OH MAN! When I first started teaching, writing conferences were a HOT MESS in my classroom.I literally would have volunteered to take every teacher's lunch, recess, and carpool duty for the year if just one of them would do my writing conferences for me. (Don't forget that I am located in the Phoenix area and temperatures get up to 120 ... Continue Reading
Grading Student Writing
Are you struggling with finding the time to grade your students' writing samples? I think one of the problems is that teachers tend to grade too many writing samples. You end up grading every night and every weekend. I believe you can get writing grades without having to take home formal writing samples too often. Let me show you how I ... Continue Reading
Tips for Teaching Students to Revise Their Writing
Every single time I talk about teaching writing, someone will ask me, "How do you get your students to revise their writing?" Well, I don't really give them a choice. That's not too helpful! Let me explain... First, what is revising? When I first started teaching, I thought that revising and editing were synonyms. I didn't understand why they ... Continue Reading
Editing Student Writing
When I first started teaching, I used to take a few students' writing journals home to edit each night. I would spend my evenings marking up mistakes in my students' writing. I would then meet with them the next day to discuss what they needed to fix. I would do this every single night! When I did this, we mostly focused on spelling, grammar, and ... Continue Reading
Why I Ditched the Writing Prompts
Teachers in my Facebook groups are always asking for suggestions for what they should have their students write about. They always get a big list of ideas, but I am the crazy one who says: "Let them write about whatever they want to write about!" That scares the begeebers out of some teachers! I have to be real with you, ... Continue Reading
How to Find Time to Teach Writing
As you may already know, I am a huge proponent of the writer's workshop model in the classroom. But finding time for writing workshop can be tricky. When I asked teachers in my Facebook groups what their biggest challenge was when teaching writing, most said it is finding the time to teach it. I believe that you need at ... Continue Reading
Teaching Students to Solve Word Problems
I LOVED teaching third grade math! If I could have found a way to teach nothing but third grade math- I would have been in heaven. I did not like math as a child. I just couldn't understand WHY! I was THAT kid asking, "When will I use this?" "Why does that work?" My math teachers hated me. And because of that experience, I strive to give ... Continue Reading
Ways to Differentiate Grammar for Struggling Learners
Teaching grammar got so much easier when I implemented a daily routine! You can read more about my grammar instruction HERE. This is my basic routine: Monday: PowerPoint Tuesday: Notebook Activity Wednesday: Writing Thursday: Task Card Scoot Friday: Assessment I use THIS resource for all of my grammar ... Continue Reading
What Should I Teach During Writing Workshop?
Have you ever felt like you have no idea what to teach during your writing mini lessons? Do you read your students' writing samples and then still have no clue where to start with what lessons they need? Mini lessons need to be short and meaningful. That can be very hard to do! It's pretty easy to get off track in a lesson, especially when ... Continue Reading
Everything You Need to Know About Test Prep
I don't love standardized testing, but it is a necessary evil. I don't agree with judging schools, teachers or students on the results of one test. I don't believe that money should be handed out or taken away based on test scores. I am certainly not a fan of schools being graded on test scores alone. That being said... testing isn't going ... Continue Reading
