Topic: Lucy Calkins

Student conversations about writing, whether with a peer or a supportive adult, can provide powerful support on multiple levels. Opportunities to talk during writing workshop might take the form of rehearsal for writing, problem solving, reflection, feedback, or goal setting.

Not only can teachers be flexible with what is taught to a small group of students, but also how it is taught can be differentiated according to how much teacher scaffolding, or how much student independence is appropriate for the students in that group.

Consider how well you know your students by this time of year. By now you know about their interests, hobbies, favorite sports, and so much more. The best literacy assessments help you to get to know another side to your students--as readers and writers.

What if preparing for tests could look, sound, and feel like your favorite units of study for reading and writing? What if they could have the confidence and the tricks-of-the-trade to make it possible for them to do their best work on every test they take?

Writing workshop is not a time where where students prepare to someday write a letter to the editor, or prepare a speech for their local school board. They are doing it right now, every day, in ways that shape their schools and communities in important ways.

Lucy Calkins's leadership is rooted in her practice of reading and writing workshop instruction, but where did that instruction begin and how was she called to literacy work to become the leader we know today? How has Lucy Calkins nurtured her own culture of continuous study?

Book clubs provide an authentic purpose for reading closely, note-taking, and writing about reading--to prepare for great conversation. When book clubs meet, the conversations are usually open-ended and completely student-directed.

In reading and writing workshop, strategic partnerships can help us provide an audience, built-in feedback provider, and peer-reviewer for every student. While we can’t clone ourselves and have a teacher next to every student, we can set up partnerships that support, motivate, and inspire.

This week on the Heinemann podcast, a conversation with author Lucy Calkins on leadership. In Leading Well: Building Schoolwide Excellence in Reading and Writing, Lucy Calkins draws on the transformative work that she and her colleagues at the TCRWP have done.

At this time of year, it’s natural to experience a flagging of energy - both yours and your students’. Attention is divided between school and all of the holiday goings on, and there’s a sense that everyone could really use the December break.

To assess for independence, probably the most important assessment is observational: what do you notice when you sit back and simply watch. You might come up with a checklist to guide your observations, something that would work across subjects areas.

Read an excerpt from Chapter 7 of Lucy Calkins' new book for school leaders. In this chapter, you’ll find: ways to make time for teachers to plan together, tips to ensure collaborative groups go well, ways to anticipate and dissipate resistance, and more.

At this point in the year, it’s important to take stock of how your students are progressing toward independence and whether it would be helpful to shine a light on this all-important focus.

Supporting independence and helping students to become true, life-long writers also takes a certain kind of flexibility and willingness on teachers' parts to let go of the reins.

The TCRWP phonics team has been observing and collecting data as teachers have gotten the phonics units off and going. This feedback will inform the ongoing phonics work, including the development of the second grade series.

Empowerment comes from having a clear vision of the work that needs to be done, and from having a sense of autonomy in one’s process. It is from this thoughtful balance between shared goal and a menu of options that smart decisions can come.

Reading is a process that is internal, and where the problems lie can seem difficult to pinpoint. Happily, though, for many young readers, once they get focused help working through stuck points, their progress seems to skyrocket.

when a teaching community comes together in a shared study of a topic, they become a community of learners. They become more open to not having all of the answers, and to letting go of old ways of thinking.