Topic: Writing

The six types of writing assignments represent the way we really work, the assignments we actually give, and what we can ask students to do within the constraints of time, class size, student needs, and available resources.

Before you get started on your journey of making books in writing workshop, there are a few things you need to know about the practice.

Today on the Heinemann Podcast, does the design of an assignment impact the quality of a student’s work? Jim Burke is the author of The Six Academic Writing Assignments: Designing the User’s Journey.

Begin conferences by asking students an open-minded question that invites them to talk about what they're doing as writers.

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.

When you ask the question, 'How’s it going?' at the beginning of writing conferences, you’re doing much more than inviting students to talk about what they’re doing as writers. The question initiates your relationship with each student and deepens each of these relationships.

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.

Today on the Heinemann Podcast, a special conversation between Linda Rief and Penny Kittle. Both are at the Boothbay Literacy Institute. Penny talks with Linda about her new “The Quickwrite Handbook: 100 Mentor Texts to Jumpstart Your Students’ Thinking and Writing.

Before we were teachers, we were readers−readers who understand the power reading has to change our lives from the new characters we meet, the new places we visit, and the new lessons we learn.

Quickwrites offer easy and manageable experiences that helps both students and teachers find their voices and develop their confidence.

A wrap up of the PLC series posts from 2017-18 year.

In this video, Allison & Rebekah explain how simple it can be to get the creative juices flowing with inspiration from 'analysis in the wild'.

I’ve been asking myself, “How can I create writing curriculum that is accessible to all learners, one in which they are truly motivated to uncover new stories they are driven to share?” I want my students to grow their ideas about different perspectives in the world and discover insight into their own identities.

My theory as a writing teacher this past year was this: getting my students to reflect on and talk about the revisions they were trying—to ask them to “get a little ‘meta’”—would help foster these identities and build a culture of revision in my classroom.

Your first draft is like a dark room and our questions can show you the parts we’re curious to know more about—the places to shine your flashlight. It’s your choice as a writer which questions tug at your pen the most, but choose one or two, and cast your beam in those dark corners.

If you read aloud regularly to your students, you know: there is no time in the day quite like read aloud time. A good read aloud can bring a group together like nothing else, can provide a foundation of camaraderie, trust, and respect in a classroom.

Patricia Vitale-Reilly's book Supporting Struggling Learners: 50 Instructional Moves for the Classroom Teacher provides practical strategies for empowering students with the right tools to grow and learn. In this video, Patricia talks about providing strong study skills.

In what ways are certain topics treated as taboo in our classrooms and why? How often do we avoid talking and writing about race because we fear what others might say? If we avoid controversial issues, how will our students learn how to have civic discussion of such issues?