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DIY Literacy will give you the tools you need to reach all your students

Teaching well demands we stay current and try new ideas. There isn't any insurance policy that the newest strategy, book, program, or app will work for all or anyone, but we trust our education and experience, and we do what we know to be best for kids. Brené Brown in Daring Greatly says, Risk aversion kills innovation~ Berné Brown Daring Greatly So embrace the mess, the awkwardness, and all the uncertainties rattling in your mind and do what you trust to be best for the students in your classroom.

One question I am often asked about using technology is, “How do you get started?” The answer is actually a simple one - humbly.

Reflecting on my first experience using TCRWP's goals & technique cards for informational writing with a small group of writers.

A guide to crafting your own teaching points for 1:1 conferences, strategy lessons, minilessons, mid-workshop interruptions, and share sessions.

It seems appropriate that today’s post should be related to using your own writing in the classroom. We are, after all, in the midst of the March Slice of Life Story Challenge. And what… Continue reading →

Thinking about your demonstration texts this way can give you some inspiration for multiple ways to teach the same minilesson, to the whole class, or to small groups as follow-up.

We spend lots of time talking about the writing process here at TWT. This post tackles something that has nothing to do with meaning, structure, focus, word choice, elaboration, voice, or conventions. It deals with the physical act of writing, which can be challenging for some children.

Looking for a summer project? Spruce up your teaching toolkit.

The gradual release of responsibility works for teaching one's mom how to use a smart phone just as well as it works for teaching writers.

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. –Maimonides Last week, my mother took a plunge she’s… Read More →

As an instructional coach, a key part of my job is to encourage and inspire teachers. This is one of my favorite things about my job. It isn’t easy to be the person… Read More →

Earlier this month I shared an idea about a writing station (aka: center) for older students.  Another product from Chronicle Books has crossed my desk and has piqued my interest as something that can be used in the classroom.  This time, it’s a poetry-related writing station using Haikubes, which are 63 word cubes that can [...]

Whenever I used to hear the words “Center Time” I immediately thought about early childhood classrooms.  However, that notion changed in 2008 when I created a Poetry Station for my fourth graders.  The Poetry Station was created for students to use during the “morning work” period of the school day.  It was a choice, not [...]

Amazing Africa Projects You Can Build Yourself by Carla Mooney is a wonderful book full of cool projects and information that will keep your child busy for hours.  Africa is part of Nomad Press's Build-it-Yourself series for kids ages 9-12.

This book thoroughly explores Africa, the people, the culture, their traditions and amazing wildlife.  But unlike other books that just talk about Africa, this book actually includes 25 hands on projects that can be done using household items.  Some of the projects include;

I’m slowly making my way through the keynote addresses from last week’s Writing Institute.  Today I bring to you my notes and some highlights from Roy Peter Clark’s speech, “The Power of the Parts: How Writers Learn and How Teachers Teach.” Clark wrote a book I’ve been reading for awhile now, Writing Tools: 50 Essential [...]

Trading Our Favorite Spaces: 1 of 2 Originally uploaded by teachergal Mary Lee & Franki are hosting something of a blog carnival over at A Year of Reading. It’s called Trading (Our Favorite) Spaces. Click here to learn more about it &/or to submit photos of your favorite space by September 1st. I’m posting just two [...]

Last August we made our blog live. This August, we’re delighted to announce the launch of Two Writing Teachers — The Website! Essentially, our new website is a place where you can go to find lots of tools (and links to related blog posts) to help you with various units of study you might teach [...]

If you’re not on our catalog mailing list, you haven’t been able to take a peek at our latest books. Well, the wait is over—our Fall 2008 books are now available on our website. Take a look at all of our new products, including brand-new series (Graphic Spin, We Are Heroes) and fresh additions to old favorite series (Claudia Cristina Cortez, Jake Maddox, and Graphic Flash, among others!). While you’re there, you can also check out our vast repository of educators’ resources, including free Reader’s Theater scripts, book report forms, and create-your-own-graphic-novel pages. Check it all out at www.stonearchbooks.com!

Most Sunday mornings, I can be found watching “Meet the Press.” This Sunday morning I watched “Meet the Press,” but not really, since Russert’s chair was empty. As I’m sure you know by now, Tim Russert, the host of “Meet the Press” died of a heart attack this past Friday afternoon. The [...]

Reader’s Theater continues to be a huge buzz. The session on the subject was packed at PLA, and as more and more teachers and librarians become familiar with this great way to improve kids’ fluency, it’s only getting more popular.

Educators know that the leveled play scripts from Stone Arch Books’ Reader’s Theater help build oral fluency for individual readers. The scripts also support confidence as kids learn public speaking. They promote listening skills, build student cooperation, and most importantly, add another way to make reading fun! Stone Arch has always made Reader’s Theater easy for educators by leveling our scripts so that assigning roles by reading level is simple.

Now we’re making it even easier by selling Reader’s Theater kits on our website. Each kit contains a teacher’s version of the script (complete with leveling information), enough scripts for each character in the play, six copies of the paperback book, and a handy storage bag. It’s never been so simple to help your students bring books to life!

For more information on Reader’s Theater, check out the Educator Resources tab on our website.

Ruth introduced me to Winkflash a few weeks ago. I signed up for their services and received a $19.99 special deal to create a photo book of up to 100 pages. Hence, I decided to create my own lesson plan book. I created templates in Word, scanned them in, saved them as [...]

We know it’s hard to gauge a student’s reaction and comprehension after reading a book. And book reports, while useful for you, can be boring and frustrating for the student. That’s why we created our handy book report form (opens PDF). It’s a simple handout, with areas for students to fill in the information they need to show that they understood a book. But with its fun design and clear areas for information, it doesn’t feel like an assignment.

Try it out in your classroom, library, or home, and let us know what you think! If the student agrees, send us a copy of any book report on one of our books—we love to hear what kids think, too.

For a great final project, you can combine the book report form and the blank graphic novel page we’ve created. Ask the student to read a graphic novel, write a book report on it, and then draw a graphic novel page of their own, using our create-your-own-graphic-novel page (opens PDF).

Not such a crazy idea anymore!

In an editorial today, the New York Times championed something that’s very near and dear to our hearts: Comic books in the classroom. Buoyed by a recent article about the Comic Book Project and the Maryland Comics in the Classroom initiative, the editorial posits that comic books (and by extension, graphic novels) have an important place in education. In fact, the editorial states, “The pairing of visual and written plotlines that [comic books] rely on appear to be especially helpful to struggling readers.” We’ve been saying this since our first graphic novels hit shelves in Spring 2006, so it’s nice of the Times to catch up! We’ve got a make-your-own-graphic-novel page (opens PDF) that students love, which is a great supplement to any of our graphic novels and a fabulous learning tool for the classroom.

There are sure to be many more articles like the two in the Times--here's to getting kids to read with the kinds of books they love.

So last week I helped one of the small libraries I worked with get their in-house library catalog actually online, like on the web. They use Follett and had to pay some ungodly amount of money for the “web connector” software to make this happen. The process involves installing a fairly non-standard web server onto whatever your server is and then using it as the interface to your existing Follett install. The manual says you need to have a static IP address to make this work and the cable company they use for Internet won’t give them one. So, we had to do a little haxie magic using DynDNS, a special port redirect in the router, and a little app that lives on the server and broadcasts its current IP address to the DNS server. I had an idea that this would work but wasn’t totally sure, so we tried it. Other than that, my basic approach was “I am not a good cook but I can follow a decent recipe” which is what we did for the install.

When I say “we”, I mean me and my friend Stan who is a local IT guy who comes with me on some of these more complicated projects for the cost of lunch and does all the typing while I answer questions and explain what’s going on. The software install took all of fifteen minutes but the Q and A session took nearly an hour. As it stands they’re probably still going to use the local version of the OPAC in-house just in case the Internet goes down. I’m not sure I understand this reasoning and told them so. I’m as cautious as the next person as far as having a Plan B for most catastrophic situations, but I worry that if you only roll out the most bulletproof solutions, you wind up never trying new things and you live in fear that you haven’t tested everything rigorously enough. This sort of fear, uncertainty and doubt means going with large-scale tried and true solutions and is a definite impediment to getting libraries to work with open source. Additionally, with the perpetual betaness of a lot of 2.0 tools, anyone can muster up a reason to say no to them. I’m still always looking for the angle that will make people say “yes.”