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More and more, I've been recognizing the need to give students some freedom in their writing lives. Can independent writing time be the answer?

My favorite gifts to give are the ones that have come from my heart and my pen!

This week my colleagues and I are writing posts that we hope will make your life a little easier. We’re sharing some ways to work smarter, not harder.

This week my colleagues and I are writing posts that we hope will make your life a little easier. We’re sharing some ways to work smarter, not harder.

You've got to practice writing to teach writing!

Some students want to write more than what is required of them in writing workshop. Enter independent writing projects! But how do you go from being another set of eyes on some additional writing a student does to helping him/her go public with their work?

Encouraging students to have back-up work honors who they are as writers.

Channeling students to write over the summer can generate loads of independence and engagement. Read on for tips on how to get started.

Today launches our Independent Writing Blog Series! Join us all week long as we write about writing projects, summer writing, getting published in the real world, multi-genre projects, pulling back to let kids write on their own, and much, much more! Also join us for a Twitter chat on Monday, May 12 at 8:30pm EST with the hashtag #TWTBlog.

My students were always shocked to learn that my favorite subject to teach wasn’t writing… it was social studies!  I was a history minor in college and almost considered getting my first master’s… Read More →

An interview with Author Germano Zullo + a giveaway of his new book, Line 135.

If you’re planning to launch independent writing projects in your class during the final weeks of school, then you’ll most likely have several students who might want to write a book about a… Read More →

The Day My Mom Came to Kindergarten can be used to help kids find a topic and to teach students a variety of craft moves. Read more about this book and then leave a comment if you'd like a chance to win a copy.

Amy Krouse Rosenthal provides insight into her new word play book. Chronicle Books offers a giveaway of the book to one reader who comments on this post.

“The act of telling your story and sharing part of your life with somebody is alive and well—even more so than at the dawn of blogging.” –Lee Rainie, director of the Internet and… Read More →

With the school year wrapping up, I’m assuming that many of you are starting your final units of study.  I’m sure many of you are doing an independent writing project unit so as to get your students ready to go off and write independently this summer. When I received a review copy of Todd H. [...]

April 2009 Poetry Challenge Gifts Originally uploaded by teachergal One-third of my students attempted the April 2009 Poetry Challenge, which I gave them as an optional, independent activity during the month of April to celebrate National Poetry Month. It was a lot of work in a month that included over a week off from school. However, three [...]

We had recess yesterday, which I supervise on Mondays only. There were kids clustered around the classroom playing games, doing art projects, and working on Mad Libs. One of my students, E, came over to me and asked, “Remember that book contest you told us about a few months ago?” I raised my eyebrow. [...]

I received a bunch of questions from a regular reader of TWT yesterday. Her questions seemed like ones that other folks might want the answers to, so I asked her if I could answer them on TWT without mentioning her name. She said yes. Q. My kids constantly tell me, “my mother conferred [...]

Fall 2006. One of my talented former students, who was part of the Extended Day Program, decided to undertake an independent writing project similar to Lisa Meyer’s Book Quotes for Kids: Today’s Interpretations of Timeless Quotes Designed to Nurture the Young Spirit. My student’s interpretations of a variety of quotations (and overheard things [...]

Linda B. Gambrell, President of the International Reading Association, has a great column in the April/May 2008 Issue entitled “Closing the summer reading gap: You can make a difference!” It’s a great column on ways teachers can help their present classes stave-off summer reading loss. (Something I fear every September when a new [...]

I like challenging myself and my students with their writing. So… in honor of National Poetry Month, I thought about creating a week-long poetry challenge since I’d like to create more poetry of my own to share with my students during minilesson demonstrations. Hence… I was thinking about starting this Challenge on Saturday, 4/12 [...]

Tomorrow’s Interactive Read Aloud includes Alan Say’s Book Grandfather’s Journey. Since our IRA Theme for the past two months has been immigration, I thought it would be nice to end out the unit with a book that the kids compile on their families (sort of as an unofficial independent writing project). I’m giving [...]

Still laughing....

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