Teaching the Writer

Teaching reading and writing is one of the most important things that happens in any elementary school, don't you think?  That said, there are lots of different curricula out there to help teachers do just that.  As many of you know, Lakewood City Schools has adopted The Teachers College Reading & Writing Project Reading and Writing Workshop as the framework for teaching our students these important skills.

If you venture to this organization's website (http://readingandwritingproject.org/about), you will see what a "deep" resource it is.  In order for Lakewood teachers to learn how to use these tools for the benefit or our students, some serious professional development is taking place right here in our schools.  It is taking place in stages, so that each session is a targeted, small group learning opportunity for our classroom and curriculum/technology teachers, as well as administrators.

Last week, the 3rd-5th grade Horace Mann teachers and I attended sessions on writing with an amazing staff developer from The Reading and Writing Project.  Our developer, Simone Fraser, taught us many things, and I'll share two of them here.  First, she emphasized the importance of choice for students as they are practicing their reading and writing skills.  Another gem she shared is that we need to teach the writer, not the writing.  That means we are considering the writer's skills and matching our instruction in the key elements of writing at that grade level to his/her needs.  This is powerful stuff!

I hope you are enjoying talking with your child about reading and seeing the pieces of writing s/he is creating.  I know I am :-)