As teachers, we do indeed live narrative lives, and if you read Engaging Young Writers, Preschool to Grade 1, Matt Glover will help you live out new kinds of stories with the children you teach. I know he's helped me do just that. I'm a better teacher because of what I've learned from him. Katie Wood Ray Author of About the Authors We are so fortunate to have this book. Matt shares his deep understanding of young writers, presents a thoughtful and warm approach to teaching writing, and shows us how to nudge children in ways that are considerate of their interests and intentions as well as their intellectual development. -Kathy Collins Author of Growing Readers Many children come to school wanting to write. But some are unsure about getting started or don't realize they have something to say. Motivating students to put markers to paper is the key that unlocks a lifetime of writing. Engaging Young Writers presents a range of entry points that help every student find a way into writing. In Engaging Young Writers, Matt Glover (coauthor of Already Ready) presents ways to encourage students to pick up the pen and share their remarkable thinking. With multiple entry points for writers, he helps you match your teaching to children's individual interests and patterns of learning. Glover shows how you can: nudge writers into action through meaning, choice, and purpose invite preschool children to write through conversation and invite primary students through units of study spark imaginative writing through read-aloud and dramatic play inspire kids to write stories from personal experiences give students the chance to share their passions and interests through nonfiction writing. Engaging Young Writers features teaching tested in real classrooms and the student samples to back it up. Glover takes special care to address how his ideas can be applied to the unique developmental needs of writers in preschool, kindergarten, and grade one. Inside every child is a writer. Inside you is the desire to give children a great start. Inside Engaging Young Writers is the teaching to help you create that wonderful moment when your students decide to become the writer within.

"Chapter 1 contains a definition and explanation of genre-based strategy instruction with self-regulation for kindergarten through grade 2. In Chapter 2, we discuss writing purposes and the writing process, and we provide explanations about how to make connections between reading and writing under the larger umbrella concept of genre. In Chapter 3, we explain the strategy for teaching strategies, which is the instructional blueprint for using this book and for the development of additional genre-based lessons. Chapters 4 to 6 are instructional chapters and include the lessons and resources for responses to reading, opinion writing, procedural writing, and story writing. Chapter 7 includes guidelines for sentence writing and application of oral language in grammar instruction"--

Help young writers learn to engage and invite their reader's thinking with five key thinking strategies - connect, question, visualize, infer, and transform.

From the very first chapter of this informative and inspiring book, a clear picture emerges of how even three- and four-year-olds' capacities for serious authorship can and should be supported. - Lillian G. Katz Coauthor of Young Investigators: The Project Approach in the Early Years By the time they reach preschool or kindergarten, young children are already writers. They don't have much experience, but they're filled with stories to tell and ideas to express - they want to show the world what they know and see. All they need is a nurturing teacher like you to recognize the writer at work within them. All you need to help them is Already Ready. Taking an exciting, new approach to working with our youngest students, Already Ready shows you how, by respecting children as writers, engaged in bookmaking, you can gently nudge them toward a lifetime of joyful writing. Katie Wood Ray and Matt Glover guide you through fundamental concepts of early writing. Providing numerous, helpful examples of early writing - complete with transcriptions - they demonstrate how to: make sense of children's writing and interpret how they represent sounds, ideas, and images see important developmental signs in writers that you can use to help them grow further recognize the thinking young children engage in and discover that it's the same thinking more experienced writers use to craft purposeful, thoughtful pieces. Then Ray and Glover show you how little ones can develop powerful understandings about: texts and their characteristics the writing process what it means to be a writer. You'll learn how to support your writers' quest to make meaning, as they grow their abilities and refine their thinking about writing through teaching strategies such as: reading aloud working side by side with writers sharing children's writing. Writing is just one part of a busy early childhood classroom, but even in little doses, a nurturing approach can work wonders and help children connect the natural writer inside them to a life of expressing themselves on paper. Find that approach, share it with your students, and you'll discover that you don't have to get students ready to write - they're Already Ready.

If you believe that all students should have opportunities to write in genres of their choice but aren't sure how, Matt Glover is here to help. In Craft and Process Studies, Matt makes a compelling case for raising student engagement and writing quality by allowing students to choose the genre they want to write in. Then he shows you how with 17 possible units, divided into craft and process studies, that teach important writing skills while also providing opportunities for choice of genre. Matt uses a predictable structure for each unit that includes suggestions for: - applicable grade ranges - time of year to try - key unit goals and questions - mentor texts - minilesson topics - conferring goals. With key teaching points, ideas for how to fit the units into your existing curriculum, and strategies to overcome common roadblocks, Matt gives you all the specific how-to's for implementing the studies even in school settings where writing units are already set. And with 40 classroom videos, you'll see the power of this work in action.

It's vital that we support young children's reading in ways that nurture healthy reading identities, that foster an attraction to books and a love of reading, and that teach them how make meaning in any text they choose, whether or not they can read the words. -Kathy Collins and Matt Glover What do we see when young children interact with books before they can read the words? Kathy Collins and Matt Glover see real reading, characterized by purposeful meaning-making and opportunities for reading growth and language development. "One of our biggest hopes," write Kathy and Matt, "is to help you see and value all of the powerful work young children do as readers." With I Am Reading you'll see that fostering what little ones do before they can read the words is important early instruction. Kathy and Matt show how to nurture, nudge, and instruct young readers to make meaning in any text, whether or not they are reading the words. They share: observation guides for children reading any kind of book specific descriptions of language and independence development sample reading conferences and whole-class minilessons suggestions for creating reading opportunities in preschool and reading workshops in K-1 action plans to get you going 25 online video clips of children making meaning and teachers supporting them. I Am Reading pairs two important voices in early literacy to remind us that we're teaching children, not reading levels. "In the rush toward ever higher reading levels in the early years," write Kathy and Matt, "we may fail to value the strategy use and high-level thinking children do before they are reading conventionally." Join Kathy and Matt and look anew at your young readers so you can provide the kind of support that gets them off to a great start.

Invigorate your teaching and simplify your lesson planning with inquiry! With this book, learn to develop an essential question that students will be engaged by, and then plan lessons, activities, and projects that support students as they pursue answers and understandings. Addresses all the content areas.

"Writing allows each of us to live with that special wide-awakeness that comes from knowing that our lives and our ideas are worth writing about." -Lucy Calkins Teaching Writing is Lucy Calkins at her best-a distillation of the work that's placed Lucy and her colleagues at the forefront of the teaching of writing for over thirty years. This book promises to inspire teachers to teach with renewed passion and power and to invigorate the entire school day. This is a book for readers who want an introduction to the writing workshop, and for those who've lived and breathed this work for decades. Although Lucy addresses the familiar topics-the writing process, conferring, kinds of writing, and writing assessment- she helps us see those topics with new eyes. She clears away the debris to show us the teeny details, and she shows us the majesty and meaning, too, in these simple yet powerful teaching acts. Download a sample chapter for more information.

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) identify three essential writing genres: narrative, persuasive, and informative. This highly practical guide offers a systematic approach to instruction in each genre, including ready-to-use lesson plans for grades 3-5. Grounded in research on strategy instruction and self-regulated learning, the book shows how to teach students explicit strategies for planning, drafting, evaluating, revising, editing, and publishing their writing. Sixty-four reproducible planning forms and student handouts are provided in a convenient large-size format; purchasers also get access to a Web page where they can download and print the reproducible materials. The Appendix contains a Study Guide to support professional learning.

"This book seeks to reinvigorate the teaching of writing by harkening back to the original principles of the writing workshop, offering teachers a meaningful way to teach children how to write with enthusiasm and expertise. The author argues that we must focus again on genuine curiosity, individual choice, big blocks of time, quality conversations, and powerful children's literature"--