Helping students develop into strong writers is difficult work. Fortunately, as teacher Kevin Hodgson discovered recently, the Common Core emphasis on writing in every content area means there are many more colleagues with ideas to share.
Kids on the Cusp / Teaching writing
by Mary Tarashuk · Published 11/05/2014 · Last modified 11/29/2019
Leaping into writing with students can be almost as thrilling as sky-diving, says Mary Tarashuk, who has now tried both. Here she describes how she is modeling “the writer as reader” with her 4th graders and shares their organizer for narrative writing.
Kids on the Cusp / Teaching writing
by Mary Tarashuk · Published 05/27/2014 · Last modified 11/30/2019
Having helped her students visualize scenes and characters during read alouds, Mary Tarashuk tries the same idea with writing. She and her students “write aloud” as they create text to match the opening illustrations from The Invention of Hugo Cabret. Then they envision their own stories.
If asking student writers to develop voice, stamina and range isn’t hard enough, says teacher educator Troy Hicks, we now have digital tools to contend with. Watch as Hicks helps his 6th grade daughter think through her creation of a book report video.
Working Draft / Writing with Students
by Kevin Hodgson · Published 04/22/2014 · Last modified 11/16/2019
Eager to muse about the future of writing instruction, Kevin Hodgson calls on the handy ThingLink app to share reflections with nine authors featured in April’s Educational Leadership magazine. Penny Kittle, Carol Jago, Jeff Anderson, et al – read this!
Good writing instruction doesn’t have to be complicated, says literacy consultant Sarah Tantillo. No matter what genre you’re teaching – a paragraph, a timed essay or a full-blown research paper – she recommends these basic steps. Rubric included!
Working Draft / Writing with Students
by Kevin Hodgson · Published 11/03/2013 · Last modified 11/17/2019
ELA teacher Kevin Hodgson often joins his students during freewriting time and sometimes shares his own messy work, as a way to model what writers do.
Good writing has a theme. It’s the heartbeat of any essay or story. ELA teacher-author Marilyn Pryle shares her strategies to help students write more thematically.
Book Reviews / Writing / Writing Craft
by MiddleWeb · Published 09/08/2013 · Last modified 12/03/2019
The 2nd edition of What A Writer Needs is even better than the first, says ELA teacher Rachel Small. It blends Ralph Fletcher’s wisdom with excellent teaching tools.
Teaching Argument Writing: Supporting Claims with Relevant Evidence and Clear Reasoning is not a portable guide, says reviewer Jaime Greene, but a book that “did help me begin to wrap my brain around what quality argument in the classroom sounds and looks like.”
