Workshop Overview

Every teacher wants their students to learn to write well:

• They want them to learn how to craft their writing so that it is clear, effective and powerful.

• They want them to develop a repertoire of strategies for navigating the stages of the writing process.

• The want them to use writing conventions with precision and understanding.

What’s the secret for accomplishing these goals?

One important answer is to teach with mentors. By showing and studying well-written mentor texts in writing lessons, your students will learn about the qualities of writing– focus, structure, detail, voice and conventions – and see how they can integrate these qualities into their own writing. 

And by teaching with “process texts” -- writing from each stage of the writing process, most often written by you, the classroom teacher – your students will see how experienced writers handle the challenges at each stage of the process, and learn strategies they can use themselves.

By teaching with mentor and process texts, you’ll align your practice to the principle of learning that an important way people learn to do something is by studying what more skilled people do. Teaching with mentors is an important focus of Carl’s books A Teacher’s Guide to Mentor Texts and How to Become a Better Writing Teacher (with Matt Glover). 

Learning Outcomes

In this two-day, in-person institute, Carl will help you improve these aspects of how you teach writing:

• You’ll learn how to assemble “stacks” of mentor texts for each writing unit that are highly engaging and will help you teach the craft techniques and conventions you want your students to learn.

• You’ll practice several methods for finding a wealth of teaching points in mentor texts, both crafting techniques and conventions.

• You’ll learn about how to introduce mentor texts in each unit during “immersion” at the start of a unit.

• You’ll practice composing craft and convention teaching points using mentor texts that will help you teach with clarity and precision in whole and small-group lessons as well as in 1:1 writing conferences.

• You’ll write your own “process text” for a writing unit that you’ll be able to use in your own teaching.

• You’ll compose teaching points using your process texts that show students strategies that will help them move through each stage of the writing process. 

During the workshop, you’ll learn numerous hands-on, practical strategies you can use as soon as you return to your classroom, and which will help you become a better teacher of writing.