One piece of advice that we give quite often to teachers is for them to make their instruction clearly visible to students. An excellent way to do this is by creating anchor charts, a verbal and visual strategy that significantly…
Summer Writing A few days ago, I tried to convince a fabulous reading teacher to switch over to our writing team. Her response was, “Absolutely not. Teaching writing is too hard.” Upon further conversation, she revealed that she didn’t see…
As writing teachers, we’ve always known that writing is, as stated by Stephen King (2012), “thinking through the end of a pen” and that writing supports academic achievement across all subject areas. With the adoption of the Common Core State…
Revealing Your Students Understanding in Mathematics by Writing How does writing an answer to a math problem compare to writing an explanation of how the problem was solved? Which is more valuable to a teacher? Writing an explanation reveals students…
Using Writing As Formative Assessment A few days ago, I spoke to a first year teacher who was frustrated with the amount of instructional time that it took her to to assess her students each week. My response to her…
Common Core English Language Arts Instruction In this issue of our newsletter, we’re going to focus on what English Language Arts instruction might look like under the Common Core Standards. We think you’ll find these ideas useful and easy to…
Let’s Get All Students Writing! In this issue of our newsletter, we’re going to focus on some ideas to encourage writing. We think you’ll find these ideas useful and easy to implement in your own classrooms. If you use any…
Writing and Thinking through the Student User’s Guide Assignment Once again we’ve been on the search for engaging writing ideas. This one we found on edutopia, and we think it will definitely spark some interest with your students. As the…
Teachers are incredibly busy. Creating all new lessons aligned to the CCSS is time consuming, to put it mildly. With this in mind, we’ve looked for some online resources that can help teachers as they create new writing lessons. Videos…
The Common Core Writing Academy Facilitating excellence in writing instruction! September, 2013 Writing across the Curriculum When we talk with content area teachers, they often share their reluctance to assign writing. This reluctance seems to be fueled by the…