Learn about two engaging ideas for National Poetry Month, which begins on April 1. Stacey shares a bit about creating a collaborative "Living Poetry Anthology" where students curate poems to display throughout the school. Next, she discusses developing personal poetry collections featuring their work, inspirational poems, and reflections on poems they admired. Make poetry come alive for your students – listen now! 

TWTBlog Posts

• A Breakthrough In Poetry: How To Bring Playfulness to Every Genre 
• Building a Living Poetry Anthology
• It’s Alive!
• Starting the Year: Poetry 
• The Doors of Poetry: Guest Blog Post by Sarah Mulhern Gross

Resource List

• Academy of American Poets
• Awakening the Heart, second edition by Georgia Heard 
• National Poetry Month
• Poetry Mentor Texts: Making Reading and Writing Connections, K-8, by Lynne R Dorfman and Rose Cappelli
• Poems Are Teachers: How Studying Poetry Strengthens Writing in All Genres by Amy Ludwig VanDerwater

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

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

There's a lot of brain work involved in written expression. This week, Melanie shares a tip to help students reduce their cognitive load, which will help them express their ideas more easily. In this tip, Melanie shares how providing students with sentence frames and a bank of vocabulary words can aid students with difficulty with word retrieval. Plus, she shares ways to shift the agency to students so they are not dependent on their teacher to do this work.
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For more about teaching writing, head to the Two Writing Teachers blog.

In this episode, we explore accommodations for student writers. The episode has five categories: organization, materials/tools, time, response, and seating. This episode will equip you with ways to create an inclusive, accessible learning environment.

PAST TWT BLOG POSTS

• Exploring Voice Typing
• Finding Accessible Fonts for Classroom Use 
• Flexible Seating Options
• It’s Time for a Chart Check-in 
• Paper Choices
• Pens vs. Pencils

PODCASTS MENTIONED:

• Embrace an Asset-Based Approach
• Mentor Text Charts
• Navigate a Digital World by Seeing, Hearing, and Reading
• Paper Power
• The Benefits of Pens
• The Importance of Paper

RESOURCES FOR WRITING ACCOMMODATIONS:

• Dysgraphia Accommodations and Modifications
• The UDL Guidelines
• Understanding Accommodations

BOOKS MENTIONED:

• Every Child Can Write
• Welcome to Writing Workshop

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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]

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

Stacey explores the power of pairing written explanations with oral directions to enhance understanding in the context of writing workshop. She provides an overview of Driveway, a Chrome Extension that allows educators to create step-by-step process guides with written descriptions, highlighted screenshots, and optional voiceovers. Learn how to create interactive walkthroughs to help students become more independent with the technology they use in writing workshop. 

Here are some videos of Stacey’s sample guides created with Driveway (and then exported to YouTube):

• How to Create a Cover Page in Google Docs
• How to Find and Download Stock Photos from Pexels
• How to Generate Citations Using Cite This For Me
• How to Resize and Wrap Images in Google Docs
• How to Use the Merriam-Webster Thesaurus for Finding Relevant Synonyms

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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 Tip for Tomorrow, Melanie provides three ways to use digital mentor texts. She provides insight on using videos as part of your whole-class instruction, inquiry lessons, and as a goal-setting tool. Take advantage of this episode if you need more ways to integrate digital mentor texts into your writing instruction.

Read Leah Koch's Two Writing Teachers post, Energize Opinion Writing with Surprising Mentor Texts: Ready-to-Go Tip, which inspired this episode.

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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.

Discover the untapped potential of oral language in the writing process and gain valuable insights from Lainie Levin, one of our TWTBlog co-authors. Lainie and Stacey discuss the importance of oral language beyond the primary years of elementary school and how storytelling and oral language support kids in developing a sense of story and composing writing in a low-risk way. Lainie shares strategies for making oral rehearsal engaging for children.

ABOUT LAINIE LEVIN:

Lainie is a dedicated educator with 28 years of teaching experience and a strong advocate for children and public education. She is a gifted interventionist and coach in language arts and math, specializing in meeting the needs of gifted/talented elementary school students. Since 2021, she has been a valued colleague at Two Writing Teachers.

Check out Lainie’s personal blog, Soapbox: The Way I See Things, follow her on X @mrslevin11, or read her Two Writing Teachers blog posts. 

GO DEEPER: 

• Advice for the Perfectionists in Writing Workshop
• Reclaiming Joy: Effecting System-Wide Change in Writing Instruction
• Reframing Avoidance: Writers and Perfectionism
• Sharing the Wealth
• Talking it Out: Oral Language as a Tool for Revision
• The Good Enough Job: Reclaiming Life From Work
• Work-Quality Continuum

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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.

Research can be instrumental in supporting instructional decision-making for teachers. In this Tip for Tomorrow, Melanie gives an overview of some of the most critical research surrounding writing instruction. She will cover what the research says about:

• Teaching kids about different aspects of the writing process.
• Studying strong examples of writing to lift the level of student writing.
• Teaching students to become fluent with handwriting, spelling, and typing so the cognitive focus is on content, not construction and transcription.
• Providing daily time for students to write in and outside the writing workshop (e.g., content area writing, writing about reading).
• Creating an engaged community of writers where writers confer, collaborate, and think about their audience.

Links to the research mentioned in the episode:
Steve Graham: 

• Elementary School Students to Be Efficient Writers
• Writing and Reading Connections/ content

Constance Weaver: 

• Grammar intertwined throughout the writing process: An “inch wide and a mile deep”

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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.

Join Stacey as she delves into the power of reflection shares to promote growth and development in student writing. She discusses how whole-group reflection allows students to share insights, experiences, and strategies, and fosters a sense of community and accountability. She emphasizes the importance of students feeling valued and included in the larger writing community, which increases confidence and engagement in the writing process. Near the end of the episode, Stacey shares a few prompts to help you get started with reflection shares in your classroom as soon as tomorrow.

The reflection prompts mentioned towards the end of the episode:

• I still need help with…
• Something I will try again…
• A question I still have…
• I could teach others to…

You can find these and some additional reflection prompts in chapter nine of Welcome to Writing Workshop: Engaging Today’s Students with a Model That Works by Stacey Shubitz and Lynne R. Dorfman.

Two Writing Teachers contains excellent information about reflection and sharing. You may click on these category links to explore blog posts on these topics:

• #TWTBlog posts about reflection
• #TWTBlog posts about sharing

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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.

We explore the profound benefits of participating in the month-long writing challenge. Listeners will discover the power of making connections and gaining a true understanding of being a writer while cultivating a writing practice. The episode briefly overviews the Slice of Life Story Challenge's origins and purpose, pointing listeners to last year's Digging Deeper Dialogue for a more in-depth understanding. Whether new or returning, challenge participants will find a supportive global writing community filled with educators at all stages of their careers who want to connect and grow themselves as writers.

Click here for an overview of the 17th Annual Slice of Life Story Challenge hosted by the co-authors of Two Writing Teachers.

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

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• 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.

Bring the power of play into your writing instruction. Melanie explains how to teach kids to play PROVE IT in an effort for them to show evidence of the skills you're teaching in their writing. 

Check out these posts on TWTBlog for more ideas:

• Ways to Teach Conventions: Our Favorite Things
• When Conventions Aren't Sticking–Some Tips and Tricks

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Send us a text

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.