revised- it may be time to move to the next piece of writing. It's when a writer has built up a body of work, they are able to select a piece identified as worthy of publication. It's usually a piece they can imagine working on for an extended period.

I sometimes play music during the independent writing phase of the lesson and encourage students to continue writing while the music is playing. I choose music that is instrumental and unobtrusive, so as not to distract the writer. Over time I introduce musical offerings of increasing length. This serves to build stamina. Students are often amazed at how much they have written under the influence of the music. If I don't play it, they often request it. As one perceptive young writer proudly announced after one such sustained period of writing, 'The more I wrote, the more I remembered."

I would never discourage drawing and illustrating. However, it is important to include it at the most appropriate time. Rather than right in the midst of a writer's notebook entry, or during the revision stage in their writing. Such tasks fit more comfortably in the publishing phase. At this point they can try out as many possibilities as they need with regard to medium, size, location.
Sketching though, fits quite comfortably in the pre-writing stage as a means of stimulating thinking and recalling elements to include in the writing to follow. As a rule, the writer should be encouraged to delay the detailed work of illustrating until closer to publishing.

Reminding students periodically how much writing time is left each day reinforces the notion that writing time is finite. Such reminders assist the writer to remain focused. It is not unreasonable to set timelines for producing writing, or set publishing dates. The young writer begins to develop an awareness of the need to keep their writing moving forward. It is prudent to nudge the learner in the right direction.

Set up check in groups where writers come together periodically to discuss the progress of their writing. This assists each writer to maintain a greater focus on the development of their work. Such monitoring, combined with the power of the group, helps each writer to push forward.

Stamina for reading is something teachers frequently discuss with students. It is equally important to link stamina to the writing they do. It is an easy connection for students to make. Stamina for writing is something that must be an essential component of the writing programs taking place in our schools.

Effective pencil/pen grip is a factor in writing fluency. So to is handwriting. Efficient letter formation, along with knowing and using correct entry and exit points for letters of the alphabet, present as major factors in the flow of words across a page. If a student has issues with the mechanics of handwriting, it will inhibit the flow of writing, without doubt.

Support young writers to use the anchor charts around the room as planning tools.

n Promote the idea- if it's on the wall, it's important

n Encourage students to make the classroom walls part of their minds

n Use anchor charts as teaching references. Revisit them frequently. Don't allow them to become merely wallpaper!

The aim should be for the writer to make informed decisions about what needs to be done, so the work moves along without the teacher having to step in and direct the flow of writing traffic.

Take the time to remind students about the range of strategies they might be able to use to maintain the output of words. Volume and stamina provide a legitimate focus for discussion at such critical times in the workshop. Conferences and Share time provide the 'showroom' where such important messages may be shared in a focused way.

Pump Up The Volume, Elizabeth Moore, Two Writing Teachers

/ Writing Connections in the K-2 Classroom. Leah Mermelstein

Writing, Teachers & Children at Work, Donald Graves

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Assisting Young Writers to Increase the VOLUME of their Writing

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A priority for any writing program should be to progressively build the stamina of young writers, enabling them to sustain their writing efforts for extended periods. The aim is for the writer to reach a stage where the ideas flow freely and the blank page surrenders easily to a flow of words.

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Definitions

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The 6+1 Trait® Writing Model of Instruction & Assessment comprises 6+1 key qualities that define quality writing. These are:

Ideas

The Ideas are the main message, the content of the piece, the main theme, together with all the supporting details that enrich and develop that theme. The Ideas are strong when the message is clear, not garbled. The writer chooses details that are interesting, important, and informative-often the kinds of details the reader would not normally anticipate or predict. Successful writers do not "tell" readers things they already know; e.g., "It was a sunny day, and the sky was blue, the clouds were fluffy white ..." Successful writers "show" readers that which is normally overlooked; writers seek out the extraordinary, the unusual, the unique, the bits and pieces of life that might otherwise be overlooked.

Organization

Organization is the internal structure of a piece of writing, the thread of central meaning, the pattern and sequence, so long as it fits the central idea. Organizational structure can be based on comparison-contrast, deductive logic, point-by-point analysis, development of a central theme, chronological history of an event, or any of a dozen other identifiable patterns. When Organization is strong, the piece begins meaningfully and creates in the writer a sense of anticipation that is, ultimately, systematically fulfilled. Events proceed logically; information is given to the reader in the right doses at the right times so that the reader never loses interest. Connections are strong, which is another way of saying that bridges from one idea to the next hold up. The piece closes with a sense of resolution, tying up loose ends, bringing things to a satisfying closure, answering important questions while still leaving the reader something to think about.

Voice

Voice is the writer coming through the words, the sense that a real person is speaking to us and cares about the message. It is the heart and soul of the writing, the magic, the wit, the feeling, the life and breath. When the writer is engaged personally with the topic, he/she imparts a personal tone and flavor to the piece that is unmistakably his/hers alone. And it is that individual something-different from the mark of all other writers-that we call Voice.

Word Choice

Word Choice is the use of rich, colorful, precise language that communicates not just in a functional way, but in a way that moves and enlightens the reader. In descriptive writing, strong Word Choice resulting in imagery, especially sensory, show-me writing, clarifies and expands Ideas. In persuasive writing, purposeful Word Choice moves the reader to a new vision of ideas. In all modes of writing figurative language such as metaphors, similes and analogies articulate, enhance, and enrich the content. Strong Word Choice is characterized not so much by an exceptional vocabulary chosen to impress the reader, but more by the skill to use everyday words well.

Sentence Fluency

Sentence Fluency is the rhythm and flow of the language, the sound of word patterns, the way in which the writing plays to the ear, not just to the eye. How does it sound when read aloud? That's the test. Fluent writing has cadence, power, rhythm, and movement. It is free of awkward word patterns that slow the reader's progress. Sentences vary in length, beginnings, structure, and style, and are so well crafted that the reader moves through the piece with ease.

Conventions

The Conventions trait is the mechanical correctness of the piece and includes five elements: spelling, punctuation, capitalization, grammar/usage, and paragraphing. Writing that is strong in Conventions has been proofread and edited with care. Since this trait has so many pieces to it, it's almost an analytical trait within an analytic system. As you assess a piece for convention, ask yourself: "How much work would a copy editor need to do to prepare the piece for publication?" This will keep all of the elements in conventions equally in play. Conventions is the only trait where we make specific grade level accommodations, and expectations should be based on grade level to include only those skills that have been taught. (Handwriting and neatness are not part of this trait. They belong with Presentation.)

Presentation

Presentation combines both visual and textual elements. It is the way we exhibit or present our message on paper. Even if our ideas, words, and sentences are vivid, precise, and well constructed, the writing will not be inviting to read unless it follows the guidelines of Presentation. These include: Balance of white space with visuals and text, graphics, neatness, handwriting, font selection, borders, and overall appearance. Think about examples of text and visual presentation in your environment. Which signs and billboards attract your attention? Why do you reach for one CD over another? All great writers are aware of the necessity of Presentation, particularly technical writers who must include graphs, maps, and visual instructions along with their text. Presentation is key to a polished piece ready for publication.

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The 6+1 Trait® Writing Model of Instruction & Assessment comprises 6+1 key qualities that define quality writing. These are: The Ideas are the main message, the content of the piece, the main theme, together with all the supporting details that enrich and develop that theme.

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focus on these to raise quality of writing

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We want our student's writing to be more than I did this...then I did this...then I did that. We want jump-off-the-page lines. We want stories that are more than stories. We want to see and feel their inner selves coursing their work. Nationally known as both a trade writer and a writing teacher, Ralph Fletcher experiences both sides of the writer/teacher dynamic. In What a Writer Needs, Ralph lists 11 craft essentials that we can teach to help kids become writers we want to read.

Writing becomes beautiful when it becomes specific. If we teach writers to include evocative details, we give them a skeleton key into their readers' minds. They learn to engage a reader's senses and thrust them into a narrative or even an argument.

Characters link the reader to the writing. Teaching a writer to convey a character's inner self, not just their actions, helps them draw in a reader like nothing else.

Litanies of facts and story beats are boring. Voice carries in words the sense that someone has actually written them. When writers find their voice, we give them a way to juice up their writing.

You get one chance to make a first impression. As teachers we show students how to shape a lead, knowing it's their first opportunity to hook the reader.

If an ending fails, the entire work fails. So we can teach kids to write different kinds of endings that satisfy a reader by fulfilling the writing that's led to it.

Tension staples the reader's eyes to the page. Teaching writers to introduce irresistibly interesting conflicts keeps an audience zooming through the text.

Places are like characters of their own. By teaching writers to create a believable world, even in nonfiction, we give them another valuable way to immerse and entrance the reader.

8. A Playfulness with Time

Our youngest writers usually can't distinguish the flow of real time from the abstracted, compressed flow in a piece of writing. But once they reach the intermediate grades, we show them how narrative-time works, and they have another tool in their writing tool crib.

9. Unforgettable Language

Written language can take our breath away and allows us to see the tired old world with new eyes. If we help children write what they see rather than what they think they are supposed to see, their work will crackle with inventive, arresting sentences.

Readers expect more from nonfiction than juicy trivia or factual accuracy. We can teach our students to write nonfiction with an interpretive insight that gives their lines a reason to exist.

Kids famously resist our encouragement to revise. But we don't give up. Once they understand that the real work of writing is in revision, their writing makes great leaps.

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11 Craft Essentials Every Student Writer Needs to Learn

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We want our student's writing to be more than I did this...then I did this...then I did that. We want jump-off-the-page lines. We want stories that are more than stories. We want to see and feel their inner selves coursing their work.

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Narrative tips for teaching young writers

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Narrative tips for teaching young writers

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Periodically I find myself engaged in conversations with teachers about student narrative writing. They are often working with writers in junior classes. The conversation reveals how committed they are to teaching narrative genre to their entire class, simultaneously. They further inform me that their young writers just don't get it (narrative writing) and they are pulling their hair out attempting to have the writers put all the pieces 'together.'
I am extremely keen at this point to know more regarding the approach they have employed. I harbour strong suspicions about the methodology...

Tell me how you are approaching the teaching? I ask. Invariably, a conscious planning decision has been made to carve up the narrative into discreet parts and teachers have then embarked on a quest to teach these elements separately. They then set the young writer the challenge of assembling the narrative. They are asked to pull all the pieces into a coherent piece. The teaching of narratives has been siloed. The students may be challenged to work on parts of the narrative in isolation- effective leads, character development, settings, problem, resolution, ending.
This is where knots and tangles emerge. This is frustration central for the writer and it is absolutely avoidable. In the end, the inexperienced writer is overwhelmed with accommodating all these story elements. They must feel they are juggling elephants!
Think for a moment about when you were learning to drive a car. The driving instructor never approached the learning task from the perspective of discrete parts. At no point did you hear the words, 'First we'll learn about the steering wheel and in the next lesson we'll focus on the brakes and then the accelerator.'
You were asked to deal with the car in its entirety. From the way you handled this challenge, the instructor made an assessment as to where they needed to focus their teaching.
I remain indebted to my wife, Vicki for this illustrative analogy.
Researcher, John Hattie reminds educators that they often waste a lot of valuable time, focusing on things kids already know. So armed with this knowledge, our starting point should always be to find out exactly what our young writers already know. Let that knowledge inform our instruction. Let's stop making assumptions about our student writers without seeking evidence.
So, let's rethink our starting point with narrative writing. Be a curious learner. Encourage student writers to begin by telling you what they know about narrative and how they work. Chart what they know. Your teaching at this point might focus on text structures and features of narratives -read alouds, shared reading, reading conferences to prepare for the writing to follow. Always ask students who want to write in this genre to think about the story they want to write. Have them tell that story to someone else. Encourage them to tell the story several times in order to know it well. You may need to remind them of the truism -no struggle, no story.
At this point some writers may just want to jump straight into the writing, while others may choose to do some rudimentary planning/ drawing/ listing/reading before they write. Encourage your writers to articulate their preferred actions. Then, step out of the way and let them write!
Their writing is your action research project. Once you can peruse these initial story drafts, you have a launching pad for your teaching. When we choose to teach in this way, we make productive use of precious teaching time. We stop relying on untested assumptions. We use real data, in the form of student writing pieces to guide and inform our teaching of writing. Allow your student writers to show you what they know as well as what they need to know.
The writing student produce will usually reveal the basic structure of the narrative- beginning, middle and end. It is a framework upon which our teaching can build the telling of the story. At this point our teaching is able to be directed to matters of craft. We teach mindfully to help the developing writer improve the content of the writing. We may identify the need for strategy groups where specific aspects of writing are taught to those who need support. We may also need to teach strategy lessons to the whole class or individual writers, via conferencing.
Don't think for a moment that writing effective narratives does not present a complex challenge. It clearly does. However, we are working with emerging writers and we need to develop their understanding of writing incrementally and from the point of need, rather than making assumptions that may not necessarily apply to that particular young writer. We must scaffold the learning and target the need. We must avoid the urge to overload the learner with our desire to 'correct or fix the writing.' Focus on what is developmentally appropriate.
To paraphrase the words of Colleen Cruz, 'Relax people. It's kid's writing. It's never going to be perfect.'
Let's strive to untangle those knots...

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A Different Approach To Teaching Narratives To Young Writers

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Periodically I find myself engaged in conversations with teachers about student narrative writing. They are often working with writers in junior classes. The conversation reveals how committed they are to teaching narrative genre to their entire class, simultaneously.

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A succinct blog post from Alan Wright

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How do we teach developing writers to independently use the different elements of craft that are discussed and taught in lessons?

We begin by honouring the reality that terms like We need to identify specific elements of craft when assessing student writing samples and use such revelations to help plan instruction that is both relevant and timely. If we adopt this approach to planning curriculum action we are able to teach students the specific craft techniques that will move them forward as writers. Katie Wood Ray in her book, voice, sentence fluency, and writing with detail are descriptions of where we want our students to be, not next steps on how to reach those goals. Wondrous Words provides an excellent guide for examining a text for its potential to teach craft elements to developing writers (See below)

As teachers of writing we must develop a concrete process for noticing craft in writing so that craft lessons can be planned and developed Craft lessons based mindfully on students' writing. Planning must be fluid, It must reflect the changing needs of students. When teachers meet regularly to assess the effectiveness of their teaching, the efficacy of their planning is more likely to reflect the current needs of the student writers with whom they are working. Planning is not something a teacher does merely at the start of a term, or a project. it's not a case of set and forget. Planning is a dynamic process. When teachers moderate outcomes, their planning prospers.

Learning the techniques that make up good writing allows teachers to see craft in many different levels of writing, a skill that is particularly powerful when conferring with below-grade-level writers.
Most of us know good writing when we read it, but writing teachers need to know what makes it work. They need clear insight into identifying and teaching the small elements that make good writing successful. These authors become our unwitting collaborators. We enter the classroom each day with a host of potential mentor authors. We are not alone in undertaking this important work.

Learning to read like a writer takes time, effort and regular practice. Those teachers who themselves are writers possess a distinct advantage. They understand the struggle of composition. As writers, they appreciate that writing is essentially problem solving. Their eyes see things, non-writers fail to notice or understand.

As teachers we must reach the understanding that it is important for students to do such focused work in their notebooks. What better place to practice and experiment. It's a chance for developing writers to flex their writing muscles

Building Curriculum from the Writing of Others

The craft of writing is built upon our observations regarding the potential of a text

to assist us in being effective teachers of writing.

' If the expectation of what we teach students about writing is changing, then so should our preparation. If we are to teach the craft of writing to students, and not just mechanics and spelling, most of us cannot rely solely on our own histories of writing instruction.'

Crafting Writers, K-6, Elizabeth Hale

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Teaching The Craft of Writing Effectively

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How do we teach developing writers to independently use the different elements of craft that are discussed and taught in lessons? We begin by honouring the reality that terms like We need to identify specific elements of craft when assessing student writing samples and use such revelations to help plan instruction that is both relevant and timely.

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Great site for building character descriptions

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Great site for building character descriptions

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Saving Wildlife and Wild Places - Bronx Zoo

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General information, zoo history, map, education program summary, animal photos and descriptions, and calendar of events. Part of The Wildlife Conservation Society.

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A different take on writing with older students

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A different take on writing with older students

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Link to a podcast of Ralph Dletcher talking aobut this topic

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Mentor texts or anchor texts are any text that can be used as an example of good writing for writers. Writers use a mentor text to inform their own writing. Ralph Fletcher explains that mentor texts are, "... any texts that you can learn from, and every writer, no matter how skilled you are or how beginning you are, encounters and reads something that can lift and inform and infuse their own writing. I'd say anything that you can learn from - not by talking about but just looking at the actual writing itself, being used in really skillful, powerful way." To read or listen to Ralph talk more about mentor texts, you can listen this great Choice Literacy podcast.

Teach Mentor Texts focuses on using any authentic text to impact our writing. When I read, my writer's eye looks for what I can learn from a text and how it can inform my own my writing. My goal is to highlight texts that writers might use as mentor texts.

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Mentor texts or anchor texts are any text that can be used as an example of good writing for writers. Writers use a mentor text to inform their own writing. Ralph Fletcher explains that mentor texts are, "...

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I am forever rereading writing pieces from my notebooks. It is amazing how often such rereading assists me to dig up a new idea to feed my writing addiction. Virginia Woolf defines rereading as a chance to find diamonds in the dust-heap. I am definitely covered in dust and constantly looking for precious gems.
My numerous notebooks are a critical part of my reading library. The role they play in my writing life changes upon completion, but the influence is sustained.
I am acutely aware that rereading is vitally important to me as a writer. Apart from the possibility of finding a new writing thread, I am also reliving the moment in time when I first captured a particular entry. What a buzz.
On some occasions rereading connects me with previously overlooked memories or ideas. So, apart from reading to revise or proofread, rereading for the express purpose of excavating fresh ideas is important too. This rereading is akin to rummaging through a toy box as a child and discovering a lost treasure. It provides a rich opportunity to mine new ideas from old words.
Ralph Fletcher in his great little book, 'Breathing in Breathing Out' talks about this very act of rereading:
'Some writers claim they never revisit their notebooks. But most of us go back incessantly, rummaging, rereading, looking for- what? For me, I don't usually know what I'm looking for until I find it. And then: Aha!'
Like Ralph, I don't always know what I am specifically looking for as I reread, but I am generally confident that I will find something useful to me as a writer.
One of the many things that need to be modeled for young writers is the way other writers excavate ideas. When students lament that they have no idea what to write about, you are doing them a huge favour by suggesting that they go back to their previous writing.
You could encourage your students to reread for a number of purposes:
* Reread consciously looking for something to write about, or something to rewrite.
* Reread randomly hoping to land on a line or image that inspires you to write. This rereading is skimming in search of a chance landing.
* Reread to find your voice. Rereading notebook entries written in different voices can assist the writer to find the voice, the tone appropriate for a new writing piece.
* Reread to find material related to a particular theme or idea.
The writer's notebook is not the place where you bring your unpolished gem of an idea to polished completion, but it definitely provides a place to begin shaping and reshaping selected pieces and rereading supports this process.
What does this mean for you and your students? Well, for a start they will need plenty of notebook entries. This implies the writer is holding a well nourished notebook. Multiple entries are essential. It is after all, a collection zone.
By this time of the year notebooks should be brimming with lots of different writing pieces, experimental pieces and writing lists and ideas. If student notebooks have been sparsely used, and intermittently visited, then rereading for new ideas isn't going to be all that fruitful I'm afraid. In these situations, neither the teacher, and as a natural consequence the students, have developed a perception of the notebook as a gathering point for writing. Notebook rejuvenation would appear a most timely intervention at this point. Otherwise the writer's notebook is falling well short of its intended purpose. When it comes to notebooks, being overweight is quite acceptable.
The notion of rereading for ideas relies on the writer being able to choose from a veritable feast of ideas and thoughts previously recorded -and this rests on a foundation of regular writing opportunities. It's hard to make discoveries when the toybox is practically empty...

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Rereading Writer's Notebooks To Extract New Ideas

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I am forever rereading writing pieces from my notebooks. It is amazing how often such rereading assists me to dig up a new idea to feed my writing addiction. Virginia Woolf defines rereading as a chance to find diamonds in the dust-heap.

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Transitional Phrases for Information Writing

Information writing is usually a genre where students experience success in writing. Most students can come up with topics they know a fair amount about-I have seen hilarious and informative pieces on grocery store, shopping malls, steaks, and even things that smell. Because information writing has inherent structure, less instructional time tends to go toward teaching focus and organization, and more time can be spent on sentence structure.

When I am working in classrooms, I keep a chartbook with me, and I use it all the time when I am conferring or running small groups. It also serves as a coaching tool for teachers since I get many requests for pictures or copies of pages.

For younger students, I have found the following page in my chartbook to be useful.

My overall point to students is that sometimes we want to add information and sometimes we want to explain information. It's really helpful for them to understand the difference between those two purposes. Depending on the student I am working with, I may choose to switch the sticky notes in my chartbook. For example, if I am working with a younger student or someone who is less confident, I may offer them just two choices for adding information, and then I give them the sticky note to keep. If you look closely, there are several blank notes underneath the top one. If I think a student can handle it, I may even present this page as an inquiry conference or small group lesson, showing them only a blank sticky note and challenging them to come up with words and phrases for the two categories.

For students in middle to upper grades, I turn to a similar page, but one that includes phrases for contrasting information, as well as adding and explaining.

This page offers a lot of flexibility since I can present all three categories of phrases, or I can present them one at a time, depending on the students in front of me. The sticky notes allow me to just pick them up and put them on the opposite side of the book.

In the past, I have taught these phrases all together. I have found that students have an easier time building their repertoire when I emphasize the purposes of the phrases and the categories in which we can put them.

Regardless of how you teach these phrases, they have the potential of really boosting students' fluency and providing pathways and inroads for them to say more about their topics.

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Transitional Phrases for Information Writing

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Information writing is usually a genre where students experience success in writing. Most students can come up with topics they know a fair amount about-I have seen hilarious and informative pieces on grocery store, shopping malls, steaks, and even things that smell.

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Elaboration Strategies for Information Writing

Many of our students who struggled with narrative writing have a different experience with information writing. It's relatively easy for children to think of topics they know a lot about-sometimes much easier than it is to think of the stories within their own lives.

For the most part, structure is easier for students when they write information pieces. Focus and organization are clear because students know what they are writing about and they have a list of sections or chapters. Most of the students I see, whether they are second graders or even fourth graders, need to see how to elaborate their facts and how to make their writing sound more fluent. In order to deal with the tendency to present facts as a list, I have created a page in my toolkit, and I find myself using this page all the time, as well as letting teachers take pictures of it.

I've started with a sticky note that duplicates the type of writing I see a lot-the list-like sharing of facts. You can get plain pizza, pepperoni pizza, vegetable pizza, or onion pizza.

Then I talk to students about the importance of voice and extra information. The orange bullets on the charts are the different strategies writers can use so that they add extra information or create more of a flow in their writing. I have demonstration sticky notes to show students what it looks like for my example about pizza types. I also keep blank sticky notes-sometimes even in my chartbook-so that students can practice the skill themselves.

Of the five bullets, the most important one to me is the first one that involves breaking up the sentence:

The other skills don't work well if students are unable to split their facts up, so if that skill needs practice, I have stayed with just this step with some students.

Once I'm sure they understand how to break apart their sentence, I can move on to the other four ideas on the page. Depending on the level and ability of the students I'm working with, I offer a different number of strategies. What's nice about the sticky notes is I can move them over to the other side of the notebook if they are too much. I don't need all of them to make my point about adding information and voice to a "listy" sentence.

Over and over, I have found this page effective in working with students across grade levels to get them to say a little more about a fact or an idea.

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Elaboration Strategies for Information Writing

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Many of our students who struggled with narrative writing have a different experience with information writing. It's relatively easy for children to think of topics they know a lot about-sometimes much easier than it is to think of the stories within their own lives.

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Pay less for domain names. Bulk pricing and private domain name registration options. Transfer domain names risk-free.

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Word Choice

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Students can improve their work by learning to recognize the strengths in the work of their peers.

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Trying on the words of Mentors

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Writing Under The Influence

As teachers of writing we frequently gravitate to the words of authors we admire. We then take their observations about the writing process and apply them to our own writing efforts. However, when we find ourselves reading published works- novels, picture books, news articles, or poems the process that has delivered them is largely hidden.

We start to think about the impact of such knowledge being shared with our students. What might it mean for my students as writers if they used this craft move in their writing? How would it improve their understanding of writing?

I read somewhere, 'Bad writers borrow, good writers steal.' When you notice yourself influenced by the words of another writer you need to shape that influence to make it fit your writing intentions and your particular voice. In this space you will find potential for writing curriculum.

Some teachers express concern that inviting students to write in the style of an author they admire will result in 'copying.'

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The Influence of other Authors on our Teaching of Writing

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Writing Under The Influence As teachers of writing we frequently gravitate to the words of authors we admire. We then take their observations about the writing process and apply them to our own writing efforts. However, when we find ourselves reading published works- novels, picture books, news articles, or poems the process that has delivered them is largely hidden.

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Online educational games and school games for kids to play for free.

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Students challenging self

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Self-Assessment: Assessment Strengthens Writers

There is nothing more rewarding than witnessing a student's progression towards a goal. As the teacher, I observe patterns and needs in student writing, and I plan minilessons and conferences to address the skills necessary for growth. When I begin to see the students develop, I feel powerful. I have made changes! I have helped learners move forward on their journey of learning! After all, isn't this why I became a teacher?

Well, yes, I became a teacher to help others grow, but I didn't become a teacher to feel powerful. Who am I to own this power over others' learning? Isn't it the learner who should be feeling the power and pride of hard work and all its rewards? So why do I feel so powerful? Then, I realized I was the one setting the goal and designing the path toward achievement. My students were following MY plan. Through my work, I was holding the agency, not the students.
The Power of Student Agency:
Agency is motivating, it gives work purpose. This ownership keeps us pushing toward a mark. Agency is the motivator I want for my students. As an educator, my goal is to instill a love of learning. It was clear, I had to make changes in who owned the learning. I had to release the reins and turn the choice over to the students.

The students need to know the purpose of the lessons and to see a vision of what it is we are asking of them. With an understanding of what we are asking and knowledge of how it supports their development, students will find motivation and purpose. Students will find ownership and agency over their learning.

Student motivation and purpose will drive students to look more deeply at themselves as learners. Students will welcome the opportunity to set learning goals and design their path toward growth.
Releasing the Reins:
Our classroom is a responsive classroom; students are responsible for the way our learning community runs on a daily basis. So when it came time to release the academic reins to the students, it was a natural transition. We began as we were all gathered on the carpet for writing workshop. I asked the writers to reflect on our learning thus far in writing workshop.

After giving the kids a few minutes to reflect, I grabbed a sheet of paper and asked them, "Writers, what would you expect to see in a piece of writing?" They looked at me and paused, no hands shooting in the air and no shout outs. Finally, a brave soul said, "Pictures and words." I turned to my paper and drew a tree in green and wrote tree with the same green marker. "How about this? I have words, and I have an illustration. " Immediately, the kids began to add ideas, " No, you need a sentence and more than one thing in your picture and you used only one color."

I grabbed a second piece of paper and wrote a sentence and added a few things to my illustrations. I turned to the class and asked, "Ok, how's this?" "It's better Mrs. Frazier (first graders are so compassionate), but you still need more." "We can do like three sentences and three illustrations to match our words."

So, I gave them just that, three illustrations and three sentences. They paused and began again, "Well, we can still do more." I replied, "YOU CAN! So, what would it look like if we tried one more time?"

"We would write lots of sentences, with matching pictures to help our reader."

"I think we should have feelings in our writing and lots of colors. One color is kind of boring."

"We need punctuation marks too, and we can write ideas from our mentor authors."

"WOW! You know a lot about writing!

I grabbed my final paper and began creating just what they'd asked me to do. When I finished, I taped each sample on a piece of chart paper and labeled each with a number for easy reference.

Next, I asked the writers to think about their writing, reminding them they could be anywhere on this chart.

"We are all working hard to grow, and each one shows us a step in growing as a writer."

Before sending the students off to write, I asked them to envision the writing they were planning for today. Then, I handed each writer a pre-cut piece of a post-it-note (The super sticky notes to ensure its power to stick.) and requested they place their name with the number showing which writing they would aspire to do today.

I watched as Annie, who is at the prewriting stage, placed her name below the fourth page. I noted this in my notes and waited while the writers settled into writing. I watched as Annie worked, determined to improve her writing. At the close of the workshop, Annie gathered her work, and I noticed she had more than one page of writing. Anxious to see what Annie had written I invited her to share. Annie stood proudly and walked to the projection table to share her work. Not only had Annie produced three pages of writing complete with illustrations and several sentences, but she also demonstrated an understanding of mentor authors.

Annie began reading, the first few words showing strong attempted spelling, "I went to the forest and followed a path...." As she continued, her stamina for attempted spelling waned. Her enthusiasm and eagerness to share did not change! She kept reading her story with fluency and excitement. When Annie finished, she turned to the class, and the writers greeted her with silent applause and Annie beamed.

Annie saw what was possible; she understood what it was she was striving to learn. Annie pushed herself to grow as a writer. In doing this, Annie found ownership and pride in herself and hard work. We all learned Annie has grit!

While Annie's story is unique, Annie's ownership and purpose are omnipresent in our workshop. I watch as students move their names from place to place on the chart, seek out classroom resources as they write, and consult specific peers for feedback. As I confer with writers, I am noticing more specific questions and more grit! The writers want to grow, and they are striving toward a goal they've set, a goal they own.

On Friday, as we were packing up for the day one student said, "When are we going to make a five? I am writing one now we can use."

I guess Monday we are making a five!

Don't forget, we will be hosting a Twitter Chat TOMORROW evening!

Giveaway information is also below.

GIVEAWAY INFORMATION:

This giveaway is for one copy of Conferring with Young Writers: What to Do When You Don't Know What to Do by Kristin Ackerman and Jennifer McDonough ( https://www.stenhou se.com/content/conferring-youn g-writers). Many thanks to Stenhouse Publishers ( https://www.stenhouse.com) for donating a copy of this book.
For a chance to win one copy of Ackerman and McDonough's Conferring with Young Writers: What to Do When You Don't Know What to Do ( https://www.stenhouse.com/ content/conferring-young-write rs), please leave a reaction to any post in the blog series, including this one, by Sunday, November 6th at 11:59 p.m. ET. Dana Murphy will use a random number generator to pick the winners, whose names she will announce in our blog series' IN CASE YOU MISSED IT POST on Monday, November 7th.
You may leave one comment on every post in our Assessment Strengthens Writers blog series.
Please be sure to leave a valid e-mail address when you post your comment, so Dana can contact you to obtain your mailing address if you win. From there, our contact at Stenhouse will ship your book out to you. (NOTE: Your e-mail address will not be published online if you leave it in the e-mail field only.)
If you are the winner of the book, Dana will email you with the subject line of TWO WRITING TEACHERS - CONFERRING WITH YOUNG WRITERS. Please respond to her e-mail with your mailing address within five days of receipt. Unfortunately, a new winner will be chosen if a response isn't received within five days of the giveaway announcement.

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Annie began reading, the first few words showing strong attempted spelling, "I went to the forest and followed a path...." As she continued, her stamina for attempted spelling waned. Her enthusiasm and eagerness to share did not change! She kept reading her story with fluency and excitement.

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Things to consider

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An Anchor Chart Mashup

As I settle into my job as instructional coach in a new school district this year, I am still orienting myself to my surroundings. I believe I have finally located all of the staff bathrooms, and I have found both copy machines. I have a pretty firm layout of the two-story building and if you came to visit me, I could probably take you on a guided tour without getting us lost. I have noticed the classrooms are all carpeted (rather than tiled) which makes every room feel like my living room. I am still acclimating myself to the ever-present technology. Chromebooks, iPads, and green screens are everywhere.

One thing that hasn't changed, though, is evidence of good writing instruction. This has been a constant in every classroom I have had the pleasure of working in this year. I notice anchor chart after anchor chart highlighting important writing lessons. Come along as I take you on an anchor chart tour in the classrooms of our school:

I hope these charts confirmed some of your current teaching or nudged you to think in new ways.

As I continue to ground myself in my new environment, I am comforted by the old, familiar feel of kids learning how to be writers.

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As I settle into my job as instructional coach in a new school district this year, I am still orienting myself to my surroundings. I believe I have finally located all of the staff bathrooms, and I have found both copy machines.

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Dipping in to get inspired

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Sometimes we don't write in writing workshop

On our first full day of sixth grade, I hand each of my students a reading and writing survey and ask them to tell me a little bit about themselves as readers and writers. Their answers, as they slowly filter in over the course of the week, allow me valuable insights. I learn about how my students choose books, view themselves as readers and writers, and struggle with this or that aspect of reading and writing. I learn about their proudest writing experience, and how they hope to grow as readers and writers. And, I learn about the mechanics of their writing: where they stand with grammar conventions, spelling, even their handwriting issues. By the end of that first week, I usually have a pretty good idea as to where our journey in 6th. grade writing workshop needs to begin.

This year's writing surveys revealed three things:

many of my kids "really, really don't like to write"

many of my kids said that they "never know what to write about"

and most of my kids said that even when they started out writing about something good, they "got stuck - and the story kinda stank"

My in-class experience of these sixth graders, however, told me a different story. They seemed to have plenty to say, and they seemed to know how to tell a great story (funny points to make us laugh, thoughtful comments to make us pause, great descriptions so we could visualize). But they didn't seem to see any connection between these natural as-we-are-settling-into-the-day stories and the ones they wanted to write in their writer's notebooks. They did not see themselves as writers.

So, much of our time this past week and a half has been spent engaged in these activities:

We to jog our writing memories, beginning with heart maps which my sixth graders are familiar with:

then created a few more sketches - idea banks for more stories to remember, share, and write about:

and we finished up our week with an idea borrowed from Ralph Fletcher's memoir, Marshfield Dreams: When I was a Boy:

We tried to get specific with our jottings, and I used my own map to demonstrate how we could do this - "my climbing tree" for instance needed specific stories to serve as a more meaningful jog to my memory. Students went back to their visual tools to do the same, creating better idea banks for later writing endeavors.

We gathered in our meeting area to story tell, trying to generate at least 3 to 5 minutes of an oral narrative based on one of our jottings. Classmates would ask questions at the end, trying to draw out further details which we'd make sure to note down - perhaps these notes would help us when we were stuck in the writing process later on.

We experimented with brainstorming sketches, to see if we could flesh out writing ideas and think through how we'd envision a narrative from beginning to end - what events would we include? what details would make the piece more interesting?

By the end of the week, I felt that my students felt much more comfortable about returning to writing workshop ready to write. We have ideas, we've practiced storytelling, we've thought about details we'd want to include in our narratives...we are ready to put the writing back in writing workshop.

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Sometimes we don't write in writing workshop

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On our first full day of sixth grade, I hand each of my students a reading and writing survey and ask them to tell me a little bit about themselves as readers and writers. Their answers, as they slowly filter in over the course of the week, allow me valuable insights.

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Fostering feedback and student voice in mentor texts

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Link to Sally's pinterst board

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Find and save recipes, parenting hacks, style inspiration and many other ideas to try.

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Use along with Language experience

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Kindergarten teachers at my school made what seemed at first like a small shift in the language they used, and message they shared, as they launched writing workshop this year. In fact, the change was big and significant. And the payoff has been rewarding.

Instead of starting with the words "We are all writers," they began their workshops by telling our youngest learners that we all have stories to share. Instead of encouraging students to put words on the page, they told and drew their own stories. Instead of passing out pencils and booklets with blank pages, they offered art tablets, markers, colored pencils, and crayons. And every chance they got, they reinforced the idea that we are all storytellers.

Over the summer, the kindergarten team and I tweaked their writing curriculum, and planned new lessons, and our primary goal was to lay a foundation that would not only build skills, but also create enthusiasm for writing.

We decided to take a step that I would argue isn't back, but forward, and during these first six week, our youngest writers have focused on the joys of shared stories, and how to draw those tales. We've slowed things down, and taken a leap of faith, as these children have begun their writing journeys. In these first six week, their work during writing workshop has not included a lot of writing. Gasp.

Their teachers crafted and shared many minilessons:

How to use materials including the drawing tablet, pencils, colored pencils and crayons.

What happens during writing workshop (mini lesson, writing spot and writing time, sharing time)

Where stories come from

The important parts of a story, including characters, setting, and events

How to draw the important parts of your story

How to draw people, animals, and objects- looking at parts and shapes

How to add expressions to people and animals

How to show action

How to add backgrounds and details

How to tell the story you've drawn

Every time I've entered a kindergarten classrooms during writing workshop time, I've seen focused, engaged children. When I've conferred with these storytellers, they've shared their drawings and tales with great pride.

And even though there hasn't been a lot of writing- gasp- yet...these young writers have:

Become enthusiastic story tellers and workshop participants

Created drawings with more detail than I've seen in past years

Gained confidence in sharing stories

Developed their understanding of story elements

Learned how to unfold a story with details that draw the audience in

Created detailed drawings that tell stories

Our youngest writers will soon begin to add labels, and words, and then sentences, to their drawings. Before long there will be booklets, and lined paper. And what might have looked like a step back, these past six weeks, is just what these young writers needed to take their next leap forward.

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Kindergarten teachers at my school made what seemed at first like a small shift in the language they used, and message they shared, as they launched writing workshop this year. In fact, the change was big and significant. And the payoff has been rewarding.

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Paper Choices and writing tools

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Creating Classroom Environments: Paper Choices

Every summer, my mom would take us kids school shopping at a local department store. With each shirt, sweater, and pair of jeans my mom would call us out of the dressing room to see how things fit. "Bend your legs. Make sure they're not too tight. Lift your arms... higher, now! Stretch. Make sure there's plenty of room to grow!" My brother and I would roll our eyes and groan.

Now of course, I realize my mom was wise. Kids do need room to grow. Not only do they outgrow clothes in the blink of an eye, they also grow as readers and writers. This is why we need classroom libraries stocked with a wide range of levels, and it's why we need writing centers stocked with paper choices.

As you set up your classroom for the coming school year, you may want to consider what "sizes" of paper your students might need. You'll want to nudge kids toward selecting paper that leaves them a little room to grow. Rather than paper they easily fill on the first draft, encourage them to choose paper that is just one "size up" from their usual first draft. That way, there will be a few empty lines, leaving room to revise by adding more.

If you're not sure what kind of paper to offer, try this chart on for size:

* You can find all these paper choices and others here.

To organize all these paper choices, you will probably want to set up an organized "Writing Center" in your classroom that is easily accessible, and is designed for kids to access the materials on their own. This might be a low book shelf, a desk converted into a center, or a set of drawers or cubbies that can store paper choices and other necessities for writing workshop.

When organizing the paper at your Writing Center, you might consider labeling trays, baskets, or drawers of paper with clear picture clues, making it easy for kids to find the paper they need (and to put back extra paper). Trays, baskets or drawers will keep the paper supply organized and easy to manage.

From the first day of school, no matter the age group, you will probably want to teach kids how to get paper from the writing center whenever they need more. Who wants to be passing out paper, when you need to be conferring and pulling small groups? In your observations and conferring with students, if you notice a kid who is having trouble with choosing the appropriate paper (or is taking too much paper, or is "wasting") then you can teach into that during a conference.

For success with paper choices, you will probably want to explicitly demonstrate strong habits during mid-workshop interruptions. It's unlikely you would want these simple routines to be your main focus for an entire minilesson on any given day. At the start of the year I usually teach a minlesson around an important writing strategy (like how to choose meaningful topics, or how to write with detail), and then several minutes into the workshop, I interrupt the whole class to teach them a bite-size piece of the routines for materials. I might do several of these interruptions in a day, adding up to the complete routine. For example:

* "Today I want to teach you that writers can try on paper for size, by writing a page or two to see if it fills up the page with just a little room left over. If not, they can choose paper with more lines, or less lines next time around."

* "Writers, another thing I want to teach you that whenever you need more paper you can stand up, push in you chair, and walk directly to the Writing Center (without stopping on the way). Then you can come straight back to your writing spot to get started writing right away."

* "Writers, I'd like to show you how you can add more paper to your booklets when you need to. You can take your booklet to the Writing Center, choose the pages you need, and staple them into your booklet, all by yourself."

For more on this, join us for our Twitter Chat, where we'll be discussing many ways to create classroom environments to launch the school year!

Let's chat on Monday, August 10th at 8:30 p.m. EDT , when the eight of us host a Twitter Chat about classroom environments. Just search and tag #TWTBlog to participate.

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Creating Classroom Environments: Paper Choices

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Kids do need room to grow. Not only do they outgrow clothes in the blink of an eye, they also grow as readers and writers. This is why we need classroom libraries stocked with a wide range of levels, and it's why we need writing centers stocked with paper choices.

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Examples of what can be looked for in a mentor text

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Teacher to Teacher Ideas in the Top Teaching Blog | Scholastic

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Exciting lesson ideas, classroom strategies, teaching tips, book lists, videos, and reproducibles in a daily blog by teachers from the classrooms of extraordinary mentor

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Keeping the 'Mini' in Mini Lessons for the Middle School Writing Workshop

One of my core beliefs about the teaching of writing is that students need time and space to write. In my ideal world, I would have endless time to really get to know each one of my 7th-grade students as writers.

But the reality of my situation (and that of many middle school teachers) is that I have 49 precious minutes with the 95 students I see over the course of four class periods each day. 49 minutes to take on the daunting task of helping shape their writing identities.

I know that the biggest portion of class time should be protected for students to write independently. However, if I'm not smart about how I approach my 10-minute minilessons, I risk letting the teaching portion our day run too long, leaving little room for my students to practice the strategy in their own writing.

I have learned a few moves to help me beat the clock in the four years since I've implemented the workshop model. These small changes to my approach have had a big payoff when it comes to giving my students meaningful time to write.

Set a timer: One of the promises I make to my students is that I will keep my minilessons short. To hold myself accountable, I set a timer for ten minutes (I just use my iPhone.), hand it off to a student, and start my lesson. I always ask the student who is timing to give me a "one-minute warning" by holding up a finger. When the timer goes off, I stop talking. This is hard to do (There is always more to teach and say.), but I know that what I prioritize and make time for sends a signal to students. Making sure they have time to write is the most important message to send.

Set norms to keep moving forward: I like to start off my minilessons with a short anecdote. These hook my students right away, but sharing stories often starts off a chain reaction -everyone else wants to share too! At the beginning of the year, my students and I agreed on the minilesson expectation to hold questions and comments. Having this norm in place keeps the lesson moving forward so my students get the chance to explore their ideas in writing.

Use student talk to your advantage: I listen closely as students talk during my minilesson, and if I hear a partnership make a good point that will help move us forward in our lesson, I'll ask those writers to share first when we come back together. Another method is to say "I overheard one of you saying..." as a way to segue into the next teaching point (whether I heard it or not!). Tricky, but effective.

"Write" it out: Modeling a writing strategy is so valuable. It takes a strategy from an abstract idea to a concrete practice. As much as possible, I love to generate writing on the spot for my students. But the physical act of writing out words eats up time. I'll often "write in the air" for my students, where I'll voice out what I would write as opposed to taking time to "write it live" for my students. During our realistic fiction unit, when demonstrating how to take a moment from 2D to 3D, I highlighted a 2D moment in my own writing that I needed to "pop out" and voiced out exactly how I would rewrite it, adding details and dialogue to show the moment.

I've also written out my example before class and then pretended to craft it in the moment with my students. I "write" in my notebook, voicing over with my thought process (which allows them to hear my inner thinking as a writer). Students see the finished product under the document camera, I don't have to spend valuable minutes writing a new piece with each hour, and the teaching is just as effective.

Take time to make a plan: At the end of my minilesson, before heading into their independent writing time, my students make a specific plan. Without this piece, writers run the risk of not using their time to its full potential. We do this quickly. Some use a Post-It note to jot a plan on and add it to their class journals. Other times, a simple "turn and tell your plan to their writing partner" suffices. I always suggest options that touch on the writing repertoire we've built throughout our unit to help students plan, since not everyone is in the same place with their writing. However, these are merely suggestions. The final decision for how to use workshop time is left up to the writer.

Use music to transition smoothly: When we move into our workshop time, I often play a short song and ask everyone to be in their space and writing by the time the song finishes. Oftentimes, I'll let students pick the song (I have a running list on my whiteboard.) or I'll pick a song that sets a tone for the work ahead (The Final Countdown is always a favorite when we're getting close to publishing time!). Small moves like this give my middle schoolers (and students of all ages) a tangible way to measure how quickly they should be getting into their own individual work.

49 minutes goes by quickly in a bustling middle school writing workshop, and the ten minutes reserved for my minilessons can be gone before I know it if I'm not careful. However, making small, intentional moves in the way I approach this part of my writing workshop ensures that my writers have as much time as possible to do what is most important: write.
Katie Kraushaar is a 7th grade English-Language Arts teacher at Hixson Middle School in St. Louis, MO. She strives to promote the joy of writing in her classroom by taking a student-centered approach with the workshop model and by writing daily with her students. In addition to her seven years in the classroom, Katie is a Teacher Consultant for the Gateway Writing Project, a satellite of the National Writing Project. Connect with Katie through her blog and on Twitter.

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Keeping the 'Mini' in Mini Lessons for the Middle School Writing Workshop

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One of my core beliefs about the teaching of writing is that students need time and space to write. In my ideal world, I would have endless time to really get to know each one of my 7th-grade students as writers.

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Writing process, craft, mentor texts

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Teacher to Teacher Ideas in the Top Teaching Blog | Scholastic

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Exciting lesson ideas, classroom strategies, teaching tips, book lists, videos, and reproducibles in a daily blog by teachers from the classrooms of extraordinary mentor