Inside Writing Communities: Grades 3-5 - Writing Across the Curriculum
Writing throughout the day gives students opportunities to practice the craft they learn during a writing workshop and exposes them to the authentic writing of multiple disciplines. This course — focused on practices that integrate writing into all areas of the curriculum — illustrates that writing can take many forms and serve many purposes.
Teaching Reading Workshop: Creating a Literate Community
In this video, Dr. Jeanne R. Paratore presents three research-based principles for creating an effective literacy environment: accessible materials, purposeful room and wall displays of print materials, and classroom routines that promote reading and writing. Following the lecture, workshop participants watch two sets of classroom excerpts illustrating routines and physical arrangements that advance children's reading, writing, and oral language skills. Workshop participants discuss these classroom excerpts in relation to their own classrooms and teaching practices.
Teaching Reading Workshop: Supporting the English Language Learner
In this course, Dr. Mileidis Gort presents research-based principles that support English Language Learners' literacy and language development. She describes the characteristics of beginning and intermediate second-language learners, and then presents instructional practices that best meet their needs. Educators then observe classroom excerpts illustrating teaching practices that support English Language Learners in their beginning literacy development. They later develop a lesson plan to promote understanding and appreciation of selected texts.
Teaching Reading Workshop: Teaching Writing as a Process
This course examines how to teach writing as a process. Dr. Jeanne R. Paratore begins her lecture by distinguishing between the different forms of writing and the various purposes for writing. She reviews the stages of the writing process and outlines the classroom practices that develop students' writing. The workshop participants then watch and discuss two sets of classroom excerpts showing writing instruction in grades K-2. Following their discussion, they analyze their own instructional practices for teaching and managing their writing programs.
Teaching Reading Workshop: Differentiating Instruction
In this video, Dr. Jeanne R. Paratore presents research-based principles that support the use of a flexible grouping model for literacy instruction. She reviews basic formats for flexible grouping, and applies the research to effective teaching practices and routines that advance all students' reading development. The workshop participants watch classroom excerpts illustrating instruction in different grouping formats. They then relate the classroom practices to their own teaching.
Teaching Reading Workshop: Using Assessment to Guide Instruction
This session examines assessment practices that measure student performance and progress and inform instructional decisions for Grades K-2. In her lecture, Dr. Jeanne R. Paratore reviews the principles of classroom-based assessment and engages the workshop participants in a discussion of their own assessment practices. The participants then watch and discuss a set of classroom excerpts illustrating Dr. Paratore's lecture. In the final activity, workshop participants assess a first-grader's reading and writing samples.
Write in the Middle: Creating a Community of Writers
This course explores the components of a community of writers and what teachers can do to create and foster such a community. After a brief introduction to the goals of all eight workshop sessions, middle school teacher and writing expert Linda Rief and several of the teachers whose classrooms are featured in Write in the Middle share strategies they use to build a safe writing environment. In separate extended classroom segments, Velvet McReynolds, a seventh-grade teacher from Hoover, Alabama, demonstrates two community-building strategies. During a third extended classroom segment, fifth-grade teacher Jack Wilde demonstrates one of his daily routines: the read-aloud. This course also examines how room arrangements can encourage written and spoken communication and how sharing their writing helps students become part of the writing community.
Write in the Middle: Making Writing Meaningful
When educators introduce subjects that matter to middle school students or allow them more freedom to choose and develop topics, the task of writing gains new meaning and purpose. In this course, educators will examine how five middle-level teachers help their students connect to writing and understand its capacity to transform their own lives and the world around them.
Write in the Middle: Teaching Poetry
Poetry offers young adolescents an unparalleled opportunity for exploring feelings and learning about the power of written expression. This course showcases two master teachers as they help their students develop as writers and readers of poetry.
Write in the Middle: Teaching Persuasive Writing
In this course, educators visit two middle-level classrooms to see how teachers can help young writers develop effective and authentic persuasive pieces based on their own experiences and interests - for example, using cell phones in schools or altering their homework schedule.