#10: 5 Ideas for Improving Student Writing

Jennifer Serravallo (@jserravallo) is a literacy consultant, speaker, and the author of several popular titles including the NY Times Bestselling The Reading Strategies Book, the newly-released Writing Strategies Book, and the two-time award-winning Independent Reading Assessment Series. She was a Senior Staff Developer at the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project and taught in Title I schools in NYC.  Jennifer shares 5 ideas for improving writing in your classroom today. First, she encourages teachers to focus on one goal to help students improve. She also talks about the risks of not focusing when you teach writing and gives examples of goals and how to keep from confusing kids when you're teaching writing. Second, she shares how we can set up partnerships for learning and the most common mistake teachers make when using writing partners. Third, she talks about waiting to correct grammar and punctuation until they have their thoughts down on paper. She discusses what happens when teachers don't follow this advice. Her fourth piece of advice is one of the most exciting! Outline on sticky notes and put it on the paper. She shares how to do this for both fiction and non-fiction writing. Finally, Jennifer talks about a common mistake teachers make that hurts a student's desire to write. Plan a celebration. She talks about what this looks like as well as that all important "pre-promotion" to students of what you will do with the work. A full transcript of this show and the show notes are available at www.coolcatteacher.com/podcast as well as details on entering this month’s giveaway contests.