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Empowering striving writers to thrive as writers! Somehow, in every classroom during every year, there are students who keep us up at night because of the instructional challenges they face as writers. These students—our striving writers—may find success exploring different entry points and pathways than those their classmates travel. Every Child Can Write will help you lead striving writers along their journey toward growth, confidence, and success. Filled with practical strategies, classroom-management ideas,and reproducible tools, this book also offers low- and high-tech solutions for increasing writing volume and boosting self-esteem. Plus, with suggestions for differentiating instruction based on standards and student needs, it will help you: Implement principles of UDL to optimize your classroom environment and student learning; Identify and honor students’ strengths throughout your writing instruction; Maximize the power of formative assessment to set goals with students; and Integrate the most appropriate technology that empowers students and leads them to independence. As essential as writing is in elementary school, it will be even more important when your students reach middle school. Now is the time to give them the skills, practice, and confidence they need to succeed. As we know, in distance learning caregivers and teachers partner more than ever to help students with writing. The Distance Learning companion to Every Child Can Write is for teachers to share with caregivers to help children develop their writing lives—even while learning at home. Each of the eight modules contains video clips that talk caregivers through tools for supporting their student writers, along with downloadable tools that can be used by teachers or caregivers.
For years, educators have turned to the Hess Cognitive Rigor Matrices (CRM) when it comes to assessment. Now for the first time, the modules are packaged into one resource to help teachers evaluate the quality and premise of their current assessment system.
"I''m convinced that Howard Gardner was right when he suggested that all leaders need chances to retreat to the mountains. I hope this book gives you metaphorical mountains. I hope that Leading Wellallows you to step back from the hurly burly of school leadership, to see far horizons, to breathe a new kind of air, and to return home with new energy and vision. And more than that, I hope the book helps you give the teachers and children in your care their own metaphorical mountains; because in the end, good leaders create leaders." -Lucy Calkins In Leading Well: Building Schoolwide Excellence in Reading and Writing, Lucy Calkins draws on the transformative work that she and her colleagues at the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project have done in partnership with school leaders over the last thirty years. Travel to any corner of this country, inquire about the schools that are winning acclaim for their joyous and rigorous schoolwide literacy work, and you''re apt to find yourself hearing about the results of the remarkable community of practice that has taken root around reading and writing workshop instruction. This book, like the work of the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project itself, is deeply research-based and principled, while also absolutely practical and real-world tested. Leading Well will provide you with the inspiration and energy you need to rally your teachers to outgrow their own best teaching practices and tackle predictable challenges. Additionally, Leading Well will remind you that you are part of a vibrant community of practice. You''ll learn not only from Lucy Calkins and from contributing authors, Mary Ehrenworth and Laurie Pessah, but also from talented, tenacious, and imaginative school leaders who are creating new horizons for the world of education. Topics addressed include: Planning for Literacy Reform Supporting teachers in implementing reading and writing workshops Tapping the insight and talents of teachers, and rallying key individuals to join your cabinet of literacy leaders Honing your vision for reform and communicating it to the whole school Leading through influence rather than compliance Lifting the Level of Teaching Defining the goals for your teachers and the priorities for students Establishing the structures and culture that support these goals and priorities Protecting independent reading and writing time for students and planning time for teachers Identifying ways to coach and nurture teachers'' skills in the specific methods of instruction of the Units of Study Supporting teachers'' continuing professional development Building Structures across the School and Community Setting up feedback cycles through instructional rounds and targeted conversations Putting in place rituals and traditions to support your school community''s unique character Addressing resistance with radical candor and learning from it Staying the course while integrating new initiatives Engaging parents and building your own professional learning community The book is for school leaders who''ve invited their teachers to join them in the exhilarating work of adopting a dynamic, rigorous, student-centered language arts curriculum. It is for school leaders who have taken on the challenge of transforming their whole school into a place where everyone''s potential, for learning and for growth, is sky high.
"If the writing workshop is always changing, always haphazard, children remain pawns waiting for their teacher's agenda. For this reason and others, I think it is so important for each day's workshop to have a clear, simple structure. Children should know what to expect. This allows them to carry on; it frees the teacher from choreographing activities and allows time for listening. How we structure the workshop is less important than that we structure it." Lucy Calkins Learn how to teach narrative and expository writing with increasing power and intimacy and how Lucy Calkins and her colleagues launch a rigorous and responsive intermediate writing workshop. Through 2 foundational books-A Guide to the Writing Workshop and Launching the Writing Workshop-and eight online video clips, Lucy and her colleagues provide the strategies, lesson plans, and tools you'll need to lead strong, efficient writing workshops in upper-elementary classrooms. A Guide to the Writing Workshop equips you to teach a productive, well-managed writing workshop, introduces you to the methods that underlie all writing instruction, and helps you plan a yearlong curriculum in the teaching of writing. After chronicling the guiding principles that shape a writing workshop, Lucy details the developmental stages of upper-elementary writers. Ensuing chapters describe the architecture of minilessons, conferences, and small-group strategy sessions and explain how the predictability of these frameworks fosters independence and self-direction. In addition to describing the management systems that make writing workshops possible, select chapters consider various ways to tailor instruction and address the demands of the contemporary classroom. In Launching the Writing Workshop Lucy helps you launch both your writing workshop and your yearlong writing curriculum. While initiating students into the structures and rituals of the writing workshop, this unit also reviews and teaches the essentials of writing-collecting, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing. In addition to introducing practical strategies for finding topics and generating writing, children practice the strategy of making movies in their minds and writing so readers can picture exactly what is happening. Students also learn the value of focusing on small moments in such detail that readers feel they are experiencing the event. Through the eight accompanying video clips Lucy and her colleagues open the doors of their classrooms and invite you to eavesdrop on their elementary writing workshops. These live-from-the-classroom video clips are supported and enhanced by an optional voice-over coaching commentary from Lucy that explains the teaching moves and strategies. (Video clips are free for 6 months upon registration. You must register within 6 months of purchase.) Learn more about these resources and the series at www.unitsofstudy.com This pack is part of firsthand's Getting Started series. Bridging the gap between educational theory and practice, firsthand classroom materials model the carefully crafted techniques and language of master teachers in ways that help teachers refine their practice and reinvent their own teaching. The most comprehensive of these resources span more than a year of instruction. Firsthand's Getting Started Packs were created for teachers in training and professional book study groups who want a compact, affordable way to study and tryout these transformative classroom materials.Each Getting Started Pack includes an overview book, a complete unit of study, online video clips provided free of charge for 6 months, and an accompanying study guide. Getting Started packs include: Launch a Primary Writing Workshop, Grades K-2; Launch an Intermediate Writing Workshop, Grades 3-5; Launch an Intermediate Reading Workshop, Grades 3-5; Introduce the Qualities of Writing, Grades 3-6; Monitor Comprehension with Primary Students, Grades K-2; Monitor Comprehension with Intermediate Students, Grades 3-6; Investigate the Number System, Grades K-3; Investigate Multiplication, Grades 3-5; Investigate Fractions, Grades 4-6.
Created at the Center for Collaborative Education, this is a practical guide for implementing performance assessments in schools and school districts. It includes extensive tools and assessments aligned with the Common Core. The guide is spiral bound for use by teachers and teams of educators. It offers full discussion of issues pertaining to performance assessment.
"Writing allows each of us to live with that special wide-awakeness that comes from knowing that our lives and our ideas are worth writing about." -Lucy Calkins Teaching Writing is Lucy Calkins at her best-a distillation of the work that's placed Lucy and her colleagues at the forefront of the teaching of writing for over thirty years. This book promises to inspire teachers to teach with renewed passion and power and to invigorate the entire school day. This is a book for readers who want an introduction to the writing workshop, and for those who've lived and breathed this work for decades. Although Lucy addresses the familiar topics-the writing process, conferring, kinds of writing, and writing assessment- she helps us see those topics with new eyes. She clears away the debris to show us the teeny details, and she shows us the majesty and meaning, too, in these simple yet powerful teaching acts. Download a sample chapter for more information.
