Crafting Writers, K-6, Elizabeth Hale

Show, not Tell
“Writers need words that create images and emotions for other people in addition to telling a story (Crafting Writers, K-6, Elizabeth Hale, page 43).
 
Often teachers of writing suggest to their students that they need to move away from telling a feeling to showing a feeling.  The leap is too big for many writers.  [...]

Don Murray Quote

“I write every day for two hours. But it’s what I do for the other twenty-two hours that allows me to write.”
Don Murray

Small Moment: Adding Details that Matter

Objective:  Today your job is to remember what your character/person is doing and write down the words of what you see in your mind. 
One of the lessons that my students need is adding details that add to the story instead of boring details.  Typically writers tell us that the sky is blue, the clouds are [...]

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MEME: The Best Book I Have Not Read Blog

has an interesting post: 
http://bestbookihavenotread.wordpress.com/2008/12/10/the-nearest-book-trail/
Participate in this fast and easy book meme – or follow the trail and find out where it started (if find out, let us know!).
Here are the rules:
* Get the book nearest to you. Right now.
* Go to page 56.
* Find the 5th sentence.
* Write this sentence – either as a comment here [...]

Small Moments: Person Who is Significant During The Holidays

Often teachers ask me about topic generation. I also know nothing sends terror down the spine of a teacher, then 20 or 25 children who are complaining, “I don’t have anything to write about.” Obviously, I am exaggerating!   Or a child who has written about the same frog for 26 days in a row. It [...]

Writing about a Class Experience

One writing idea is to have the class experience something, then write about this experience.
-Sing a song, then tell the students about it, have the students turn and talk about it, then the teacher writes about it using story language.
-Line up to come inside from recess. If it is a nice day, instead of going [...]

Articles that May Impact Teaching

Here are very interesting on line articles to read. Science Daily Articles linktwowritingteachers wrote about Literacy-Related News Stories so I read the links.
These are stories that I found to be interesting. There are lots more. If you write about them on your blog, please link my post to yours. Thanks!
I am intrigued about how MRI’s [...]

Writing in Kindergarten

I find one of the questions I am asked frequently is, “What does writing look like with kinders?” This writing teacher has lots of great writing going on!
Kindergarten site with writing examples from her kinders

Summary Lesson for Expository Text

50 Essential Lessons by Jim Burke is an awesome resource! Two lessons are about Summarization. Lesson 22: Summarize and Lesson 23: Write an Effective Paragraph are both lessons that I refer to in this blog post. Jim Burke deserves all the credit! I recommend Jim’s 50 lessons to all HS teachers (college too). They work.
Summary [...]