Choice Lit Topic: 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.
Results
Writing a Strong Ending: 4th Grade Writing Conference
Tony Keefer confers with Tommy about writing a strong ending for his piece.
Reporting and Crafting: Conferring with Ezra
Ruth Ayres confers with Ezra about crafting an ending using My Rotten Redheaded Older Brother by Patricia Polacco as a mentor text.
Powerful Conferences
When we expect powerful conferences, then we get powerful conferences. Sometimes it is easy to think the videos of conferences we see online or the benefits we read about in...
November Contract: Family and Memoir
November is a month of celebrating family and giving thanks. It’s a time when many people go "home" to relatives and traditions. As much as we all love our families,...
Shared Blogging in the Primary Classroom
Several years ago I discovered blogging as a way to build our first-grade learning community. Blogging changed our community as it opened the conversations between students, gave quieter students a...
Kindle Highlights: Conferring with Nicole
Franki Sibberson confers with fourth grader Nicole using Kindle Highlights as a teaching tool.
Dandelions, Chinese, and Patience with Our Youngest Learners
Seven dandelions plucked with short stems sit in a line on the arm of the bench. By this, I know that a very young child has been here recently. Only...
Finding a Writing Buddy
We begin our introduction to the revision process of our genre study with a question, “What might you want to read in another writer’s personal narrative?” The hands pop up....
Illustrations in Kindergarten: Conferring with Dalton
Ruth Ayres confers with kindergartner Dalton about illustrating his writing.
Choice, Content, and Format: Understanding How Boys Write
During a Skype visit last spring, author Gae Polisner asked my class how many of them loved reading. Hands shot to the sky; all of my 24 students raised their...
Exploring Explanatory Moves Writers Use
There is a difference, subtle though it may be, between informational and explanatory writing. Let’s take a deeper look at the moves writers use to explain beyond merely explaining how...
Group Conference in First Grade
Katie DiCesare meets with Anna and Brendan to help them learn from each other and prepare to share their rereading strategies with the whole class.
Mentor Texts for “Versus” Stories
What is it that young writers find so appealing about versus stories? Last year my first-grade class loved versus stories. They went on a versus writing streak in writing workshop...
Teaching the Genes
My twelve-year-old daughter, Lindsay, recently started using Pandora, a free Internet radio service, billed as “the Music Genome Project”, that allows listeners to customize playlists of songs by artist, song,...
Why Write?
I went through a period of time when I didn’t want to write. For more than five years, I’d established and maintained a daily writing habit. Then I found myself...
October Literacy Contracts: Fear and Conflict
October is a wonderful month for teaching and learning, with relatively few interruptions compared to other months on the calendar. By this point in the year, we’ve established routines, relationships...
Whole-Class Research Planning
Andrea Smith leads her fourth graders through brainstorming for their owl research project.
Limiting and Extending Choice in Student Research Projects
Have you read enough research projects on bears, baseball, and badminton? Over the past several years, I have learned unlimited choice in research projects does not always make students’ writing...
“We Gather Together”: On Research and Weddings
There are many similarities between committing to a research project and committing to a spouse. As I worked with a team of seventh-grade teachers at Wawasee Middle School to create...
Writing Leads Minilesson
Karen Terlecky uses mentor texts and an analogy to help students analyze leads in this minilesson from her fifth-grade classroom.
Keeping Kids Safe on the Internet
Keeping our kids safe is always foremost on our minds. When children are little, we teach them how to cross the street by looking both ways. We teach them not...
