Engaging Young Writers

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.

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.

My name is Jaquelle, and I'm a teenager. I like football movies, sushi, and dark chocolate. But the biggest, most crucial, most significant thing about me is that my life's task is to follow Jesus. He is the One who changed my life. That's what this book is about. It's for teenagers eager to reject the status quo and low standards our culture sets for us. It's for those of us who don't want to spend the adolescent years slacking off, but rather standing out and digging deep into what Jesus says about following him. This book will help you see how the truth about God changes everything—our relationships, our time, our sin, our habits, and more—freeing us to live joyful, obedient, and Christ-exalting lives, even while we're young.

Writing nonfiction is a key skill that students will need throughout their school lives, and beyond. This remarkable book is designed to help teachers develop a writing program that will enable their students to harness all of their Nonfiction Writing Powers: to Describe, to Instruct, to Compare, to Persuade, to Explain, and to Report. It illustrates ways to encourage students to write because they have something to say, and to recognize that writing well means considering intent and purpose, and choosing the best form of expression. Ideal for teaching writing in the content areas, the book includes guidance on linking writing forms to Science, Social Studies, and other subject areas.

"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"--

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.