Two Writing Teachers Podcast

Joyful classrooms, where play and humor are valued, help make schools feel safer and more welcoming. In today’s episode, we’ll provide ways to increase joy, play, and humor in your writing workshop

Related TWTBlog posts about joy, play, & humor:

• A Few Games to Inspire Writing Lives 
• A Mini Unit on Joke Telling 
• Incorporating Play-Based Learning in Writing Workshop at Any Age 
• It’s Time for Play and Fun: Storytelling in Writing Workshop 
• Making Space in Writing Workshop for Kids to Be Funny 
• Poetry Begins with Play 
• Puppets and Playdates
• Quick & Fun Lesson Closures? Yes, Please!
• (Re-)Launching Our Writing Workshops with Joy in January 
• Three Keys to Writing Partnership Success
• Warming Up with Grammar Games 
• Writing and Playing: A Natural Pairing in the Kindergarten Classroom 

Books We Mentioned:

• Goodnight Already! 
• Independent Writing
• Joy Write
• Joyful: The Surprising Power of Ordinary Things to Create Extraordinary Happiness 
• Purposeful Play: A Teacher’s Guide to Igniting Deep and Joyful Learning Across the Day
• Something’s Wrong!: A Bear, a Hare, and Some Underwear 
• Start with Joy: Designing Literacy Learning for Student Happiness 
• The HICCUPotamus 

Libro.fm Offer: Use the TWTPod Code
Receive 2 audiobook credits for $14.99 USD with your first month of membership.

Send us Fan Mail

Please subscribe to our podcast and leave us ratings/reviews on your favorite listening platform.

You may contact us directly if you want us to consult with your school district. 

• Melanie Meehan: [email protected] 
• Stacey Shubitz: [email protected]

Email us at [email protected] for affiliate or sponsorship opportunities.

For more about teaching writing, head to the Two Writing Teachers blog.

Sentence construction can be tricky for many students. In this episode, Melanie shares a few strategies that might help students begin to internalize ways to construct sentences, moving from simple sentences to compound and complex sentences. 


THANKS TO OUR AFFILIATE!

Libro.fm Offer: Use the TWTPod Code

Receive 2 audiobook credits for $14.99 USD with your first month of membership. Credits can be used for more than 275,000 audiobooks on Libro.fm. After your first month, you’ll pay $14.99 USD for one audiobook credit per month, and each payment supports local bookstores. Members also receive 30% off when buying audiobooks à la carte. Pause or cancel at any time and keep your audiobooks.

A few posts from the Two Writing Teachers Blog that relate to this episode: 

• Sentence Patterning Charts
• Tackling Sentence Struggles With Older Writers
• Bring on the Fun with Sentence Construction

Send us Fan Mail

Please subscribe to our podcast and leave us ratings/reviews on your favorite listening platform.

You may contact us directly if you want us to consult with your school district. 

• Melanie Meehan: [email protected] 
• Stacey Shubitz: [email protected]

Email us at [email protected] for affiliate or sponsorship opportunities.

For more about teaching writing, head to the Two Writing Teachers blog.

THANKS TO OUR AFFILIATES!

• Head to https://one-sec.app?qu=twt to download the One Sec app to reclaim a large chunk of your waking hours by making distracting apps less appealing.
• Libro.fm Offer: Use the TWTPod Code
  Receive 2 audiobook credits for $14.99 USD with your first month of membership. Credits can be used on your choice of more than 275,000 audiobooks on Libro.fm.After your first month, you’ll pay $14.99 USD for one audiobook credit per month, and each payment supports local bookstores. Members also receive 30% off when buying audiobooks à la carte. Pause or cancel at anytime and keep your audiobooks.
  
  

In today's Conversation with a Colleague episode, Betsy Hubbard joins Melanie to talk about poetry and its power to grow writers. 

Here are several Two Writing Teachers blog posts and past podcast episodes that deal with the topics discussed in this episode:

• Starting the Year with Poetry
• Stepping Into Poetry
• Poetry Every Day in 5 Minutes or Less

Additional resources mentioned in the podcast include:

• George Ella Lyon and the Where I'm From  website
• The Poem Farm  from Amy Ludwig VanDerwater
• Poetry Friday  from Sylvia Vardell
• All the Small Things and Fourteen More by Valerie Worth

Send us Fan Mail

Please subscribe to our podcast and leave us ratings/reviews on your favorite listening platform.

You may contact us directly if you want us to consult with your school district. 

• Melanie Meehan: [email protected] 
• Stacey Shubitz: [email protected]

Email us at [email protected] for affiliate or sponsorship opportunities.

For more about teaching writing, head to the Two Writing Teachers blog.

Equitably distributing your time among your students matters since every child should receive 1:1 writing instruction. However, it’s challenging to keep writing conferences to five to seven minutes in length. In today’s Tip for Tomorrow, you’ll hear two ideas that require minimum preparation. Both will help you trim down the time you spend with each student so that you can meet with more students during independent writing time.

Thanks to Padlet for sponsoring this episode. Please use this link to explore the features,  products, and possibilities of this amazing resource! 

Listen to a recent #TWTPod Tip for Tomorrow about setting a time to check back after a writing conference. Then, click here for more ideas about how to confer with all students regularly.

Send us Fan Mail

Please subscribe to our podcast and leave us ratings/reviews on your favorite listening platform.

You may contact us directly if you want us to consult with your school district. 

• Melanie Meehan: [email protected] 
• Stacey Shubitz: [email protected]

Email us at [email protected] for affiliate or sponsorship opportunities.

For more about teaching writing, head to the Two Writing Teachers blog.

This podcast is the second of two Tips for Tomorrow about test prep. You can listen to the first one here.

Libro.fm Offer: Use the TWTPod Code
Receive 2 audiobook credits for $14.99 USD with your first month of membership. Credits can be used on your choice of more than 275,000 audiobooks on Libro.fm. After your first month, you’ll pay $14.99 USD for one audiobook credit per month, and each payment supports local bookstores. Members also receive 30% off when buying audiobooks à la carte. Pause or cancel at anytime and keep your audiobooks.

Send us Fan Mail

Please subscribe to our podcast and leave us ratings/reviews on your favorite listening platform.

You may contact us directly if you want us to consult with your school district. 

• Melanie Meehan: [email protected] 
• Stacey Shubitz: [email protected]

Email us at [email protected] for affiliate or sponsorship opportunities.

For more about teaching writing, head to the Two Writing Teachers blog.

Teaching grammar doesn’t have to be tedious or painful. In today’s episode, we dive deep into ways to make grammar instruction more meaningful, sticky, and joyful for you and your students.

Browse Two Writing Teachers for in-depth blog posts about grammar, editing, and conventions.

Thank you to our affiliates!

• Head to https://one-sec.app?qu=twt to download the One Sec app to reclaim a large chunk of your waking hours by making distracting apps less appealing.
• Go to https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=2009225 to get a $20 credit if you sign up for a paid plan on Buzzsprout.

These are the books and online resources mentioned in this episode: 

• Everyday Editing by Jeff Anderson
• Getting Grammar by Donna Hooker Topping and Sandra Josephs Hoffman
• Grammar Girl
• Grammar Matters by Lynne Dorfman and Diane Dougherty
• Grammarly Blog
• Patterns of Power by Jeff Anderson et. al.
• Practical Punctuation by Dan Feigelson
• The Power of Grammar by Mary Ehrenworth and Vicki Vinton

Send us Fan Mail

Please subscribe to our podcast and leave us ratings/reviews on your favorite listening platform.

You may contact us directly if you want us to consult with your school district. 

• Melanie Meehan: [email protected] 
• Stacey Shubitz: [email protected]

Email us at [email protected] for affiliate or sponsorship opportunities.

For more about teaching writing, head to the Two Writing Teachers blog.

Paper can be used as an accommodation, a scaffold, and as a tool for innovation in writing workshops. 

Check out these Two Writing Teachers blog posts for more information about the topics we discussed in today’s episode:

• All About the Paper.
• Creating Classroom Environments: Paper Choices
• Gifts from the Heart
• Paper Choices for Opinion and Argument Writing: Reaching Your Writers
• Paper Choices: What’s up with that?
• Supporting Multimodal Composition in the Writing Workshop: Simple Ways to Begin

Send us Fan Mail

Please subscribe to our podcast and leave us ratings/reviews on your favorite listening platform.

You may contact us directly if you want us to consult with your school district. 

• Melanie Meehan: [email protected] 
• Stacey Shubitz: [email protected]

Email us at [email protected] for affiliate or sponsorship opportunities.

For more about teaching writing, head to the Two Writing Teachers blog.

Test prep can be fun! Here are a couple of ways to use media and bring some joy into writing as you prepare students for summative assessments.

The Two Writing Teachers blog post mentioned in this episode is: 

Some Narrative Writing Fun

Send us Fan Mail

Please subscribe to our podcast and leave us ratings/reviews on your favorite listening platform.

You may contact us directly if you want us to consult with your school district. 

• Melanie Meehan: [email protected] 
• Stacey Shubitz: [email protected]

Email us at [email protected] for affiliate or sponsorship opportunities.

For more about teaching writing, head to the Two Writing Teachers blog.

In this Conversations with a Colleague episode, Pam Koutrakos joins Melanie to talk about interactive writing and its power to grow writers. 

Here are several Two Writing Teachers blog posts and past podcast episodes that deal with the topics discussed in this episode:

• Step Up Interactive Writing (…And Sneak In More Spelling, Vocabulary, and Grammar)
• Conferring Toolkits: Class Stories, Shared Writing and Interactive Writing
• Interactive Writing: Don’t Close the Door
• Shared Writing: Expanding the Reach with Small Groups

Send us Fan Mail

Please subscribe to our podcast and leave us ratings/reviews on your favorite listening platform.

You may contact us directly if you want us to consult with your school district. 

• Melanie Meehan: [email protected] 
• Stacey Shubitz: [email protected]

Email us at [email protected] for affiliate or sponsorship opportunities.

For more about teaching writing, head to the Two Writing Teachers blog.

Just as your classroom library has books that kids can grow into, we can give students paper choices with the knowledge that they’re working to outgrow the paper they’re using. In today's Tip for Tomorrow, find out how paper can be used as an accommodation for students in writing workshop. 

Check out these Two Writing Teachers blog posts for more information about the topics we discussed in today’s episode:

• All About the Paper.
• Creating Classroom Environments: Paper Choices
• Gifts from the Heart
• Paper Choices for Opinion and Argument Writing: Reaching Your Writers
• Paper Choices: What’s up with that?
• Supporting Multimodal Composition in the Writing Workshop: Simple Ways to Begin
• The Promise of a Writer Maker Space
• Writing as a Gift Center

Send us Fan Mail

Please subscribe to our podcast and leave us ratings/reviews on your favorite listening platform.

You may contact us directly if you want us to consult with your school district. 

• Melanie Meehan: [email protected] 
• Stacey Shubitz: [email protected]

Email us at [email protected] for affiliate or sponsorship opportunities.

For more about teaching writing, head to the Two Writing Teachers blog.