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
Five Phrases That Should Be at the Top of Every Writer’s First Draft
See it. Feel it. Hear it. Taste it. Smell it. This is it. This is what Patti McNair, memoirist and writing teacher, recommends to her students to place at the...
Austin Makes Writing Plans
In this video, Austin reads his writing and shares his next steps by self-recording a video to upload to the Learning Management System. Read the companion article by Tammy Mulligan.
Helping Young Writers Make Plans
When I heard some of my first graders exclaim, “I’m done. What do I do now?” and “I don’t know what to do," or even worse, “What am I supposed...
Ten Ways to Celebrate Writers
Lucy Calkins shared on Twitter [now X], “The power of a reading and writing workshop is having teaching that is predictable, ongoing, consistent, so that we have time and space...
Picture Books to Teach Conflict
One of the first units we teach in seventh-grade language arts is on short stories. The unit begins with lessons on story elements that should be review from lessons the...
Four Keys to Making Workshop Work
“I don’t know what workshop is. We haven’t talked about that in my schooling,” the teachers said to me. We were having a conversation about the upcoming sessions these teachers...
Quick Take: Beware of Pet Peeves
Ruth Ayres cautions us to not let our pet peeves get in the way when working with student writers.
Reasons to Launch Writer’s Notebooks with Primary Writers
We had been writing all year. Making book after book. It started to feel mundane. I wondered if my students were getting the message that writers write only books. I...
Supports for Our Youngest Writers
“You have to know 48 letters to begin to write,” the primary educator proclaimed to the large group gathered to take a closer look at emergent and early writers. As...
Combining Personal Narratives and Comics
Two units that I’ve taught in my classroom for years are always favorites: personal narratives and comics. Personal narratives I’ve loved for many reasons. One, whether I'm teaching fifth grade...
Using Art to Bridge Storytelling
Aminah Robinson was an Ohio-born artist (1940-2015) whose paintings, drawings, and poetry honor African American culture by exploring history and ancestral legend. Some of the themes explored in her work...
Where the Writing Carries Meaning
Ruth Ayres explains the way image, text, and sound work together to create meaningful writing. She helps us consider where the writing carries the most meaning, as well as how...
Fairy Tales with a Multimodal Twist: Process and Product
The lights in the library dimmed. The room, filled with parents and other distinguished guests, quieted. Students wiggled in their seats, whispering excitedly as they waited. It was time for...
Fairy Tales with a Multimodal Twist: Laying the Groundwork
“We picked the name Prince Sparklepants because we wanted people to laugh.” The three girls giggled as they told me about the main character in their twisted fairy tale. “Tell...
Conventions and Keeping It Real
Conventions. Ahh, the bane of a writing teacher’s existence. How many times have I looked at a student’s writing and seen lowercase letters starting sentences, names not capitalized, end punctuation...
Is Grammar-Check Cheating?
I was recently having a conversation with friends when, as part of a larger story, I mentioned that I had my students install Grammarly, a grammar checker extension, on their...
Editing to Consolidate
Writing teachers spend a lot of time helping students edit their work. Getting words down on paper is the easy part. Choosing which words to keep around? Entirely different, entirely...
Crafting Argumentative Essays
Ever since my dad recorded The Eagles’s Hotel California album onto a cassette tape along with my Sesame Street songs when I was a toddler, music has been a part...
Yoga Poses and Workshop Processes: Honor the Journey
It’s still dark outside when I descend the stairs, careful not to wake my sleeping children with sounds of creaky floorboards. When I arrive at the mat, I cross my...
How Pictures Can Engage and Inspire Writers
One time, I watched a second grader work on an information piece about a favorite farm in town. As she wrote about the buildings, she squeezed her eyes closed. “I...
Writers’ Club
One of the first things I loved about school as a child was the clubs. Not the clubs that teachers led, although those were fun, but the clubs my friends...
