This is a great first session for those needing a crash course or a quick refresher on the writing traits, as they will be referenced frequently throughout all Writing Remix sessions. The 6-Traits language is a fabulous tool to support writing instruction and assessment. Participants will walk away with a strong understanding of what each trait looks like in a variety of grade levels and writing genres.

Session 1: 8:00-9:15 a.m.
Presenter: Kristina Smekens
Audience: K-12 | ELL All Levels

This session reveals several ways to introduce the trait language to your students using mentor text, song lyrics, and visual icons. It answers questions like: How long do you spend on each trait? In what order should you introduce them? What do you do after reading a related picture book? Leave this session with a clear vision for how you could introduce the traits to your own students.

Session 2: 9:30-10:35 a.m.
Presenter: Kristi McCullough
Audience: K-12 | ELL All Levels

The power of mentor text is that students read and analyze the qualities of strong writing before they are expected to apply them within their own writing. Mentor text can include picture books, exemplar papers, and real-world texts. This session reveals the do’s and don’ts of incorporating mentor text into your mini-lessons and how to choose which texts to utilize for which writing skills.

Session 3: 10:50-11:55 a.m.
Presenter: Courtney Gordon
Audience: K-12 | ELL All Levels

Students need a tool that defines “good” writing and identifies what the teacher wants. Rubrics accomplish this. However, they must be kid-friendly. Five-year-olds and/or ELLs have to be able to “read” it. This session will reveal strategies to create and grow a rubric that is visual and includes simple language that our youngest writers understand.
Session 4: 1:05-2:10 p.m.
Presenter: Kristi McCullough
Audience: K-2 | ELL Levels 1-2

Whether teachers have utilized writing rubrics for years or never heard of the "R" word, this session will reveal how simply a rubric can be incorporated into any writing classroom. Additionally, teachers will learn how to create a "kid-friendly" rubric, update the rubric as writers grow, apply the same rubric to different writing units, and convert writing scores to grades.

Session 5: 2:25-3:30 p.m.
Presenter: Courtney Gordon
Audience: 2-12 | ELL Levels 3-5

Conventions instruction must go beyond memorizing rules. Rather, focus on the purpose, function, and impact the grammar skill has on a sentence’s overall message. When students know why a reader needs a convention and when a writer wants a particular convention, they then realize the importance of accurate convention application. This session outlines several ways to make your initial grammar lessons more powerful, more visual, and more memorable.

Session 1: 8:00-9:15 a.m.
Presenter: Courtney Gordon
Audience: K-12 | ELL All Levels

Many students who can correct sentences in workbooks and pass online quizzes cannot apply appropriate conventions within their own writing. The secret to skill transfer is to avoid isolating grammar in a separate facet of language arts instruction. In this session, attendees learn how to weave the most relevant grammar skills into various writing units all year long.

Session 2: 9:30-10:35 a.m.
Presenter: Kristina Smekens
Audience: K-12 | ELL All Levels

A grammar skill is not mastered in a single 15-minute lesson. There is a developmental progression that occurs across a multi-day mini-lesson series. Participants will study several mini-lesson outlines and learn how to support students as they learn new skills. This includes noticing the grammar skill within mentor text, then trying it within previous drafts, and ultimately applying the skill in a new piece.

Session 3: 10:50-11:55 a.m.
Presenter: Kristina Smekens
Audience: K-12 | ELL All Levels

Students need abundant practice with a new grammar skill. This may include a variety of bell-ringer activities, peer-editing exercises, customized self-editing checklists, and more. However, mastery is demonstrated when students can accurately apply the grammar skill within a new first draft. This session reveals how and when to assess students’ growing understanding of new skills while also expecting evidence of skills previously taught.

Session 4: 1:05-2:10 p.m.
Presenter: Kristina Smekens
Audience: 3-12 | ELL Levels 3-5

As students’ phonics instruction and understanding of sentence-sense develops, young writers are ready for their first conventions mini-lessons. Attend this session for five-year-old-friendly lesson resources and key instructional points to teach spacing between words, ending with punctuation, stretching fragments into sentences, self-editing, and more.

Session 5: 2:25-3:30 p.m.
Presenter: Kristi McCullough
Audience: K-2 | ELL Levels 1-2

In order to write well in math, science, and social studies, the standards require explicit instruction be taught in every subject area. This session will show attendees how they can punctuate students’ subject-area learning with short and powerful writing experiences. This includes providing discipline-specific writing instruction, assigning relevant writing tasks, and assessing content accuracy and basic writing skills.

Session 1: 8:00-9:15 a.m.
Presenter: Kristi McCullough
Audience: 3-12 | ELL Levels 3-5

It’s expected that students go beyond simply summarizing and regurgitating content-area knowledge. They must apply what they know about a concept in writing. This session outlines a wide variety of short and powerful writing formats that generate informative and argumentative responses across all grade levels and content areas.

Session 2: 9:30-10:35 a.m.
Presenter: Courtney Gordon
Audience: 3-12 | ELL Levels 3-5

Support students as they attempt to write strong, complete, and cohesive summaries that utilize content-area vocabulary. This session will include 10 different strategies including the Key-Word Summary, the Shrinking Summary, Information Pyramids, 20-Word Gists, Framed Writings, and more. Try out several strategies during this session and see authentic student examples executed in various content areas and grade levels.

Session 3: 10:50-11:55 a.m.
Presenter: Kristi McCullough
Audience: 2-12 | ELL Levels 3-5

More than just a landing spot to copy notes from the board, nonfiction notebooks are a place for students to reflect on key concepts and deepen their thinking in writing. Participants will first see various options for setting up, organizing, and integrating this classroom resource in any content area. Then the presenter will reveal numerous notebook-entry writing topics and ideas.

Session 4: 1:05-2:10 p.m.
Presenter: Courtney Gordon
Audience: K-12 | ELL All Levels

The research is clear— learning sticks when students have opportunities to process and digest content in chunks. This requires students to pool their thinking and deepen their understanding through conversation and writing. This session will demonstrate procedures for Talk Moves, Timed Mingles, Think-Ink-Pair-Square, and several other classroom-tested strategies to weave conversation and writing into any subject area.

Session 5: 2:25-3:30 p.m.
Presenter: Kristina Smekens
Audience: 3-12 | ELL Levels 3-5

The bulk of this session includes many activities that fit the four stages of writing—drawing, labeling, listing, and sentence writing. Gain an understanding of how persuasive, informative, and narrative are represented within these developmental stages. Participants leave with a calendar suggesting a progression of these stages across the year.

Session 1: 8:00-9:15 a.m.
Presenter: Kristi McCullough
Audience: K-2 | ELL Levels 1-2

We don’t teach traiting— we teach writing. This session describes how to bring the trait language into the writer’s workshop while teaching individual writing skills listed in grade-level standards. Attendees will learn that the 6 Traits are simply six words that help teachers prioritize their lesson instruction and provide students with specific feedback for improvement.

Session 2: 9:30-10:35 a.m.
Presenter: Courtney Gordon
Audience: K-12 | ELL All Levels

The 6 Traits are not equal. Some traits merely add sophistication to the writing, while others are imperative and essential. The trait of ideas is the most essential trait, and consequently, consumes a large majority of the mini-lessons taught throughout the year. This session will reveal favorite Smekens strategies to support students in developing ideas, adding details, incorporating evidence, and more.

Session 3: 10:50-11:55 a.m.
Presenter: Kristi McCullough
Audience: K-12 | ELL All Levels

Students must be able to write an organized first draft. This requires that they have the skills needed to gather relevant details, group them together, and present them in a logical order. This session will provide a sequence of mini-lessons to support students in achieving this, including how to apply this thinking to the three most common graphic organizers used during the pre-writing process.

Session 4: 1:05-2:10 p.m.
Presenter: Kristi McCullough
Audience: 3-12 | ELL Levels 3-5

All teachers are expected to provide writing experiences across the three major modes—persuasive/argumentative, informative, and narrative. However, these units do not have to span weeks and end with a final draft. Rather, learn how to spiral through the same skills in multiple mini-units that provide students with numerous writing opportunities.

Session 5: 2:25-3:30 p.m.
Presenter: Kristina Smekens
Audience: 2-12 | ELL Levels 3-5

How often should students be writing? How many minutes should students write at a time? What do I do while students are writing? This session begins with various ways to fit writing into the daily schedule of a self-contained classroom. The rest of the session dissects the facets of the whole-class mini-lesson and independent writing time, including how they can be applied to math, science, and social studies.

Session 1: 8:00-9:15 a.m.
Presenter: Kristina Smekens
Audience: K-12

Meeting with every writer every day is a daunting task. However, group conferring is a way to touch base with more students more frequently. This session will outline the four-step rhythm to such an efficient teacher-writer meeting. In addition, acquire examples of trait-specific feedback, sample forms for documentation, and a procedure for peer conversations.

Session 2: 9:30-10:35 a.m.
Presenter: Kristi McCullough
Audience: K-12 | ELL All Levels

The writer’s workshop concludes with an Author’s Chair where a couple of students share their writing with the rest of the class. This should be a productive and powerful activity— but for many, it’s not. After identifying what’s working and what’s not, attendees walk away with a set of procedures that transform the Author’s Chair from a show-and-tell activity to a powerful and purposeful celebration of great writing accomplished that day.

Session 3: 10:50-11:55 a.m.
Presenter: Courtney Gordon
Audience: K-12 | ELL All Levels

Everyone says they teach mini-lessons, but what are they, really? During this session teachers learn the four steps of a powerful 10-15 minute writing lesson. Learn the hallmarks of highly-effective teaching that include student engagement and the gradual release of responsibility. This session will also include a live mini-lesson modeled by the presenter and several video clips from real classrooms.

Session 4: 1:05-2:10 p.m.
Presenter: Courtney Gordon
Audience: K-12 | ELL All Levels

Teachers struggle to keep their writers focused and on task during in-class writing time. This session offers practical strategies for handling the “I’m done” writer and the “I need help” student. Walk out the door with several routines and procedures that will build writer stamina and student independence, regardless of their age or grade level.

Session 5: 2:25-3:30 p.m.
Presenter: Kristi McCullough
Audience: K-12 | ELL All Levels

This session troubleshoots the four errors that plague students’ answers to text-based questions. Their written responses may lack evidence, include made-up evidence, provide just a detail, or be missing an explanation. This session will provide strategies to combat each of these weaknesses to strengthen responses to reading.

Session 1: 8:00-9:15 a.m.
Presenter: Courtney Gordon
Audience: 2-12 | ELL Levels 3-5

Students are assessed in reading through their writing. This session begins with a quick review of how the inference and its evidence are both part of a constructed response. The rest of this session focuses on the essential ingredients to a well-written constructed response utilizing the Yes, MA’AM strategy. Participants will learn to repeat key words, cite textual evidence, and conclude a constructed response with a written explanation.

Session 2: 9:30-10:35 a.m.
Presenter: Kristina Smekens
Audience: 2-12 | ELL Levels 3-5

Extended-reading responses are longer essays that require students to know how to supersize the Yes, MA’AM formula. This concept works for any informative or argumentative writing prompt based on provided passages. In this session, attendees learn how to teach students to generate a strong, multi-paragraph response that includes a powerful combination of textual evidence and its significance.

Session 3: 10:50-11:55 a.m.
Presenter: Kristina Smekens
Audience: 3-12 | ELL Levels 3-5

Young writers are expected to write simple persuasive pieces, and they have to respond to their reading. Why not combine these two expectations? Teach students how to share their opinions about characters, settings, ideas, and concepts learned from their reading. This session reveals numerous lesson concepts to improve students’ opinion writing tied to popular picture books read in the primary grades.

Session 4: 1:05-2:10 p.m.
Presenter: Kristina Smekens
Audience: K-2 | ELL Levels 1-2

Beyond viewing “research” as a massive unit that culminates with a multi-page product, students need to know how to gather, organize, and present researched information on a regular basis and at every grade level. This session will demonstrate how to execute the research process in short, simple products all year long.

Session 5: 2:25-3:30 p.m.
Presenter: Courtney Gordon
Audience: K-12 | ELL All Levels