Teaching Writing

Getting Started with Voice Recorded Responses

Gigi MicAllister gives step-by-step advice on how she set up voice-recorded response as an option in her fourth-grade classroom.

Visual Essays

Gretchen Schroeder finds visual essays are a fun option for her high school students to present what they have learned just before Christmas break.

Supporting Brave Writers

Tara Barnett and Kate Mills use the Sara Bareilles song “Brave” to help their fourth-grade students move from bed-to-bed stories to more emotive writing early in the year.

Teaching Students How to Give Revision Suggestions

Franki Sibberson shares a lesson progression to help students learn how to give helpful revision feedback. She uses online videos and resources to support her work.

Why I Don’t Like Erasers

Melanie Meehan explains why erasers can be problematic in writing workshops, beyond just eliminating the ability of teachers to see the progression of revisions in a young writer's work.

Story Maps for Reflection in the Midst of Drafting

Jennifer Allen finds the use of a story map opens up revision possibilities for a young writer stuck in a drafting rut.

Student (and Teacher) Risk-Taking

Carly Ullmer ponders what it means to take risks in her middle school classroom as she and her students experiment with different response options.

Branding Blogs (Part 3)

Andrea Smith concludes her series on the power of branded student blogs in her fourth-grade classroom.

Branding Blogs (Part 2)

Andrea Smith continues her series on the power of "branding" for improving student blogs. In this installment, students examine mentor blogs and bloggers.

Best First Drafts

Ruth Ayres confers with fourth grader Nicole and reinforces advice from her mom about capitalizing proper nouns, as well as the importance of applying what you know about conventions in first drafts.

The Craft of Blogging

Franki Sibberson uses a micro-progression of her own draft of a blog post to help her third graders improve their blogging skills.

The Importance of Audience

Julie Johnson demonstrates how teachers can help students think through issues of audience during writing workshops.

Top 10 Conferring Tips

Ruth Ayres gives her best advice for honing your conferring skills with this succinct list of tips for better conferences.

Bad Days in Workshops

Franki Sibberson realizes there are some bad days in literacy workshops that hold no great life lessons for teachers and students, and that is okay.

Teaching Revision Strategies: Introduction and Modeling

Heather Rader shares a process for teaching peer editing and revision skills that helps students learn how to assist each other kindly during writing workshop. This is the first video in a three-part series.

An Unconventional Scavenger Hunt: Finding Errors

Jennifer Schwanke finds that a scavenger hunt for errors to add to a bulletin board is a great way to build editing skills and a writing community all year long in her seventh-grade classroom.

Teaching Revision Strategies: Partner Work

Partners confer over revision in fifth grade in this second installment of a three-part video series.

The Pocahontas Ewww: Writing and Inquiry for Context

Mark Levine finds his middle school students are appalled by some of the cultural differences from times gone by, and shares how he fosters more understanding.

How to Keep Conferring Notes

Ruth Ayres shares her grid notes sheet, and takes teachers step-by-step through the process of using this assessment tool in conferences and instruction.

Charts as Tools, Charts as Teachers

Tara Barnett and Kate Mills give three principles they use to help avoid the “charts as wallpaper” syndrome in their fourth-grade classroom.

Better Mondays Through Quick-Writes

Mark Levine uses quick-writes with his middle school students to set the expectation at the start of the week for work together that is independent, thoughtful, and conversational.

Plans for Writing Circle

Stella Villalba starts writing workshop with her young English language learners by having everyone share their plans in a community circle.

Using Mentor Texts to Craft Leads

Tara Barnett and Kate Mills carefully select the first mentor text for crafting leads in their fourth-grade classroom.

Mentors for Process and Habits

Ruth Ayres shares some of her favorite mentors and mentor texts for developing good writing processes and habits.

From Mentor Texts to Mentors in First Grade

Katie DiCesare uses technology in her first-grade classroom so that students can see the lives of the authors who create the texts they love.

Beginnings, Middles, and Endings: The Power of Baseline Assessments

Carly Ullmer shares how much her seventh-grade students learn from examining their own growth as writers with baseline, midpoint, and final assessments throughout the year.

Getting to Know Writers: Using Quotes

Dana Murphy concludes her series on getting to know writers with an activity on responding to quotes. This activity is a great baseline for gauging attitudes and previous  experiences early in the year.

Laying the Foundation for Genre Writing

Shari Frost helps a teacher dealing with dreadful how-to drafts from her students by sharing quality mentor texts.

Getting to Know Writers: The Inventory

A Joyful Mess

Ruth Ayres writes about the messiness of analyzing needs, celebrating achievements, and thinking about what’s next with writers in workshops.