Teaching Writing
Everyone who writes for Choice Literacy loves teaching writing, because we all write ourselves. We know it is "hard fun," as Donald Murray famously said—exasperating and exhilarating at the same time. The writing workshops you will read about here and see in our videos are busy, noisy, vibrant places. And most days, we wouldn't want to be anywhere else than in the midst of 'em! Here is where you'll find our latest discoveries, insights, and occasional boneheaded mistakes in teaching writing.
Latest Content
Dabbling: Reviving a Focus on Play
Mary Lee Hahn finds a focus on play and "dabbling" renews student writers during a unit on narrative nonfiction.
Humor Writing with Teens
Gretchen Schroeder develops a unit on humor writing that engages and delights her high school students.
My Five Objectives for the Start of the School Year
Gretchen Schroeder winnows many competing demands at the start of the year down to five clear objectives in her high school classroom.
Celebrating and Nudging: First-Grade Writing Conference
Bitsy Parks takes time to celebrate first grader Colson’s finished writing, even as she nudges him to try a technique shared in the day’s minilesson.
Joy
Katrina Edwards deals with a frustrated writer on the verge of tears in her first-grade classroom. She realizes the element that is missing in her writing workshop is joy.
Digital Revision: Conferring with Aidan
In this week’s video, Gigi McAllister helps fourth grader Aidan revise his writing on the computer to flesh out character development.
Creating an On-Demand Writing Checklist
On-demand writing can be a stressful assessment task for students, but it does mimic the type of writing many adults face in their professional lives. Tara Barnett and Kate Mills work with students to create an on-demand writing checklist.
Expert Students
Christy Rush-Levine uses a quick assessment during writing workshop conferences to connect expert students with peers who might need assistance. She includes a video example of the practice.
Literary Analysis: Tone and Scholarly Writing
Christy Rush-Levine shares how to help student writers understand and develop a scholarly tone. The feature includes a video example of small-group instruction.
Brainstorming Writing Topics with Drew
Katherine Sokolowski confers with Drew about writing at home, brainstorming possible topics. In the process she shows how much she knows about Drew's life outside of school.
Using If I Stay to Model Literary Analysis
Christy Rush-Levine uses the mentor text If I Stay to model literary analysis, building on her middle school students’ interest in the recent movie.
Building Relationships with Authors
Katie DiCesare is helping her students move from mentor texts to seeing authors as mentors through their websites and other digital resources.
First-Grade Minilesson: Reading Like Writers
Bitsy Parks teaches her first graders early in the year how to read like writers, highlighting examples from favorite mentor texts.
Hosting Reading and Writing Events
Gigi McAllister explains why you have to be a bit choosy about reading and writing events since there are so many possibilities. Here are some she values in her fourth-grade classroom.
The Riskiest Writing
Mary Lee Hahn tackles the riskiest writing of all — in front of students and improvised with no advance drafting or planning.
Minilesson: Writing a Mentor Text
In this week’s video, Gigi McAllister models writing in front of her fourth-grade class. She takes advice from students as she develops the characters in her story.
Get in the Pool: Teachers Who Write
Ruth Ayres shares how she was always someone who wrote—until she became a teacher. Getting back into writing was all about motivating her reluctant students.
Teachers Who Write
Melanie Meehan explains why your own writing, however imperfect it is, might enhance your teaching tremendously.
Literacy Routines for Applying See-Think-Wonder
Shari Frost finds that the See-Think-Wonder activity is great to use as a “bell-ringer,” as well as throughout the day to promote deeper thinking and engagement.
Teaching Students to Start at the Right Place
Melanie Meehan uses focus questions for teaching students to start at the right place in their writing, moving them beyond the bed-to-bed stories that plague so many literacy workshops.
The Ins and Outs of Using a Jot Lot
Tara Barnett and Kate Mills use a jot lot to turn students’ notes on their learning into instructional plans and assessment.
Environmental Group Notes
Katherine Sokolowski meets briefly with a group of fifth-grade girls to go through the notes they are taking for their environmental studies project and talk through next steps.
Do I Really Have to Keep Conferring Notes?
Ruth Ayres answers a question from teachers, Do I really have to keep conferring notes? Spoiler alert: The answer is yes.
Reminder Notes
Bitsy Parks teaches her first graders to write sticky note reminders throughout the day, and is delighted by the learning and community building that ensues.
Getting the Ball Rolling in a Realistic Fiction Unit
Melanie Meehan helps elementary students move from narratives to realistic fiction by beginning with “facts” about their fictional characters.
Life in a Single Breath
Shirl McPhillips says hello to autumn and explores the power of haiku.
Free Range Learning with Nonfiction (Part 1)
Andrea Smith's students explore nonfiction through free-range roaming. She explains how she sets up expectations and resources early in the year in this first installment of a two-part series.
Conferring Questions
Ruth Ayres finds there can be a difference between questions in writing conferences that inspire an enthusiastic response, and those that foster more reflection and independence. Download a question list to use during your writing conferences.
Quick Reading Reflection in First Grade
Bitsy Parks has her first graders complete a quick reading reflection before a share session early in the school year.
Growing Writing Stamina
Tara Barnett and Kate Mills have a confession to make: in the first weeks of school, many of their fourth-grade students didn’t write much at all in workshops. It was only after tackling the issue of writing stamina head-on that they saw rapid progress.
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