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Great examples of conferring and tips.

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From A Teacher's Guide to Writing Conferences of The Classroom Essentials Series
Invite students to have a real give-and-take with you.

Even though in conferences you're a teacher talking to students, you're also a (more experienced) writer talking to (less experienced) fellow writers about what writers do-come up with topics, make a plan for a piece of writing, write a lead, develop a section
with detail, use commas in a series, and so on. In this give and take, you learn about what students are trying to do as writers and how well they're doing it, and the students learn how they can do their work better.

Speak in a conversational tone.

Tone is the foundation of the good relationships you want to develop with students over the course of the school year. Speaking in a warm, friendly manner puts students at ease and makes it more likely they will talk with you about what they're trying to do as writers. What you learn from this talk helps you assess students and decide what you should teach to help them grow.

Sit alongside students, at their eye level.

How you sit with students helps you establish a positive tone in conferences. You might grab a nearby empty seat or sit on one that you carry with you around the classroom. As you sit, it's important to make frequent eye contact with students and make sure that your
facial expressions show an interest in what students are telling you.

Use "active listening" strategies.

For example, give some wait time after asking a question so that students have the time and space they need to come up with a response. Ask students to "say more" about what they tell you. And repeat what children say to check that you're hearing them correctly.
Using these strategies shows that you have a real interest in what students are saying and that you're really trying to understand them. Students will usually respond by talking to you more.

The goal of a writing conference is to teach students something about writing that they can use in the future. If you add to students' writing repertoires in every conference, they become better writers over time.

Learn more at Heinemann.com

Carl Anderson is one of the nation's leading experts on teaching writing to students in grades K-12. He dedicates his energies exclusively as an education consultant and writer.

Carl recently worked for Teachers College Reading and Writing Project at Columbia University as a Lead Staff Developer, providing staff development in the teaching of writing grades K-8. He spent school days in New York City elementary and middle schools demonstrating effective teaching in the writing workshop and coaching teachers. He gave day-long workshops for teachers at Teachers College on launching the writing workshop, conferring with student writers, mini-lessons, and developing curriculum for the writing workshop.

Carl is the author of numerous books including the bestselling How's It Going? A Practical Guide to Conferring with Student Writers, as well as Assessing Writers and the series Strategic Writing Conferences: Smart Conversations that Move Young Writers Forward Grades 3-6.

His latest book, A Teacher's Guide to Writing Conferences, is part of the Classroom Essentials series. Full of classroom video, the book helps teachers understand the underlying principles and reasons for conferring with students, and how to make writing conferences a part of teachers' daily routines.

Follow Carl on Twitter @ConferringCarl

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The goal of a writing conference is to teach students something about writing that they can use in the future. If you add to students' writing repertoires in every conference, they become better writers over time.

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Launching Writing Workshop with Passion and Purpose

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Launching Writing Workshop with Passion and Purpose

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In Spark! Quick Writes to Kindle Hearts and Minds in Elementary Classrooms, Paula Bourque states, "We write for so many reasons, from practical to poetical. I want my students to embrace writing as a way of being human." Not to raise test scores, not to get a point on a rubric, not to earn a certain grade on a report card. There is writing for the game of school and there is writing as a path to better self-knowledge, writing as a bridge to connect with others, writing as a means to understand the world and our place in it. What do you want for your student writers?

When we want more than formulaic writing, more than answers filled in a graphic organizer, we need to establish writing as more than something done for an assignment.

In my third grade classroom, here is what I plan to do to start the year with passion and purpose for writing:
Teacher as Writer:
I'm going to gather a collection of pieces I've written through the years: a poem for my son, the eulogy for my grandmother, the speech for my sister's wedding, blog posts I've written, an A-Z book I made for my husband when we were dating, my writer's notebooks, etc. I plan to share how writing has meant so much to me and has allowed me to remember important moments, communicate my love for people, and understand my thinking and feelings. I want my students to know I have a passion for writing and it is a meaningful practice in my life.
Student Surveys:
In the classroom, I've used surveys to learn about my third grade students as readers. Typically, I give the same survey at the beginning of the year and the end of the year, which allows me to see if students changed their thinking over time. I'm not sure why I never thought to give students a survey about writing, but this year I plan to find out what they think about why people write, what people write, and how they feel about themselves as writers.

Click on the image to be taken to the file. If you want your own version, click "File" then "Make a copy" and rename it to use as you like.

In Kelsey Corter's post, "When Writers Choose the Genre: Nurturing Independence From the Start", Kelsey says, "Writers in the world find reasons to write, drawing upon inspiration in everyday occurrences. Then, they think flexibly about how to bring ideas to life." I want my students to understand that writing takes many forms and there are so many reasons a person might choose to write. So before we begin our year together in writing workshop, I want to know what students already think about writing. Do they feel like writers? Do they know why people write?
Display Answers
After reviewing student surveys, I want to make a display of the answers to the questions "Why do people write?" and "What do people write?" (I will fill in any missing ideas from student surveys.) Kelsey's chart about the reasons we write is an excellent one to share and adapt for this purpose. Students need to know there are many reasons to write and many possible ways to express themselves via writing.
One Topic, Many Genres
It is important for students to know the terms narrative, persuasive, informational and poetry. I plan to show them how you can write about a topic in any genre. I am going to pick the topic "Roller coasters" because my family took a vacation at an amusement park this summer with many roller coasters and I think it is a topic that third graders will enjoy. I plan to model a personal narrative, a persuasive piece, a "how-to", and a poem about roller coasters. My idea is to model one genre a day and briefly talk about the structures we commonly see in that genre.
Territory Maps
I wrote about territory maps here and plan to bring them back this year! Heart maps are a great tool to help students brainstorm topics, but territory maps are another possible way to go. My social studies unit in September is about geography with a focus on maps, so creating maps in writing workshop is another way to layer meaning and understanding. The map students choose is one way of expressing a topic they love. The goal is to uncover important people, places, and events that a student might want to come back to again and again when thinking of a writing idea.
Blogging
Each year, I use Kidblog as the platform for my students to become bloggers. This year, I am considering interactive blogging on our class website before students start to blog themselves. In this way, I can model the parts of a blog, considering the audience and the purpose, and revising and editing before publishing.
Personalizing Writer's Notebooks
I usually reserve a Friday afternoon for this activity! Students bring in photographs or any memorabilia they want to add to their notebooks (ticket stubs, postcards, etc.) I always have magazines and stickers on hand for students who do not bring in anything from home. Students can share their notebooks with a partner and the class can do a gallery walk to view all the personalized notebooks.
Read Alouds That Celebrate Writing
One other way to show my passion for writing is to share beautiful books with students and notice what the author did to make the book so special. Some books that I plan to share with my students include:

How do you start the year of writing workshop with passion and purpose?

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View all posts by Kathleen Neagle Sokolowski

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Launching Writing Workshop with Passion and Purpose

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What are your hopes for your writers this year and how will you start the year with those hopes in mind? Read on to see my plans for starting writing workshop with passion and purpose.

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Working with the intention of creating writing environments with our students that are reflective of the beliefs and the needs of all should be our goal. While each writing workshop is unique to th…

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Using a Strategy Group to Support Writers

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Using a Strategy Group to Support Writers

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Using a Strategy Group to Support Writers

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One of the hardest things about writing is-getting started! For many of our students, drawing and talking about their drawings is just what they need to cross the barrier from a blank page to page filled with their words.

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ewoodson75@gmail.com

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Connect with educators around the world!

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What moves are you already making? What moves might you lift up?

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Conversation around new book, Writing Workshop Essentials

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How can we create daily structures and routines that support writers?

Today on the podcast we're joined by Heinemann author and Classroom Essentials series editor Katie Wood Ray. We're also joined by Katherine Bomer and Corinne Arens, co-authors of the newest Classroom Essentials book, A Teachers Guide to Writing Workshop Essentials: Time, Choice, Response.

Guided by the research-based belief that children learn to write best when provided a predictable, daily writing structure, Katherine and Corinne introduce the basics of Writing Workshop, and suggest small, incremental steps towards implementing them.
Below is a transcript of this episode.
Katie: So I'm here today talking with Katherine Bomer and Corrine Arens about their book in the classroom essentials series, A Teacher's Guide to Writing Workshop Essentials: Time, Choice, Response, really focusing in on those three things. Yes. Congratulations to you both on having the book out in the world for a while now. And I just want to get right to talking about it.

It is very focused on those three essentials: Time, choice, and response. And those are big idea concepts and yet I'm struck by how much incredibly practical support there is in the book. It's not a theoretical book, even though it's very grounded in the theory that that's what writers need. So, I wonder if you could each just say which practical part of the book are you most excited about and do you think will help teachers a lot?

Katherine: I love that question.

Corinne: Wow. Yeah, that's a great one. Katherine, do you want to go first?

Katherine: Aren't you sweet. I definitely have my choice and I also have my choice for you. How about that?

Corinne: Okay, okay.

Katherine: Talk about taking away choice.

Well, okay, let me just say that I think you helped so much in the time session because you were so deeply embedded in actual schools. I don't have the opportunity of being in a school every day and you are in schools, multiple schools, every day. And so you're really are right in the heart of dealing with a school schedule and time and noticing what teachers have and feel that they don't have and what are some of the answers for that in terms of crafting a special uninterrupted bubble of time, that we call it in our book, for writing. So does that feel like something you would like to talk about or have I totally taken away your choice?

Corinne: No, I do think that ... Well, thank you for that first of all. And I do think that time ... I was actually going to talk about the different ideas that we give them in terms of writing partnerships.

So, that was actually the first thing that came to my mind. So, if I could speak to that first and then I can circle back around to time, would that be okay?

Katherine: Yes, please.

Corinne: The work that I ended the year in Blue Springs this spring was so centered on writing partnerships. And what I found is that there's a misconception that they are like peer editors. And so then we have second graders who are trying to edit someone else's writing, and that doesn't really seem fruitful all the time. But it also gets to be a little bit deficit thinking in terms of, "Oh, well, I've got to pair people by ability. I've got to have a low writer talking to the high writer." And when we think about it in terms of us correcting each other's work.

And so we really, what I'm so excited about, and every time that I was in a classroom, I was like, "Man, I wish the book we're outside could give teachers these resources of just how to teach kids how to speak to someone as a partner within their writing." So, I really love that part of the book. And I feel like that's going to be really helpful to teachers as we start to continue to grow our writing partnerships or to launch them. If you've never had kids write or talk to each other about their writing. I love the dialogue and the talking stems in that part of the book.

Katie: Something I was thinking about in relation to this question too, is in section on choice, I think you really open up the idea of all the different ways that kids can have choice and it really got me to thinking about how hard it is to teach writing as a process if kids don't have choices. If you just tell them what to do, there's nothing to teach into. And so really the heart of teaching, the process of writing, is giving kids choices and I think it really illuminates that in a powerful way.

Katherine: Well, yes, our choice section is rich. It is rich with possibilities. We just pushed on each other's brains and looked around at all the classrooms and just said, "What are the multitudinous ways that we can give choice over to kids?" And choice means more than ... The first thing to think about, of course, is the utter importance of topic choice when kids are writing about what they want to write about, even if it's things that don't necessarily interest us as adults, as teachers, or things that we think are not really school appropriate, like video games. When we let kids choose that to write about, it's as if you all gave them red bull for a snack. They suddenly are on fire to write.

And that just makes sense, that when you're writing about something that brings you joy, you're going to want to do it. But besides topic choice, we just found all these amazing different ways that kids make choices of where to sit and who to sit with and how to sit. Literally some kids are on their bellies on the floor and then just choice being also the ability to make decisions.

So, there's choice/decision-making. So making a decision of what genre do I want to write in, and if I'm writing a poem, for instance, do I want it to be all one chunk of words? One big block of, of words, that's one way poems can look. Or do I want to put white space in between 20 different stanzas?

There are just a million different decisions to make as a writer, including when am I finished? And so in classic traditional classrooms, when you were handed a product, there was definitely a task, an assignment, and a time that you were supposed to be finished. I've just recently been going through boxes of old ancient pieces of paper from my mom's attic or the garage or something, I think. I'm, first of all, moved that she kept these pieces of student class work all the way from kindergarten, because they're really, really boring. Because all they are is spelling words and handwriting practice over and over and over. And there's nothing to look at to see a person in there. I'm like, who was I when I was a child? All I was was copying and getting a grade on it.

And so with, with student writing, when choice is there, you read student work and you feel like, "I hear you. I see you. I can find a person inside there because you have the personality of the child there." I totally lost track of your initial question, Katie.

Corinne: I think I can circle it back around because what she said was ... When I felt a, "Oh yes" moment when you were talking, Katie, was when you said, "There's nothing really to teach into." When we make all the choices for the kids, then it's just an act of compliance. Can they follow directions is essentially what I'm assessing. Not really tapping into their compositional thinking. And so that was the thing that struck me more than anything. And Katherine, all of those handwriting sheets and things, manuscript has a place in the world and everyone needs a John Hancock.

However, if we're really talking about compositional thinking, that's not giving us intel. That's not a formative assessment. That's strictly just, can they do it or can they not? And no wonder you would shy away ... I would shy away from teaching writing if that's what I felt like my writing instruction was.

Katie: And you have this gorgeous ending. "I'm the kind of writer who ..." That really shines a spotlight on these two young boys who've been co-authoring, Jackson and Tate. Choice is also the essence of identity. If you don't have any choices, you don't have an opportunity to know yourself in that particular way.

Katherine: Exactly.

Katie: And it's really what it all comes down to, isn't it? Is kids being able to walk away from this process with a sense of who they are in the world when it comes to writing. So, I think that's really powerful.

Katherine: So the section on response is another really rich section because we talk about response being not only from the teacher in the form of conferring, but also from peers in the classroom, the writing partnerships, and from certainly audiences that we can invite in with celebrations of writing and also now of course we are learning so much about how to be online and sharing our writing online. So many kids are going to come into the classroom in August and say, "I've got this. I am sharing my writing to someone in Egypt. So, I'm good with this." But the conferring piece is I want to just give a nod to the books that have come before mine, both Katie, your book with Lisa Cleveland, and also Carl Anderson's book on conferring and writing, and also Jen Serravallo's book on conferring and reading.

So there is a lot of information and a lot of great resources out there about conferring. But one thing that I love about our book, the part about conferring has wonderful videos attached to it for conferring. And what I love about those videos is that I think that I would share those videos right now with the parents that I know who are trying to homeschool, the parents who are reaching out to me and saying, "How do you do this? I have respect for teachers now, because I can't even ... How do you talk to your kids about writing without showing them that they don't have periods in their writing?" Which is, of course, what most adults think of when they think about talking to children about their writing, they think they've got to correct it. Correct the spelling and make sure that they put their periods and capitals, and that's all super important, yes. But it is not how to talk to kids about writing.

And so I think the videos in the book are really little visions for what conferring can look and sound like. And they are about, specifically, they show the kind of tone that we want to have with our kids, the kind of leaning in and number one, listening, the number one thing to do when you're with a child who's writing is to listen to what they're saying about their writing and how to ask open ended questions like, "What are you working on your writing? Talk to me about your writing." And how to talk about kids' writing process, what they're thinking and the decisions they're making as they write. Rather than just going straight for, "You need paragraphs."

And that's a very hard. I have all empathy and understanding for that being the first thing that comes into your mind when you're with a child, because that's how we were all taught and so of course it's the default position. But I think the videos and the information that's inside the book around conferring is going to help people, help teachers and parents if they want to check out the book, really know just how to just relax and lean in and listen to their children talk about writing.

Katie: And you mentioned, let's talk about the videos for a minute. Because there are 15 videos connected to this book, all of which captured in your district, Corrine. And actually, I was just looking at the overview. Really only three of them are your exquisite conferences with children. Every time I watched those, I just think I wish every child in the world could sit next to you, Katherine. [crosstalk 00:12:36]

But the other videos are different. They're not like the normal videos that are attached to a book. We've got a video that's about prioritizing time. We have one that's about the value of response. One about teaching into small group work. And can you just talk a little bit about your vision for the videos? What you hope they do? How they are different from more traditional videos about teaching?

Corinne: Well, I don't know, Katherine feel free to jump in, obviously, but I just feel like so much of this, if I could just see it and I could see what was possible, then I could so much more easily translate it into my own classroom. And I think that that is the gift of how these videos are crafted. They are in the moment. They are real time. They give such a strong ... I don't know another word than visual of what this can look like, when is it living and breathing within a classroom, what does it look like?

And I think that-

Katie: And across classrooms, that's one of the things that strikes me, right? It's not just a single classroom. You show routines in action in kindergarten and routines in action in sixth grade.

Corinne: Yes. And it's so funny to me. Thank you for highlighting that. Because I live in such a vertical world. I could be in kindergarten in the morning and then third grade and then back to kindergarten and fifth grade and first grade. And so I live in a vertical world, but that is exactly ... The gift of my job is embedded within those classrooms in terms of seeing things in and out of all different classrooms.

And it also, what I love about the videos, is that each of our teachers, you can feel a sense of continuity in what they are doing, but it is so individualized to who they are as teachers. And so I love the different, the ways that we've been able to capture that you can own this and it can look however you need it to look within your classroom and put your own stamp on it, but still knowing that you are valuing the principles of what we know to be true for writers. I think that's beautifully showcased within the videos.

Katherine: I absolutely agree with that. Going in, we really wanted to include so many different styles. Just so teachers know they can be themselves. We wanted for people watching the videos to know, "Oh, so I can be the kind of teacher who stumbles over her words a little bit." Or, "I could be the kind of teacher who every sentence that comes out of my mouth feels completely focused."

You can hear my own language, how it stumbles a little bit, and I'm that kind of person when I speak out loud. But there are other people who don't talk like that. And that's okay. We all have our different personalities and styles of teaching. And we were trying to capture that.

But also the main thing about the videos that I want to say is that they are fun to watch. They're actually little tiny mini Ken Burns documentaries. They've got-

Katie: Actually, they're Michael Grover documentaries.

Katherine: Yes, of course. Thank you, yay, Katie. Yes. Shout out to Michael Grover.

Katie: The wizard of documentary work at Heinemann.

Katherine: He is. He's a magician. But he put together these from a ton of raw footage. But what we knew we wanted was we have a couple that you could watch as just a straightforward mini lesson or straightforward conference and also there are ones that are more like that are like a vision. They're visionary, they're around big ideas. There's one about writing notebooks, and so you just get this vision and all the possibilities for what writing notebooks can be and look like along with a little bit of music in the background.

And we've got amazing teachers talking about their teaching. Oh my goodness. I love their testimonials. We've got children talking about their writing.

Corinne: The children's testimonials, oh.

Katherine: They'll melt your heart. And all of that's put together in these very small, easy to digest it, easy to watch, little movie-ettes.

Katie: Another feature that I really appreciate in the book, you have spotlights on both beginning writers and also bilingual and multilingual writers. What is it that you would most want readers to understand about those particular writers in their classrooms?

Katherine: Well, this was a big decision to add this feature into the book because we have to. There's nothing that I do in my work anymore that does not include or try to include everyone who sits in our classroom. That's just a mission in my life and I know it's a mission in Corrine's life also. And so we wanted to make sure it was a part of the book.

We make sure to give a nod, or what we call take a bow, to people who are more informed about teaching multilingual students than we are. But we also wanted to make sure that we can again, bring back to these foundational ideas and say, "Once again, these work for everyone." I will argue with anyone who says, "But these kids can't, or my kids can't because, fill in the blank." Because they're this or they're that, or we live here, or we live there.

No. The answer is always time, choice and response. And so, one thing we argue is that actually one thing we know from research and experience is that people who are learning another language, learning English as another language, need time. They need time to be using that language. And so in the writing workshop, kids have time to both write and talk a lot about what they're working on. And that is going to help anybody learning English as another language.

Kids who have choice of what to write about and so feel comfortable writing about their abuela or writing about whatever is important to them in their home life or their school life, are going to feel more comfortable trying out English because they have the choice. And kids who have encouraging response through conferring and peers and audiences are going to just want to keep trying and wanting to do better and learning more than if we just handed them a worksheet and said, "Fill in a line."

I'm just going back to those wrinkled moldy papers I've been finding in these boxes. These fill in the blanks with the correct phonetical word. It was okay for me. I managed to make 100s or 92s, but that one made me cry. But think about the difference between that, sitting in a classroom and doing that, or sitting in a classroom and being able to write about the party that you're having on Saturday with all your family coming over and how you're going to celebrate together and being able to use words that you do know in your own language. And that that's good and okay as far as learning language in the writing workshop.

Corinne: Yeah. And I would say that this is the most important part of the book in so many ways, because this work is universal. And just like Katherine said, for the multilingual students, there feels a need to over scaffold. And when we over scaffold, we are not truly understanding what they are capable to do if we didn't scaffold. And there's a fear that if we don't, so we're like preemptively rescuing them, right. Like I'm going to give you the graphic organizer because I think it will make it easier for you. And I'm assuming that this is going to be what you need when really, when we engage the children with the time to tell us what they know, and responding in a way that's not right or wrong, so many of the kids in some of these settings feel as if they're not good at X, Y, and Z. And this work allows them to be successful in ways that perhaps they haven't had a chance to feel in other areas. So, I think it's one of the most important parts of the book.

Katie: Okay. One last question. This book is beautiful to look at.

Corinne: It feels gorgeous.

Katie: And one of the most beautiful things is it's just filled with really exquisitely beautiful student writing. And it occurs to me when I just do sort of a flip through of that writing, is that there's a message there. There's something to take away from all the student writing in this book. And I wonder in your own words, what do you hope the message of all the student writing that I see in this book is for readers?

Katherine: Can I say the first thing I want is for people to be delighted by student writing. The two boys that you talk about, Katie, at the very end, Tate and Jackson. When Corrine and I first encountered the writing that they're talking about, these little tiny, teensy, tiny chapter books. They're just little, teeny, tiny, not even three by five size. And though they were writing those on their own and by the dozens, and the teacher brought them to the library and we're all standing around reading them to each other. And we were cracking up.

Adults after school reading students chapter books and cracking each other up. We were just delighted by the writing. And that's the first thing I would love people looking through this book and looking at the student writing is to just take delight in the humor, the originality, the creativity, the things that they write about that you would never in a million years think to write about. If we told them what to write about, never would we have anything as delightful as these little tiny chapter books that Tate and Jackson create.

Corinne: And that's one of the time savers, Katherine, is you're done having to search for the cutest newest thing because kids will not disappoint. Kids will always be more creative and have cooler things to say, then whatever we can find.

But this is what I want to say on behalf of the children. If the kids within these pages could talk to the audience, I think they would say things like this: We are here, we are capable, and we will knock your socks off given the opportunity.

So, get out of our way a little bit.

Katherine: Yeah.

Corinne: Honor the big principles and let us shine. I feel like if the kids could talk, those are some of the things they would say.

Katie: Oh, that's beautiful.

Katherine: That is beautiful.

Katie: I love that.

Katie: Well, thanks you too, again. Thanks to you both. Congratulations to you both. It's a beautiful book. I'm just so happy to have it as a new classroom essentials book. I think it absolutely fulfills the mission of these books, which is to bring people into foundational work, remind people about what is foundational about the work they've been doing for years. So, I'm thrilled that it's out in the world.
...
Learn more about The Teacher's Guide to Writing Workshop: Time, Choice, and Response at Heinemann.com

Follow us on Instagram @heinemannpub to stay up to date on the latest books, your favorite authors, and upcoming events!

Katherine Bomer, author of The Journey Is Everything, Hidden Gems,and Starting with What Students Do Best,is one of the field's most gifted writers as well as one of its most gifted teachers of writing. In more than two decades of teaching and consulting, she has used her writers' eye to focus on how craft isn't just an instructional goal but an instructional tool that allows writers to grow well beyond the range of most publicly available assessments. An internationally-known consultant and frequent keynote speaker, Katherine began her consulting career with the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project. In addition to Writing a Life, she is the coauthor of the Heinemann title For a Better World(with Randy Bomer) and delivers on-site PD through Heinemann Professional Development Services.

A published poet and essayist, Katherine is also coauthor (with Lucy Calkins) of A Writer's Shelf. She began over fifteen years ago as a professional developer with the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project. A classroom teacher for ten years, she now works with teachers in elementary and middle schools throughout the country. As a frequent speaker at conferences and institutes, she combines a teacher's practical advice, a writer's love of language, and a powerful plea for social justice.

Corinne Arens, Ed.D., is a district-level Instructional Coach for Writing in the Blue Spring School District, Blue Springs, Missouri. She is a teacher consultant for the Greater Kansas City Writing Project and has served on multiple state-level committees.

For many years as the author of bestselling Heinemann books such as About the Authors, Study Driven, Already Ready, and In Pictures and In Words, and as a member of Heinemann's Professional Development Services, Katie Wood Ray gave teachers resources and PD that transformed writing instruction and helped children discover a lifelong love of writing.

In 2014, Katie "moved to the other side of the desk" and joined the dynamic team of editors at Heinemann where she works closely with authors to craft powerful professional books on a range of literacy topics. Katie is also the series editor for the newClassroom Essentialsbooks from Heinemann. Tasked with bringing foundational, progressive practices to a new generation of teachers, Katie works to ensure that the sharp focus and enhanced design of each book best serve the content. She also teamed up with her longtime collaborator, Lisa Cleaveland, to write one of the first books in the series, A Teacher's Guide to Getting Started with Beginning Writers.

You can find her on Twitter at@KatieWoodRay

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On the Podcast: Writing Workshop Essentials with Katie Wood Ray, Katherine Bomer, and Corinne Arens

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How can we create daily structures and routines that support writers?

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Chapter 7 from A Guide to the Writing Workshop

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Chapter 7 from A Guide to the Writing Workshop

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"Inside the Minilesson"

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2017-2018 K-2, Provisioning Writing Workshop

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Consider this list of materials to plan for setting writers up for success.

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3- I learned...

2- I want to try...

1- I am still wondering...

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I learned that active engagement is the most important part of the mini-lesson. Through this step, students' interests are piqued and more curiosity/questions/reflections are generated.

I want to try conferring with my kids as I still give feedback in general, and not more on a one-on-one basis.

I'm still wondering how I can increase student engagement, especially for those who are ESL students.

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Article summarizing feedback study. (Original Study embedded)

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Every teacher or coach worth their salt knows that there's no moment more important than the moment feedback is delivered. Do it correctly, and the learner takes a step forward. Do it poorly, and the reverse happens.

The deeper question is, what's the secret of great feedback? We instinctively think that effective feedback is about the quality of the information - telling the learner to do this and not that. But is this true, or is there something else going on?

A team of psychologists from Stanford, Yale, Columbia, and elsewhere recently set out to explore that question. They had middle-school teachers assign an essay-writing assignment to their students, after which students were given different types of teacher feedback.

To their surprise, researchers discovered that there was one particular type of teacher feedback that improved student effort and performance so much that they deemed it "magical." Students who received this feedback chose to revise their paper far more often that students who did not (a 40 percent increase among white students; 320 percent boost among black students) and improved their performance significantly. (See the study here.)

What was the magical feedback?

Just one phrase:
I'm giving you these comments because I have very high expectations and I know that you can reach them.
That's it. Just 19 words. But they're powerful because they are not really feedback. They're a signal that creates something more powerful: a sense of belonging and connection.

Looking closer, the phrase contains several distinct signals:

1) You are part of this group.

2) This group is special; we have higher standards here.

3) I believe you can reach those standards.

The key is to understand that this feedback isn't just feedback - it's a vital cue about the relationship. The reason this works so well has to do with the way our brains are built. Evolution has built us to be cagey with our efforts; after all, engagement is expensive from a biological standpoint. But when we receive an authentic, crystal-clear signal of social trust, belonging, and high expectations, the floodgates click open.

I think the lessons for teachers and coaches are pretty simple:

First, connect: like John Wooden said, they can't care how much you know until they know how much you care.

Highlight the group: seek ways (traditions, mantras, fun little rituals) to show what it means to belong in your crew.

Don't soft-pedal high standards. Don't pretend that it's easy - do the opposite. Emphasize the toughness of the task, and your belief that they have what it takes.

If you have any ideas, stories, or examples to share about how coaches and teachers achieve this kind of connection, I'd love to hear them.

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The Simple Phrase that Increases Effort 40% - Daniel Coyle

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Every teacher or coach worth their salt knows that there's no moment more important than the moment feedback is delivered. Do it correctly, and the learner takes a step forward. Do it poorly, and the reverse happens. The deeper question is, what's the secret of great feedback?

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Carl Anderson

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There are a variety of record-keeping apps, which make it possible to monitor your students' writing progress. Confer, DailyNotes, Evernote, and Notability are four popular apps that promise to make it easier, dare-I-say a pleasure to maintain meaningful conferring notes on all of your students.

Have you made use of any of these apps in the past? Please leave a comment, sharing your insight, so other folks can get some tips for how to make their conferring notes go digital in time for the 2013-2014 school year.

I am a literacy consultant who has spent over a decade working with teachers to improve the teaching of writing in their classrooms. While I work with teachers and students in grade K-6, I'm a former fourth and fifth-grade teacher so I have a passion for working with upper elementary students.

I'm the author of Craft Moves (Stenhouse Publishers, 2016) and the co-author of Jump Into Writing (Zaner-Bloser, 2021), Welcome to Writing Workshop (Stenhouse Publishers, 2019), and Day By Day (Stenhouse, 2010).

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There are a variety of record-keeping apps, which make it possible to monitor your students' writing progress. Confer, DailyNotes, Evernote, and Notability are four popular apps that promise to make it easier, dare-I-say a pleasure to maintain meaningful conferring notes on all of your students. Have you made use of any of these apps in...

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There is no shortage of formative assessment strategies, techniques, and tools available to teachers who use formative instructional practice in their classrooms. Here is an extensive list of 75 digital tools, apps, and platforms that can help you and your students use formative assessment to elicit evidence of learning. We didn't just add any old tool to this list. Here are the criteria we used for those that made the cut:

Supports formative instructional strategies and ways to activate learners to be resources for themselves and peers

Is free or awful close to it (under $10 per year, where possible)

Allows both students and teachers to take the activator role when possible (sometimes teachers need to get things started)

Before you dig into the tools, I encourage you to spend some time thinking about exactly what you want to accomplish with your students. "How to pick the right digital tool: Start with your learning goal" by Erin Beard can help you wrap your head around goals and guide you in choosing the best tool for the task. "27 easy formative assessment strategies for gathering evidence of student learning" can help you decide what strategies work best for you and your students.

Record audio and video

Create quizzes, polls, and surveys

1. Crowdsignal Lets you create online polls, quizzes, and questions. Students can use smartphones, tablets, and computers to provide their answers, and information can be culled for reports.

2. Edulastic Allows you to make standards-aligned assessments and get instant feedback.

3. FreeOnlineSurveys Helps you create surveys, quizzes, forms, and polls.

4. Gimkit Lets you write real-time quizzes. And it was designed by a high school student!

5. Kahoot! A game-based classroom response system that lets you create quizzes using internet content.

6. MicroPoll Helps you create polls, embed them into websites, and analyze responses.

7. Naiku Lets you write quizzes students can answer using their mobile devices.

8. Obsurvey Designed to make surveys, polls, and questionnaires.

9. Poll Everywhere Lets you create a feedback poll or ask questions and see results in real time. Allows students to respond in various ways. With open-ended questions, you can capture data and spin up tag clouds to aggregate responses.

10. Poll Maker Offers unique features, like allowing multiple answers to one question.

11. ProProfs Helps you make quizzes, polls, and surveys.

12. Quia Lets you create games, quizzes, surveys, and more. Access a database of existing quizzes from other educators.

13. Quizalize Helps you create quizzes and homework.

14. Quizizz Guides you through designing quizzes and lets you include students in the quiz-writing process.

15. Quizlet Lets you make flashcards, tests, quizzes, and study games that are mobile friendly.

16. Survey Hero Designed to build questionnaires and surveys.

17. SurveyMonkey Helpful for online polls and surveys.

18. SurveyPlanet Also helpful for online polls and surveys.

19. Triventy Lets you create quizzes students take in real time using individual devices.

20. Yacapaca Helps you write and assign quizzes.

21. Zoho Survey Allows you to make mobile-friendly surveys and see results in real time.

Brainstorm, mind map, and collaborate

Present, engage, and inspire

Generate word or tag clouds

1. EdWordle Generates word clouds from any entered text to help aggregate responses and facilitate discussion. Word clouds are pictures composed of a cloud of smaller words that form a clue to the topic.

2. Tagxedo Allows you to examine student consensus and facilitate dialogues.

3. Wordables Helps you elicit evidence of learning or determine background knowledge about a topic.

4. WordArt Includes a feature that allows the user to make each word an active link to connect to websites, including YouTube.

Get real-time feedback

Foster family communication

1. Remind Lets you text students and stay in touch with families.

2. Seesaw Helps you improve family communication and makes formative assessment easy, while students can use the platform to document their learning.

3. Voxer Lets you send recordings so families can hear how their students are doing, students can chat about their work, and you can provide feedback.

Strengthen teacher-to-student or student-to-student communication

Keep the conversation going with live chats

1. Yo Teach A backchannel site great for keeping the conversation going with students.

2. Chatzy Supports live, online chats in a private setting.

Create and store documents or assignments

1. Google Forms A Google Drive app that allows you to create documents students can collaborate on in real time using smartphones, tablets, and laptops.

2. Piazza Lets you upload lectures, assignments, and homework; pose and respond to student questions; and poll students about class content. This tool is better suited for older students as it mimics post-secondary class instructional formats.

Learn more

There are several resources for learning more about formative assessment and responsive instruction strategies. Consider our formative practices workshops, where school and district teams can gain a better understanding of the role formative practice plays in instruction and the four foundational practices to use in the classroom. Or for a quick start, download our eBook "Making it work: How formative assessment can supercharge your practice."

Jump in, try new tools and methods, and have fun!

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75 digital tools and apps teachers can use to support formative assessment in the classroom

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We've compiled an extensive list of 75 digital tools that can help teachers use formative assessment to elicit evidence of student learning.

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If you can give us a list of Writing Mentor Texts for Lower Grades.