TWO WRITING TEACHERS

Jordan was a confident third-grade writer—until he opened a blank notebook on day one of fourth grade and froze. A new school year feels like a fresh start, but it doesn't mean starting over. Here are three simple ways to activate prior knowledge and remind students who they still are.

Class Newsbooks are an interactive writing routine designed to support oral language development and writing skills, plus foster strong classroom community in the primary grades. Read all about how to get started with this routine in your own classroom.

Write, share, give.

Before adding another scaffold, take a moment to figure out what’s actually making the task hard and match the support to the barrier.

What if we don’t launch Writing Workshop in August? Last year, I proposed this idea to our Kindergarten team: What if we started with Story Workshop instead? For several weeks, children composed stories through play, loose parts, clay, blocks, drawing, and oral storytelling, while receiving explicit phonics instruction each day. We weren’t waiting for them to be “ready” to wri...