The ONLY Resource You Need to Teach Writing...

is a library card.

I know there are plenty of products out there that promise to help your students write proficiently. The problem is that it's a promise a pre-packaged product can rarely deliver. If you want your students to love to write, and write well, the best investment you can make is in yourself. Until you become cognizant of the thinking processes you use when you interact with a book, it will be virtually impossible to help students do the same.


We wear several different hats that influence how we experience a book. When we Read Like a Reader, it is a bit like being a detective. (By the way, don't you just love Natalie's "thinking" face?) We pay careful attention to what has already happened to predict what might happen next. We use what we know about words to figure how to read and understand new words. We connect, visualize, sythesize.

But when we Read Like a Writer, we use different skills. We notice the 6+1 Traits. We ask questions like "Where do you think the author got the idea for this story?" and "Why do you the author decided to..." We pay very careful attention to the decisions a writer made so that we can use these same tools as we "construct" our own writing.

The thing about kids is that they're usually much better at noticing than we are. I'll never forget the day Natalie and I were reading a Clifford book and she asked "Why do the adults have five fingers, but the children only have four?" And while I had no idea, it did serve as a reminder that so many of our learners are visual. So when we Read Like an Illustrator, we notice the cover page and the picture on the dedication page. We notice the use of texture, colors, and style. We notice when the illustrator zooms in to give us lots of details and when they zoom out to show more of the setting.

This year, I hope you'll spend more time noticing. As you share your favorite read alouds, try on each hat and see what new teaching possibilities you, and your students, discover.

{This is the first of the 11 for '11 series. I'll be posting (with a little help from a guest blogger or two) 11 things that I've been thinking about as we begin the 2011-2012 school year.}