How do we teach elementary students to independently use the different elements of craft that are discussed and taught in lessons? We begin by honoring the reality that terms like voice, sentence fluency, and writing with detail are descriptions of where we want our students to be, not next steps on how to reach those goals. In Crafting Writers, K-6 Elizabeth Hale shows us how to identify specific elements of craft when assessing student work and planning instruction, and use them to teach students the specific craft techniques that will move them forward as writers. Liz offers practical information that teachers can use immediately in their classrooms. She also presents a concrete process for noticing craft in writing so teachers can develop and plan craft lessons based on their students' writing. Learning the techniques that make up good writing also allows teachers to see craft in many different levels of writing, a skill that is particularly powerful when conferring with below-grade-level writers. Additional chapters look closely at assessment and classroom management practices like group conferring. Most of us know good writing when we read it, but writing teachers need to know what makes it work. Filled with easy-to-use charts, and practical lessons, Crafting Writers, K-6 provides clear insight into identifying and teaching the small elements that make good writing successful.

"In these pages you'll discover engaging fiction and nonfiction children's books and ideas for using them to their maximum potential as teaching tools. And you will find new ways to give your students ... models for their own writing."--Page 4 of cover.

“They’re All Writers” will help teachers explore the power of writing centers. In elementary school classrooms across the country, writing instruction (not grammar worksheets or spelling drills) is still the neglected “R.” In this book, classroom teachers will find foundational information about the writing process with everything they need to begin and facilitate a peer tutoring writing center. Student-led writing centers harness the social and instructional power of students working and learning together, and this book includes specific lessons to teach students how to be effective peer tutors and how to be better writers. Book Features: A new, research-based approach to writing pedagogy that integrates both writing process theories and writing center pedagogies.Complete lesson plans to help teachers implement a writing center curriculum that meets Common Core and other quality standards.An approach that harnesses the power of social learning, develops students as leaders in their schools, and facilitates generative conversations around writing. “Through the framework of peer tutoring, the authors show us how children can improve their own writing while also appreciating differing perspectives.” —Anne McGill-Franzen, The University of Tennessee “With lesson plans on preparing peer tutors, the authors have established a flexible framework for teachers interested in implementing writing tutoring in their schools.” —Rebecca Babcock, University of Texas of the Permian Basin

In her new book, bestselling author and professional developer Carol Booth Olson and colleagues show teachers how to help young readers and writers construct meaning from and with texts. This practical resource offers a rich array of research-based teaching strategies, activities, and extended lessons focused on the “thinking tools” employed by experienced readers and writers. It shows teachers how to draw on the natural connections between reading and writing, and how cognitive strategies can be embedded into the teaching of narrative, informational, and argumentative texts. Including artifacts and written work produced by students across the grade levels, the authors connect the cognitive and affective domains for full student engagement. “This book seamlessly bridges the gap from research to everyday practice.... You get an extremely well-organized set of overarching instructional principles that are right for our era and brought to life through well-explained instructional guides and classroom activities.” —From the Foreword by Judith Langer, University at Albany, SUNY “I have always admired Carol Booth Olson’s work with secondary students and teachers. She now applies those essential principles and practices to elementary and middle school students. Bravo!” —P. David Pearson, professor emeritus, University of California, Berkeley

Now in its sixth edition, Striking a Balance clearly illustrates how to create a comprehensive early literacy program that places direct skills instruction within the context of rich and varied reading and writing experiences. Text discussions, dynamic activities, and valuable appendices provide a variety of effective instructional resources, selected based on research and teacher testimonials. The sixth edition incorporates recent updates to national and state standards, as well as expanded sections on working with English language learners and students with special needs, while maintaining the book’s essential features: classroom vignettes, discussion questions, field-based activities, a student website, and study guide. An essential resource for early literacy instructors, this textbook’s practical approach fundamentally demonstrates how children develop authentic literacy skills through a combination of direct strategy instruction and motivating contexts.

Master teacher Lisa Morris invites you to share her secrets of success with writer's workshops. After years of experimenting with the workshop model, she has developed the most effective ways to apply it in the classroom, yielding higher test scores and increased student engagement. Through practical, step-by-step instruction, Morris demonstrates how to use writer's notebooks, mentor texts, the writing process, and the 6 traits. Specific topics include: setting up the classroom for workshops creating a writing curriculum creating guidelines, expectations, and lessons for using notebooks helping students select ideas, brainstorm, and plan assigning writing partners and organizing sharing getting students to self-reflect creating process and product portfolios finding resources for publishing holding effective writing conferences The book also offers an array of invaluable tools, such as student writing samples mini-lessons for each stage of the writing process lesson plans pacing guides for dividing your time during the workshop sample charts to help you stay organized suggested classroom guidelines and handouts a list of mentor texts, organized by what you can use them to teach (e.g., adjectives, alliteration, onomatopoeia, beginnings, endings, strong verbs, sensory details) quotations on each stage of the writing process to motivate students

When faced with a blank page in their readers' notebooks, students often fall back on what is familiar: summarizing. Despite our best efforts to model through comprehension strategies what good readers do, many students struggle to transfer this knowledge and make it their own when writing independently about books. Readers Writing,' Elizabeth Hale offers ninety-one practical lessons that show teachers how students of all ability levels can use readers' notebooks to think critically,' on their own,' one step at a time. Each of the lessons uses a fiction or nonfiction book to address a comprehension strategyquestioning, connecting, analyzing, synthesizing, evaluating, visualizing, or monitoringby showing students one specific way they can write about their thinking. Each lesson also provides an example of how to model the strategy. All of the lessons follow a similar format with five componentsName It, Why Do It?, Model It, Try It, and Share Itand include time for students to actively process what they learn by talking about and trying out the strategy in their readers' notebooks. Elizabeth also provides suggestions for supporting student independence, managing independent writing time, scaffolding comprehension of nonfiction texts as well as assessing and conferencing with readers' notebooks. Helpful appendices include a table that illustrates how each lesson aligns with the Common Core State Standards and a list of additional titles that can be used to demonstrate each of the ninety-one lessons. ' ' ' ' ' Readers Writing' gives teachers a way to engage all children with readers' notebooks, to learn the language of thinking, one strategy at a time, and to become lifelong readers who can think and write critically on their own.