Presents strategies for turning good ideas into great fiction and nonfiction stories, explaining how to spark inspiration, develop ideas into a piece of writing, assess the ideas, analyze story elements, and troubleshoot the manuscript. Includes over three hundred prompts.

In clear language, Fletcher and Portalupi explain the simple principles that underlie the writing workshop and explore the major components that make it work.

The best story is one that comes from the heart. The library is having a contest for the best story, and the quirky narrator of this book just has to win that rollercoaster ride with her favorite author! But what makes a story the best? Her brother Tim says the best stories have lots of action. Her father thinks the best stories are the funniest. And Aunt Jane tells her that the best stories have to make people cry. A story that does all these things doesn't seem quite right, though, and the one thing the whole family can agree on is that the best story has to be your own. Anne Wilsdorf's hilarious illustrations perfectly capture this colorful family and their outrageous stories in Eileen Spinelli's heartfelt tale about creativity and finding your own voice.

"In this resource, you'll find four units of study for each grade level that fit tongue-in-groove alongside each other, each accounting for about five weeks of teaching. Each new unit in the sequence helps students consolidate, use, and build upon what they have already learned. Each of the four units offers a sequenced set of daily sessions that invite students along a path of writing development in one of three genres: narrative, information or explanation, and opinion or argument writing. This is unit 1 of the series is intended for Grade K"--

When writing workshop first blossomed in classrooms, its hallmarks were genuine curiosity, individual choice, quality conversations, and engaging children's literature. A joyous hum of intention, creativity, and craft enlivened the school day. But today's teachers are often faced with a range of obstacles, as new initiatives are embraced, mandates handed down, and scripted programs purchased. Sometimes teachers must sacrifice the original principles of writing workshop and lose that joyous hum. Above and Beyond the Writing Workshop by Shelley Harwayne is filled with original, joyful writing challenges designed to bring back the spirit of the original writing workshop model while encouraging educators to enhance it through invention, innovation, and inspiration. These challenges are meant to generate other lessons and other projects, as teachers come to realize that teaching writing is not only possible but perhaps the most important, relevant, and gratifying part of their instruction. Shelley invites teachers to keep the groundbreaking spirit alive by: taking back their writing workshops finding time for professional conversations trying out new ideas in the company of colleagues encouraging children to be inquisitive, outspoken, and independent reminding children how fascinating the world is helping students delight in figuring out how things work and then teaching others what they have learned offering children an opportunity to think deeply about their passions and giving one another new things to love showing children that high quality writing can and will make a difference in the world. Shelley believes children who write what matters to them - their experiences, their beliefs, their observations - will find their lives enhanced. She seeks to raise activists who, by becoming more aware of the world and asking why things are the way they are, will be empowered to make it better.

The Writer's Workshop takes an approach to teaching writing that is new only because it is so old. Today, rhetoric and composition typically proceed by ignoring what was done for 2,500 years in Western education. Gregory Roper, on the other hand, helps students learn to write in the way the great writers of the past themselves learned: by carefully imitating masters of the craft, including Cicero, Thomas Aquinas, Charles Dickens, Sojourner Truth, James Joyce, and Ernest Hemingway. By living in their workshops and apprenticing to these and other masters, apprentice writers—like apprentice musicians, painters, and blacksmiths of the past—will rapidly improve the complexity of their art and discover their own native voices. Interspersed into chapters full of sound practical advice and challenging assignments are reflections on Great Ideas from "Realism and Impressionism" to "Nominalism and Modern Science." Perfect for the college or even high school writing classroom—as well as a marvelous book for homeschoolers and others who would like to improve their own writing—The Writer's Workshop is a fine practical guide, and Dr. Roper a friendly yet demanding teacher-mentor.

“Equal parts motivation and inspiration . . . Bite-size, easy-to-read chapters coach new writers through everything from imposter syndrome to writer’s block.” —The Writer I Should Be Writing is everything you’d hope to find in a writing workshop, condensed into one highly effective journal. It’s time to stop dreaming about what you want to write and finally do it! Let award-winning podcaster Mur Lafferty, who in the past has interviewed authors including John Scalzi, Neil Gaiman, Gail Carriger, Adam Christopher, and Kameron Hurley, guide you through the nuts-and-bolts process of honing your craft, including which writing myths to ignore, how to refine your creative process, listening to your inner muse while ignoring your inner bully, and more. This book also contains writing exercises that will help the blossoming writer strengthen the writer’s muscle of writing every day. These include everything from situational writer’s prompts to lists of ideas writers should try to jot down between writing sessions. With this helpful guide, you can make the phrase, “I’ve always wanted to write a story . . .” a thing of the past. Because you should be writing!

Where do you get your ideas? It’s a question that plagues every writer. And once you’ve got an idea, what then? Ideas without a plan, without a purpose, are no more than pleasant thoughts. So how do you come up with those ideas, and how do you turn them into writing that will engage your reader? The Writer’s Idea Book is here to help you find the answers. Utilizing more than 400 prompts and exercises, you’ll generate intriguing ideas and plumb their possibilities to turn them into something amazing. This indispensable guide will help you: • Develop good writing habits that foster creativity • Explore your own life for writing material • Draw inspiration from the world around you • Find form for your ideas, develop them into a piece of writing, and make them better Let The Writer’s Idea Book give you the insight and self-awareness to create and refine ideas that demand to be transformed into greater works, the kind of compelling, absorbing writing that will have other writers asking "where do you get your ideas?"

An innovative new approach to teaching and writing creative nonfiction from veteran teacher and critically acclaimed author Carol Bly. Teachers and writers everywhere are facing the limits imposed by the prevailing models of teaching: community or MFA “workshops” or, at the high-school level, “peer review.” In Beyond the Writers' Workshop Carol Bly presents an alternative. She believes that workshopping’s tendency to engage in wry scorn and pay exaggerated attention to technical details, causes apprentice writers, consciously or unconsciously, to modify their most passionate work. Inspired by a philosophy of individuality and moral rigor, Bly combines ideas and techniques from social work, psychotherapy, and neuroscience with the traditional teaching of fresh metaphor, salient dialogue, lively pace, and analysis of other literary work in her pioneering new approach. She also includes exercises and examples in an extensive practical appendix.

Master teacher Lisa Morris invites you to share her secrets of success with writer's workshops. After years of experimenting with the workshop model, she has developed the most effective ways to apply it in the classroom, yielding higher test scores and increased student engagement. Through practical, step-by-step instruction, Morris demonstrates how to use writer's notebooks, mentor texts, the writing process, and the 6 traits. Specific topics include: setting up the classroom for workshops creating a writing curriculum creating guidelines, expectations, and lessons for using notebooks helping students select ideas, brainstorm, and plan assigning writing partners and organizing sharing getting students to self-reflect creating process and product portfolios finding resources for publishing holding effective writing conferences The book also offers an array of invaluable tools, such as student writing samples mini-lessons for each stage of the writing process lesson plans pacing guides for dividing your time during the workshop sample charts to help you stay organized suggested classroom guidelines and handouts a list of mentor texts, organized by what you can use them to teach (e.g., adjectives, alliteration, onomatopoeia, beginnings, endings, strong verbs, sensory details) quotations on each stage of the writing process to motivate students