Writing Workshop Series

Writing is more important than ever today. And yet it remains one of the hardest subjects to teach. Get the tools you need to make it work. Add dozens of high quality, classroom-tested mini-lessons to your repertoire that can be used without extensive preparation. Get inspired and energized about writing with the information you need to make teaching it easier for you and better for your students.

Writing Strategies That Work For All Classrooms

In this workshop, you’ll be introduced to an innovative set of writing strategies that will help your students make dramatic improvements almost instantly. Through a unique hands-on approach, you’ll experience practical, proven tools you and your students can use on all kinds of writing assignments across the curriculum. This fun-filled, fast-paced, and highly interactive workshop will focus on techniques for improving narrative, expository, and persuasive writing. The strategies you’ll be introduced to here are applicable to both prompted writing situations and student-selected topics. We’ll also discuss approaches to writing better research reports, persuasive essays, and fiction stories, as well as practical and effective solutions for working with reluctant writers.

Conventional Wisdom:
Helping Writers Master Mechanics

Let’s face it: most kids don’t handle writing conventions as well we would like them to. And most people don’t know exactly why. Correcting doesn’t seem to help very much. Spelling tests are tedious and time consuming. DOL doesn’t seem to transfer to authentic, independent writing situations. And nobody likes English books and worksheets. So what do you do? Get a set of proven tools and powerful ideas that work because they are based on what writing conventions really are and how real writers really learn them.

Prompted Writing:
High-Scoring Secrets For High-Stakes Tests

Essay writing is now a significant part of our state testing systems. Under less-than-ideal circumstances, students have to analyze a prompt and compose a response that will earn a passing score. To score high, students need to use a variety of strategies designed specifically for today’s high-stakes testing situations. But if teachers spend all their time teaching to the test, students lose interest and become poor writers in the long run. How can you balance the demands of good teaching while making sure that each of your students achieves the highest possible test scores? Take this workshop and find out.