Welcome to interactive writing, a foundational classroom practice that helps our youngest students discover the joy of writing as a community of learners.  Letters, sounds, spelling patterns, and concepts of print come to life when teachers share the pen with children, collaborating to create text.

A Teacher’s Guide to Interactive Writing shares the principles,... more

There is much in this book to inspire any writer to seek more in his or her own writing: to pay attention to sounds, smells, people, and dialogue. Because Judith’s voice is strong, offering such a real and rich invitation, my students will listen.

Young-adult... more

In his staff development companion to Reading for Their Life, Alfred Tatum demonstrates the power enabling texts can have to change the life of African American adolescent males—and every student in the class.

On this powerful DVD, Alfred takes you into Deborah Osher’s classroom to see how his strategies work in regular, mixed-race/mixed-gender... more

In this step-by-step guide, Carl Anderson shows you how to put teaching with mentor texts at the center of the way you teach writing in your elementary classroom. You’ll learn how to find just-right mentor texts for your students, analyze them for multiple craft and convention teaching points, and teach with mentor texts with your whole class, in small group lessons, and... more

Writing assignments are road maps—or they should be. They guide the writer on a journey. They lay out a process, envision a destination.  They are designed. As Jim Burke explains it:  “What we are really doing when we create a year’s worth of writing assignments, of experiences, is designing a story.  Each day’s class a sentence, each week a paragraph, each unit a chapter... more

Anyone who has taught writing knows that sometimes the hardest part about teaching writing is getting students to write at all. 

What we sometimes forget, Kelly Boswell reminds us, is that every writer is reluctant to write at some point. It’s the conditions––not the kids––that determine success. In Every Kid A Writer, Kelly provides six field-tested... more

Your next writing lesson? It's already planned!

Teachers: having trouble finding the time to plan engaging new writing minilessons? Check out Get Focused, a digital writing resource unlike anything you’ve ever seen.

On-demand video lessons from Ralph Fletcher

Cue up one of 23 on-demand... more