Topic: Lucy Calkins

Most reading workshop experts suggest that students spend no more than 10% of their reading time writing about reading. During the other 90% of reading time, students should be reading, engrossed in books they can read with a high level of accuracy in order to achieve the kind of reading volume that leads to maximum growth.

Lucy Calkins and her TCRWP coauthors recently sat down and answered some frequently asked questions about this essential series. Read the excerpts below and follow the link to view the full interviews.

Writing can be terrifying: a blank page holds the potential of failure. Writing can be difficult: a pen can presents challenge with letter formation and grip. Writing can be intrusive, especially when the expected topic is one’s life.

At this week’s TCRWP Twitter chat, Lizzie Petkanics and Kristi Guinness will lead a discussion on the management, functionality and benefits of helping your readers to build a richer sticky note practice.

At this week’s TCRWP Twitter chat, staff developers Mike Ochs and Celena Larkey will lead a discussion on the place of vocabulary and word study in and out of workshop. This duo is sure to bring a wide range of expertise to the chat.

It may seem a paradox that consistency breeds creativity. It seems that creativity would stem from the new, the original, the constantly changing. But often, underpinning creative endeavors is predictability and order.

Workshop has a predicable routine, and predictable tools, and predicable expectations, students are freed up from having to guess what is expected of them day after day. They are not stymied by waiting for instructions. Instead, they know how workshop will go, and they know what is expected of them

Monday, August 27 through Thursday, August 30 the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project will host their annual August Twitter festival, holding multiple chats each night. This year’s topic: Phonics!

Show and Tell is designed to come directly after kindergarten unit one, Launching the Writing Workshop. It extends the work started in unit one, and supports young writers in taking risks with invented spelling.

The final moments of summer break are upon us, and even for some, these moments are over and another school year is underway. The cusp of a new year can be an invaluable time to pause and consciously call up data and observations from last year as you plan for the year to come

This week, thousands of educators are gathering with The Reading and Writing Project at Teachers College at Columbia University to learn, to think, and to share on the topic of the Teaching of Reading.

This week is the August Writing Institute at The Teachers College Reading and Writing Project. There, Thousands of educators from all over the country and world are learning, thinking and writing together.

As the saying goes, “Well done is better than well said.” Nowhere is modeling more important than in the teaching of writing.

If your classroom library is still a work in progress, don’t worry - with some planning, organization, and creativity, you can turn your classroom library into a truly inspiring place.

A classroom library is the at the heart of reading instruction. The kinds of texts students encounter in their library will help shape the kinds of readers they become.

Today on the Heinemann Podcast, Lucy Calkins, author and series editor of the Units of Study for Reading and Writing, shares in her own words the latest, groundbreaking work to come out of the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project: the new Units of Study in Phonics for grades K–2.

This week, institute season kicks off at The Reading and Writing Project, as thousands of educators gather at Teachers College in New York City to reflect upon, reinvigorate, and refine their teaching of writing.

If you are an educator with some time away from school this summer, hopefully you are using a lot of it to recharge. This time to re-anchor to what energizes you is crucial and much-needed.