Writer’s Workshop
Struggling Writers
Wednesday, March 28th, 2012
Question: How do you help a struggling writer? Answer: A simply-asked question with no simple answer. My response depends on the type of struggling writer we're talking about. Is it a writer who can write but won't? Or a writer who wants to write but can't? [read more...]
Brainstorm Research Topics with Desktop Graffiti
Tuesday, November 15th, 2011
Make paper tablecloths by placing butcher-block/bulletin board paper overtop clusters of student desks. Small groups look through magazines and cut out words, headlines, and photos that are on controversial, political, and social topics appropriate for an expository assignment. [read more...]
Personalized Post-its
Tuesday, November 1st, 2011
Giving individual feedback to student writers can be a daunting task, especially when you are commenting on multiple facets of the writing. Ever wish you could customize a Post-it note so you didn't have to keep writing the same thing over and over on assignment after assignment? You can! [read more...]
Fun Revision Strategy: "Story Surgery"
Wednesday, August 31st, 2011
Asking students to add details to their writing often causes frustration--for the students and for the teacher. They don't want to add more. And they feel like they can't because there's no more room on the paper. Aha! It's time to introduce story surgery. [read more...]
Using Technology in Your Literacy Classroom
Wednesday, August 31st, 2011
In the last year, numerous teachers have asked about the tech tool used during Smekens presentations. It's called a document camera (a.k.a. visual presenter or an Elmo). The particular brand and model Kristina has is the Epson DC-10s. [read more...]
Set Writing Expectations with a Parent Letter
Wednesday, August 31st, 2011
To create an effective writing community, you need the understanding and cooperation of your students' parents. Send a letter home early in the year letting them know how writing works in your classroom and how they can support their writers at home. [read more...]
Last Chance Workout
Friday, March 4th, 2011
Part of any achievement is goal setting. What about your writers? What are their goals? Whether your students are preparing for the state writing assessment or an in-class assignment, what are they going to be intentional about? [read more...]
Rubric Mini-Lesson Mishap
Friday, March 4th, 2011
Jen Caruso (literacy coach at Hatfield Elementary in Mitchell, IN) was conducting a mini-lesson model on how to build a rubric with second graders. The lesson included defining writing quality based on rubric levels. [read more...]
Focus on Building Writers, Not Simply Illustrators
Thursday, March 3rd, 2011
In order for your young writers to write with more details, more words, and more sentences, they need to spend more time writing and less time drawing. But getting seven-year-olds to put down their crayons can be difficult. Try one of these two approaches: [read more...]
Teach Students to Assess the Readability of their Own Writing
Tuesday, January 25th, 2011
When you're ready to nudge students to the next level in their writing, you might want to introduce them to the Flesch-Kincaid Grade-Level Test. Microsoft Word has a built-in feature that will give you a score, letting you know the grade-level readability of your document. [read more...]
Teaching the Power of Word Spacing
Tuesday, January 25th, 2011
Even with tongue-depressor sticks named "Space Man" and the lure of using M&M candies as space markers, some primary students still struggle to space between words. It's hard for them to manage their writing and craft their ideas at the same time. [read more...]
Strategies for Helping Spelling Perfectionists
Monday, December 13th, 2010
Some writers are open to sound-stretching and writing out a word using their best spelling. But then there are your perfectionists--those who only want to write words correctly. If they limit their writing to only words they can spell, then their writing vocabulary will be skimpy. [read more...]
Crown a Conventions Court
Monday, October 25th, 2010
In the late spring, young writers tend to find their writers' fluency. They are writing faster and faster, longer and longer. This is a great sign that their writers' muscles are growing. Unfortunately, with all these details flowing, students tend to neglect their conventions. [read more...]
Maintain a Spiral Record of Mini-Lessons
Monday, October 25th, 2010
One way to easily log your daily mini-lessons is to utilize spiral-bound index cards. More than your lesson plan book, this at-your-finger-tips tool would house the details of your mini-lesson instruction every day of your writer's workshop. [read more...]
"Idol" Inspires "American Writer" Peer Conferences
Monday, October 25th, 2010
Need a little more pep in your peer conferencing? Try a creative approach by fourth grade teacher Sherry Wakal. Modeling her concept after the popular Fox television show "American Idol," Sherry has each writer "audition" (read) his draft to the class on "American Writer." [read more...]
Organizing Student Supplies
Monday, October 25th, 2010
As your writers bring in their class supplies this fall, you may want to house them in a central location rather than allowing children to maintain their own. Keeping them in one place helps ensure that the tools are not being misused when you're not using them and keeps them organized [read more...]
Summer To-Do List
Monday, October 25th, 2010
As you look ahead to next school year, here are some actionable tasks that may improve your literacy environment and/or instruction. Select a couple (or add your own priorities) to tackle over the summer break. [read more...]
Hooked on 'Tronics
Thursday, October 14th, 2010
We're all trying to grab the attention of our secondary students. And after a few short minutes with Michelle Rodgers, high school English teacher at Woodlan Jr-Sr High, it's easy to see that she is "in touch" with her students. [read more...]
Writing Folder--Students Invent a New Word
Tuesday, September 21st, 2010
I spent a fabulous day at Oak Grove School District (Green Oaks, IL) in August, and during the training day, we discussed options for structuring and organizing a writer's notebook. I was explaining the idea of using the binding machine to spiral together several pocket folders [read more...]
Teach Students How to Omit Clichés
Wednesday, April 21st, 2010
A sign of a more sophisticated writer is one who can write with strong description, interesting similes and metaphors. Unfortunately, in an attempt to include more description and imagery, students often pull from a bank of overused [read more...]
Organizing Your Anchor Paper Collection
Friday, April 16th, 2010
Finding a system that worked for me meant sticky notes — one of my favorite ways to organize anything! Keeping track of the title of the writing, the genre, the grade level makes it easy to access later and helps you remember why you kept it in the first place. [read more...]
The "+1" of 6+1 Writing
Tuesday, April 13th, 2010
One way to offset this burden of final copies is to balance writing assignments. Students don’t need to follow the entire writing process for every piece they begin. Real-life writers do not finish everything they start. In fact, they abandon much of what they begin! Student writers should be [read more...]
Kid-Friendly 6-Traits Reminders
Monday, April 12th, 2010
Keeping a bulletin board or display of the traits up year-round provides a constant reminder for the classroom environment. But what about when students are working at home? Or when they’re peer conferencing in the hallway? They still need to [read more...]
Got Purple Words?
Friday, April 9th, 2010
Purple highlighters aren’t that easy to find. That’s why I chose that color to use for this assessment piece. And that’s just what this is — assessment — a way to evaluate and affirm what students are doing well in their writing. As [read more...]
Trait Assessment for Writing
Thursday, April 8th, 2010
If you’re using the 6 traits to teach writing, are you also using the traits to assess student writing? When we look at the standardized test writing rubrics, all the traits are there (ideas/content, organization, style — word choice, sentence fluency, and [read more...]
6-Traits Cheat Sheet for Assessment
Thursday, April 8th, 2010
When I was first learning about the 6 traits, it seemed like the different definitions and characterisits blurred together. Too many different things to keep track of. When teachers attend a Smekens 6-Traits Intro workshop, I [read more...]
Toy Time in Writer's Workshop
Thursday, April 8th, 2010
What do Slinkies, Silly Putty, and a toy train have to do with Writer’s Workshop? Everything! Since we know that children (and adults) all learn differently, keying into the visual to pair with our lecturing just makes sense. But even more than that [read more...]
Managing Peer Conferences
Wednesday, April 7th, 2010
Peer conferences — teachers either love them or hate them. I talk to some teachers who hate them because the conversations get out of hand and last longer than they need to. It’s hard to keep track of how long a couple of students have [read more...]
Publish "Real" Books with Studentreasures
Tuesday, April 6th, 2010
Even though "publishing" can take forever, kids love to finish a book they can call their own. Wouldn't you love to be able to give your students slick-finished, permanently bound books with their names on the spines? Well, you can! Studentreasures is a company that offers to do just that. [read more...]
Starting a Writer's Workshop in Your Classroom
Tuesday, April 6th, 2010
Teaching the 6 Traits sounds like a great idea, right? But where do you start? So many teachers have told me through the years that they shy away from the traits' approach because they're just not sure how to get it going. What do you teach first? Teaching the traits starts with mini-lessons. [read more...]
Dissecting Picture Books
Tuesday, April 6th, 2010
That’s what prompted me to create the Trait Trackers. Slipped into the matching books, the boomark-size Trait Trackers allow teachers to easily find the most important skills from each of the 20 titles included. Rather than reading a picture book aloud and trying [read more...]
One Way To Improve Student Writing
Tuesday, April 6th, 2010
What is the #1 way to encourage a student to improve his writing? Write a note to tell him what he’s doing right! And while you’re note writing, wouldn’t it be great to reinforce the 6 traits at the same time? You can simply write in the focused trait on a Post-it, or [read more...]
Engage More Writers with Highlighter Tape
Monday, March 8th, 2010
West Side Middle School (Union City, IN) seventh grade teacher Carla Durham likes to engage her students with fun writing tools in the classroom. One that she has found many uses for is highlighter tape. [read more...]
Dabble with Alternatives to the Traditional Research Paper
Monday, March 8th, 2010
The research paper/project can be a daunting task for students and teachers. The nature of research reports is to have students write about something they initially know little or nothing about. This consequently requires you to teach students skills on how to conduct research [read more...]
Track Mini-Lessons with Labels
Monday, January 11th, 2010
Storing and organizing your writing mini-lessons within a file box is not a new idea. However, I've developed a new tool to aid your organization further. I've created six oversized labels, one per trait, that would adhere to the front of each of your 6-trait file folders. [read more...]
Go Ahead, Laugh Out Loud
Monday, January 4th, 2010
The goal of revision is to make the piece sound better, more clear, more thorough. Revision shouldn’t be about rewriting or recopying. Teach students ways to create space within a draft so they can add, change, and cut content without recopying a [read more...]
Book Recommendation for Writing Process
Wednesday, December 16th, 2009
Fifth grade teacher Amy Becker (Ridge Lawn Elementary, Ridge Lawn, IL) recently raved about a new book by Orland Park, Il author Esther Hershenhorn entitled S is for Story. I love this book, too, because it’s partially a picture book and partially a nonfiction how-to guide for aspiring writers. [read more...]
Create Personal Life Maps
Friday, October 2nd, 2009
Create personal life maps on life experiences. Have students draw a life map plotting places, people, holidays, vacations, events, and milestones in their lives for as far back as they remember. Give students [read more...]
FAQ: Introducing the 6 Traits
Tuesday, September 8th, 2009
Q: I know I should introduce each trait one at a time within six different mini-lessons. But what do the students do during independent writing time on those days? I want them to write something, but I'm not sure what it should be. [read more...]
Teaching Grammar Within the Writer's Workshop
Thursday, September 3rd, 2009
When planning a writing unit (e.g. expository / animal report; Dear Santa letter / persuasive letter writing; fun time at recess/narrative writing; etc.), first consider what grammar/convention skills are dominant within that type of writing. Don’t simply teach the grammar skill [read more...]
Target List-Making as a Writing Genre
Wednesday, February 18th, 2009
Before early writers create sentences, they write words. Instead of turning those few words into a simple sentence, encourage students to write with more details, more words and create more powerful lists. List writing has many benefits. [read more...]
There is No "I" in "Research Paper"
Monday, February 16th, 2009
Teaching students to move from the first-person personal narrative to the third-person research paper is difficult. Many students struggle to omit the first-person pronoun from their drafts. They start their sentences with "I believe" and "I know" and "I learned." [read more...]
Find Poems in Previous Writing
Monday, January 26th, 2009
Have students find a previous writing (narratives work well for this activity) they’d like to experiment with. Then have them read the piece entirely through to review it. After they’ve read it over once, they should read it again, this [read more...]
Organizing Your Mini-Lessons
Wednesday, January 21st, 2009
Most of you have heard me describe my method of organization. I use a hanging file box to store my writing mini-lessons. The light-weight box and handle makes it easily portable. You can take the whole thing from home to school, or you can just grab a single hanging file. [read more...]
Speech Delivery Versus Reading the Writing
Wednesday, December 31st, 2008
Q: I recently had students present an oral summary of a nonfiction piece they wrote. I told them they shouldn't just stand up in front of the class and read the whole piece to us, yet most of them did. HELP! How do I get students to deliver a speech and not just read their writing? [read more...]
Create Simple Flap Booklets
Monday, December 15th, 2008
When studying seasons, weather, holidays, animals, places, or any other informational topics, primary students can utilize a simple flap booklet to organize their writing and work on simple sentences. Fold a piece of blank paper vertically. Then cut 3-5 slits up the crease on one side. [read more...]
Simple Gift of Words
Thursday, December 11th, 2008
Gifts have a way of affirming the recipient. Sometimes it's not necessary to wrap up a gift. There is much to be said for the simple gift of words. Typically the sender's expense is none, but to the recipient, the gift is priceless. What about giving words of affirmation to your own students? [read more...]
Second Graders Who Still Use Pictures to Start Writing
Monday, October 27th, 2008
Q: What do you do with second graders who still use pictures when they begin writing? Some of them take so long on the picture that they don't get to the writing itself. Should I ban pictures all together (except for the illustration as part of publishing)? [read more...]
Should Kids Look Up Word Spellings in the Dictionary?
Monday, October 27th, 2008
Q: Is it wrong to expect kids to look up word spellings in the dictionary? A: Looking words up in the dictionary is a necessary skill to learn. And when focusing on editing and conventions, then absolutely, the dictionary should be used. However, it's not necessarily an appropriate first-draft strategy. [read more...]
Literacy Notebooks
Sunday, September 14th, 2008
Many teachers have implemented a writer's notebook concept into their classrooms. But what about a reader's-writer's notebook -- a literacy notebook? Since we are trying to create writers who write for readers and readers who read like writers, then merging the two together makes sense. [read more...]
Publishing Writing on the Bulletin Board
Wednesday, June 11th, 2008
For some reason, posting writing on a hallway bulletin board frequently elicits conversation. Some folks think that if it's in the hallway it should be error-free. Others feel that this is a celebration of learning and the current level of achievement (which is not yet perfect, but excellent nonetheless). [read more...]
Tracking Student Writing Experiences
Wednesday, June 11th, 2008
Even if your state's "big test" is behind you, the concepts and skills it assesses on the exam should be a part of your year-long teaching. The prompt portion, or what some call “on-demand writing,” should not go by the wayside. [read more...]
Culminate a Genre Study with a Writing Prompt
Monday, May 19th, 2008
After an intermediate or secondary teacher spends a couple weeks teaching a particular type of writing (compare-contrast, persuasive, narrative, how-to, expository, etc.), then the study typically concludes with a final draft of a written piece. [read more...]
Making Editing Conversations Meaningful
Friday, May 16th, 2008
I have had terrific feedback so far on one of our teacher tools, the Revision Conferencing Cards. This is a set of four cards with guiding questions designed to strengthen the conferencing process during peer editing. [read more...]
Managing Writer Conferences
Friday, May 16th, 2008
Is writer conferencing bogging you down? Do you struggle to meet with all your writers regularly? Does the rest of the class get off-task during writer’s workshop while you are meeting with one writer? Here are some management tips [read more...]
Understanding the Difference Between Revision and Editing
Wednesday, May 14th, 2008
There is a clear distinction between revising ideas and editing conventions. Revision makes the piece SOUND a whole lot better--which addresses the traits of ideas, organization, voice, word choice, and sentence fluency. Editing makes the piece LOOK better (conventions). [read more...]
Introducing a Writer's Notebook to 6-year-olds
Wednesday, May 14th, 2008
So you want to incorporate a journal or writer's notebook into your primary classroom? Excellent. My guess is you have the same first two questions every other primary teacher wonders -- 1) Loose sheets of paper or bound notebook pages? 2) Lined paper or blank? [read more...]
Getting Ready for the Next School Year
Wednesday, May 14th, 2008
For those of you who have started a 6-Traits mini-lesson file, there is a good chance that lessons, anchor papers, handouts, and other resources have been piling up on your desk and nearby shelves. Now is the time to get them filed and sorted. [read more...]
Prioritizing End-of-the-year Writing Skills
Wednesday, May 14th, 2008
Spring is that time of year when there are so many things bombarding the classroom teacher that it’s difficult to stay focused on the top priorities. Many of you know about my “Launch” in August & September. Well, let’s consider your “Landing” for April & May. [read more...]
Picking Partners for Reading, Revising, and More
Wednesday, May 14th, 2008
Q: How do you keep kids from picking the same partners for reading, revising, etc.? A: Allowing students to select their partners is motivating but often leads to poor choices or kids always having the same partners. Consider instilling a system that allows you to call out the grouping method for the day. [read more...]
Should We Post Imperfect Publications?
Wednesday, May 14th, 2008
Q: How should I handle hanging elementary student writing in the hallway when it’s not perfect? A: The key is to promote realistic expectations for student writing. In my opinion, those realistic expectations are that young writing will contain errors. If every piece is written to perfection, a couple things happen [read more...]
Organizing Your Classroom Writing Tools
Wednesday, May 14th, 2008
Q: How do I organize all my writing tools in the classroom (highlighters, sticky notes, etc.)? A: Consider creating a “Tools Area” that has everything a writer needs--paper, pens, dictionaries, graphic organizers, etc.--all in one spot! [read more...]
When Should Assignments be Graded?
Wednesday, May 14th, 2008
Q: How often should you finish and grade writing assignments? Right now my students have several assignments going that I haven't collected or graded. Is this normal? A: Okay, first, for the short answer -- I'd suggest 1-2 finished (revised/edited) pieces a quarter. [read more...]
Stretching Ideas in the Primary Grades
Wednesday, May 14th, 2008
Are you a primary teacher struggling to stretch the ideas and details provided by your young writers? If so, here are three ideas that can help: IDEA 1: Start by asking "why?" You'll love this idea from Dana Schaal, a kindergarten teacher from Swayzee Elementary. In an email she wrote: [read more...]
Leprechaun Adventure Stories
Wednesday, May 14th, 2008
Albany second grade teacher Ellie Holdren reviewed beginning/middle/end in a single-draft writing activity. Her "Leprechaun Adventure Stories" took only two days. Read on for specific details for Day 1 and Day 2 instruction. [read more...]
