Integrate word walls into your daily literacy activities! Sample lessons including photos of real classrooms, show you how to add to the walls each week, drawing words from poems, nursery rhymes, morning message and more to keep them fresh.
Hello!
It's exciting to share a personal note here on Amazon. Like you, I have a huge passion for literacy learning. Mine started more than twenty years ago as I set out to teach second grade with a number of struggling learners. The status quo wasn't working: even though I was working hard and my students were working hard, my low readers/writers stayed low/readers writers. Naturally, this was enormously frustrating, so I launched into researching practical ways to help my students grow--and I haven't stopped since! That's one great thing about teaching, though, isn't it? We are always learning right alongside our students. It's in this spirit that all my books are written.
Currently, one of my biggest concerns in education is how writing has taken a backseat to reading in so many classrooms. Plain and simple, most teachers aren't writing enough with their students. We know students need motivation and practice to gain and excel in any area. Yet, we have so many misconceptions about writing that we tend to get bogged down and not get the job done. Since so few minutes are spent writing during the school day, students aren't getting the benefits of how writing aids reading and over all learning (not to mention the host of other advantages writing affords). If you care about thoughtful, rigorous education, you know a renewed commitment to writing is a MUST.
My home state of Utah has recently adopted the new Common Core Standards. The tasks students will be asked to complete to show proficiency across curricular areas require the ability to think through writing. Students will write extensively to show what they know. How will students do this without fluency in writing?
It is my pleasure to share news of the January, 2011 publication of my latest book: "Quick Start to Writing Workshop Success" from Scholastic. Inside, you'll find sound techniques for getting students writing across the curriculum in "quick bursts," so they'll gain confidence, skill and fluency while building their abilities to think through writing. Additionally, you'll see how this dovetails with daily Writing Workshop and everything we already do in reading. I hope the book will assist teachers in renewing their cross-curricular commitment to writing and reignite the passion for writing in general.
-- Best to you and your readers/writers/thinkers!
