Two Writing Teachers Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Bring Checklists to Life: A Tip for Tomorrow from Melanie Mar 31, 2024

Show notes

It is helpful to create checklists that are accessible to students so they are manageable, digestible, and possible for students to utilize. In this tip, Melanie shares ways to help students chunk checklists, think with intention, and digitize checklists. In addition, she plants the seeds to help you think about ways to help students self-create checklists that will allow them to grow as writers.
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Melanie Meehan: meehanmelanie@gmail.com
Stacey Shubitz: stacey@staceyshubitz.com

Email us at contact@twowritingteachers.org for affiliate or sponsorship opportunities.
For more about teaching writing, head to the Two Writing Teachers blog.

Boost Writing Instruction with AI: A Digging Deeper Dialogue Mar 24, 2024

Show notes

In this episode, we talk about content creation, personalized learning, accessibility, efficiency & productivity with artificial intelligence. We share various teacher-facing AI tools and discuss how you can incorporate them into your writing instruction.
Go Deeper:

Previous TWTPod Episodes:

AI Tools We Mentioned:

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Melanie Meehan: meehanmelanie@gmail.com
Stacey Shubitz: stacey@staceyshubitz.com

Email us at contact@twowritingteachers.org for affiliate or sponsorship opportunities.
For more about teaching writing, head to the Two Writing Teachers blog.

Create Personal and Living Poetry Anthologies: A Tip for Tomorrow from Stacey Mar 17, 2024

Show notes

Learn about two engaging ideas for National Poetry Month, which begins on April 1. Stacey shares a bit about creating a collaborative "Living Poetry Anthology" where students curate poems to display throughout the school. Next, she discusses developing personal poetry collections featuring their work, inspirational poems, and reflections on poems they admired. Make poetry come alive for your students – listen now!

TWTBlog Posts

Resource List

Academy of American Poets
Awakening the Heart, second edition by Georgia Heard
National Poetry Month
Poetry Mentor Texts: Making Reading and Writing Connections, K-8, by Lynne R Dorfman and Rose Cappelli
Poems Are Teachers: How Studying Poetry Strengthens Writing in All Genres by Amy Ludwig VanDerwater

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Send us Fan Mail

Please subscribe to our podcast and leave us ratings/reviews on your favorite listening platform.
You may contact us directly if you want us to consult with your school district.

Melanie Meehan: meehanmelanie@gmail.com
Stacey Shubitz: stacey@staceyshubitz.com

Email us at contact@twowritingteachers.org for affiliate or sponsorship opportunities.
For more about teaching writing, head to the Two Writing Teachers blog.

Sentence Frames and Vocabulary Words: A Tip for Tomorrow from Melanie Mar 10, 2024

Show notes

There's a lot of brain work involved in written expression. This week, Melanie shares a tip to help students reduce their cognitive load, which will help them express their ideas more easily. In this tip, Melanie shares how providing students with sentence frames and a bank of vocabulary words can aid students with difficulty with word retrieval. Plus, she shares ways to shift the agency to students so they are not dependent on their teacher to do this work.
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Send us Fan Mail

Please subscribe to our podcast and leave us ratings/reviews on your favorite listening platform.
You may contact us directly if you want us to consult with your school district.

Melanie Meehan: meehanmelanie@gmail.com
Stacey Shubitz: stacey@staceyshubitz.com

Email us at contact@twowritingteachers.org for affiliate or sponsorship opportunities.
For more about teaching writing, head to the Two Writing Teachers blog.

Accommodations for Access to Writing Instruction: A Digging Deeper Dialogue Mar 03, 2024

Show notes

In this episode, we explore accommodations for student writers. The episode has five categories: organization, materials/tools, time, response, and seating. This episode will equip you with ways to create an inclusive, accessible learning environment.

PAST TWT BLOG POSTS

PODCASTS MENTIONED:

RESOURCES FOR WRITING ACCOMMODATIONS:

BOOKS MENTIONED:

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Send us Fan Mail

Please subscribe to our podcast and leave us ratings/reviews on your favorite listening platform.
You may contact us directly if you want us to consult with your school district.

Melanie Meehan: meehanmelanie@gmail.com
Stacey Shubitz: stacey@staceyshubitz.com

Email us at contact@twowritingteachers.org for affiliate or sponsorship opportunities.
For more about teaching writing, head to the Two Writing Teachers blog.

Navigate a Digital World by Seeing, Hearing, and Reading: A Tip for Tomorrow from Stacey Feb 25, 2024

Show notes

Stacey explores the power of pairing written explanations with oral directions to enhance understanding in the context of writing workshop. She provides an overview of Driveway, a Chrome Extension that allows educators to create step-by-step process guides with written descriptions, highlighted screenshots, and optional voiceovers. Learn how to create interactive walkthroughs to help students become more independent with the technology they use in writing workshop.

Here are some videos of Stacey’s sample guides created with Driveway (and then exported to YouTube):

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Send us Fan Mail

Please subscribe to our podcast and leave us ratings/reviews on your favorite listening platform.
You may contact us directly if you want us to consult with your school district.

Melanie Meehan: meehanmelanie@gmail.com
Stacey Shubitz: stacey@staceyshubitz.com

Email us at contact@twowritingteachers.org for affiliate or sponsorship opportunities.
For more about teaching writing, head to the Two Writing Teachers blog.

Digital Texts as Mentors: A Tip for Tomorrow from Melanie Feb 18, 2024

Show notes

In this Tip for Tomorrow, Melanie provides three ways to use digital mentor texts. She provides insight on using videos as part of your whole-class instruction, inquiry lessons, and as a goal-setting tool. Take advantage of this episode if you need more ways to integrate digital mentor texts into your writing instruction.
Read Leah Koch's Two Writing Teachers post, Energize Opinion Writing with Surprising Mentor Texts: Ready-to-Go Tip, which inspired this episode.
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*****

Send us Fan Mail

Please subscribe to our podcast and leave us ratings/reviews on your favorite listening platform.
You may contact us directly if you want us to consult with your school district.

Melanie Meehan: meehanmelanie@gmail.com
Stacey Shubitz: stacey@staceyshubitz.com

Email us at contact@twowritingteachers.org for affiliate or sponsorship opportunities.
For more about teaching writing, head to the Two Writing Teachers blog.

Exploring the Power of Oral Language: A Conversation with a Colleague Feb 11, 2024

Show notes

Discover the untapped potential of oral language in the writing process and gain valuable insights from Lainie Levin, one of our TWTBlog co-authors. Lainie and Stacey discuss the importance of oral language beyond the primary years of elementary school and how storytelling and oral language support kids in developing a sense of story and composing writing in a low-risk way. Lainie shares strategies for making oral rehearsal engaging for children.

ABOUT LAINIE LEVIN:

Lainie is a dedicated educator with 28 years of teaching experience and a strong advocate for children and public education. She is a gifted interventionist and coach in language arts and math, specializing in meeting the needs of gifted/talented elementary school students. Since 2021, she has been a valued colleague at Two Writing Teachers.
Check out Lainie’s personal blog, Soapbox: The Way I See Things, follow her on X @mrslevin11, or read her Two Writing Teachers blog posts.

GO DEEPER:

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Send us Fan Mail

Please subscribe to our podcast and leave us ratings/reviews on your favorite listening platform.
You may contact us directly if you want us to consult with your school district.

Melanie Meehan: meehanmelanie@gmail.com
Stacey Shubitz: stacey@staceyshubitz.com

Email us at contact@twowritingteachers.org for affiliate or sponsorship opportunities.
For more about teaching writing, head to the Two Writing Teachers blog.

Research and Writing Instruction: A Tip for Tomorrow from Melanie Feb 04, 2024

Show notes

Research can be instrumental in supporting instructional decision-making for teachers. In this Tip for Tomorrow, Melanie gives an overview of some of the most critical research surrounding writing instruction. She will cover what the research says about:

Teaching kids about different aspects of the writing process.
Studying strong examples of writing to lift the level of student writing.
Teaching students to become fluent with handwriting, spelling, and typing so the cognitive focus is on content, not construction and transcription.
Providing daily time for students to write in and outside the writing workshop (e.g., content area writing, writing about reading).
Creating an engaged community of writers where writers confer, collaborate, and think about their audience.

Links to the research mentioned in the episode:
Steve Graham:

Constance Weaver:

Grammar intertwined throughout the writing process: An “inch wide and a mile deep”

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Send us Fan Mail

Please subscribe to our podcast and leave us ratings/reviews on your favorite listening platform.
You may contact us directly if you want us to consult with your school district.

Melanie Meehan: meehanmelanie@gmail.com
Stacey Shubitz: stacey@staceyshubitz.com

Email us at contact@twowritingteachers.org for affiliate or sponsorship opportunities.
For more about teaching writing, head to the Two Writing Teachers blog.

Propel Writers Forward With Reflection Shares: A Tip for Tomorrow from Stacey Jan 28, 2024

Show notes

Join Stacey as she delves into the power of reflection shares to promote growth and development in student writing. She discusses how whole-group reflection allows students to share insights, experiences, and strategies, and fosters a sense of community and accountability. She emphasizes the importance of students feeling valued and included in the larger writing community, which increases confidence and engagement in the writing process. Near the end of the episode, Stacey shares a few prompts to help you get started with reflection shares in your classroom as soon as tomorrow.

The reflection prompts mentioned towards the end of the episode:

I still need help with…
Something I will try again…
A question I still have…
I could teach others to…

You can find these and some additional reflection prompts in chapter nine of Welcome to Writing Workshop: Engaging Today’s Students with a Model That Works by Stacey Shubitz and Lynne R. Dorfman.

Two Writing Teachers contains excellent information about reflection and sharing. You may click on these category links to explore blog posts on these topics:

#TWTBlog posts about reflection
#TWTBlog posts about sharing

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Thanks to our affiliate!
Marley Spoon: $235 off through 5 boxes -- Makes the first box portion price start at $4.99. Click here or copy and paste this link into your browser: http://www.awin1.com/awclick.php?mid=6988&id=1261005.
*****

Send us Fan Mail

Please subscribe to our podcast and leave us ratings/reviews on your favorite listening platform.
You may contact us directly if you want us to consult with your school district.

Melanie Meehan: meehanmelanie@gmail.com
Stacey Shubitz: stacey@staceyshubitz.com

Email us at contact@twowritingteachers.org for affiliate or sponsorship opportunities.
For more about teaching writing, head to the Two Writing Teachers blog.

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