Julie Bumgardner's great strength as an educator lies in her willingness to take risks. She's always ready to try something new as long as she feels it will help her to be a more effective teacher and help her kids to be more effective learners. As a writer, Julie brings a quality of reflection to her work that is both insightful and refreshing.

Get to Know Me

Here's a bit of info about who Julie is, what she's done, and what she believes about teaching and learning. If there's anything else you'd like to know, send her an e-mail at juliebumgardner@ttms.org.

Julie's Bio, Philosophy, and Resume

Ready or Not, Here I Come

Julie describes her first day of teaching Writer's Workshop with her second graders at Santa Fe Trail Elementary School. Using the Topic T-Chart strategy to help her students select their first topics, Julie gets off to a good start and has a successful experience despite feeling a bit unsure of herself at first.

First Day of Writer's Workshop

My Safety Net

Julie discusses her use of the Draw-Label-Caption pre-writing strategy, a tool she relied on extensively in her early work with Writer's Workshop and the writing process.

Using the Draw-Label-Caption Strategy

When Bad Tests Happen to Good Students

It's testing time in Julie's classroom and interesting insights abound as she introduces prompted inauthentic writing into her thriving Writer's Workshop. How do her kids deal with it? And what lessons can we learn about the value of testing and how to prepare our kids effectively?

Testing... Testing... One, Two, Three...