Posts for August 2019

Thoughtful Learning Blog

The Thoughtful Learning blog features articles about English language arts, 21st century skills, and social-emotional learning. Insights come from the teachers, writers, and developers at Thoughtful Learning, who have been creating top-notch instructional materials for more than 40 years.

While most people spend August sipping sun tea and binge-watching Stranger Things, teachers spend it kicking off the new school year. So. Much. To. Do. We have to set up our classrooms on newly shined floors, decorate our boards, deploy our reading materials, get the printer and laminator dancing like a pair of tango champions. . . . If only there were free online lesson plans to teach student-centered writing!

There are.

If you complement your reading program with one of the writing handbooks from Thoughtful Learning, you have a free online Teacher’s Guide that gathers and organizes your resources, all in one place! Relieve a little stress. Find what you need. Seriously, this three-minute video is better than yoga for teachers in August:

How to Nurture a Writing Mindset
Thoughtful Learning

Mindset plays a pivotal role in learning. Students who approach writing with confidence and enthusiasm are much more likely to persist through challenges than students who feel fearful and discouraged by it. Unfortunately, the latter category includes many students in our classrooms.

This year, let's nurture a positive mindset toward writing. But what classroom practices will help, and how can we measure progress?

Empowering Writers

To nurture a positive writing mindset in our students, we can incorporate some best practices into our classrooms.

  • Invite students to write about topics of personal interest.
  • Build choice into writing assignments.
  • Immerse students in examples of good writing.
  • Model effective reading and writing strategies.
  • Balance freedom and structure (by teaching the writing process).
  • Use minilessons to teach skills that writers can immediately apply.
  • Focus your feedback on solutions, not problems.
  • Be flexible about grammar and correctness.
  • Make time for reflection.
  • Point students to effective writing resources.

(Learn more about these best practices.)

Surveying Growth

To measure our students’ evolving mindsets, we can use entrance and exit surveys, like the ones that follow.