Summary: The NWP Advocacy Toolkit was developed to help NWP site leaders gain local, state, and national support for their sites, and to provide information about the federal legislative process. This toolkit is a valuable resource for sites in their ongoing efforts to educate policymakers about the importance of writing...
Author: Art Peterson Summary: How does a Writing Project teacher become a leader? This brief portrait describes how award-winning elementary teacher Julie Johnson evolved into an exemplary teacher of writing and collaborated with colleagues to develop a model writing school. This resource can fulfill multiple needs for site leaders and...
Summary: This series of scenarios for planning professional development programs can serve as thinking and discussion guides for site leaders working with teacher leaders who are developing and delivering professional development. The scenarios guide leaders through a process of considering multiple brief PD requests, how they would put together a...
Summary: Through its local Writing Project sites and national programs, NWP awards badges to recognize educators’ various skills and accomplishments connected to Writing Project work. This collection identifies and explains currently open badges that Writing Project sites can award and/or participants can receive. View the public criteria that viewers see...
Author: Nancy Remington and Robert McGinty Summary: Leaders from the Great Basin Writing Project in Nevada describe a long-term school partnership that gave teachers at Southside Elementary the opportunity to redesign curriculum and reshape the writing culture of their school. This inquiry-centered approach to professional development, designed and led by...
Author: Kari Scheidel Summary: Noting the gap between the level of sophistication of her students’ writing in writing workshop and in social studies, teacher Kari Scheidel reflected upon her teaching practice, asking “How do I use writing effectively in social studies?” and “How do I find time for it?” In...
Author: Pat Fox Summary: Planning a visioning retreat can be an effective strategy for bringing together directors and teacher-leaders to take stock of where the site has been and to develop a strategic plan for future programs. Visioning retreats can help newer sites in their early years to develop an...
Author: Rebeca García-González Summary: This article describes how pre-retreat coaching can be organized to deepen the effectiveness of a Professional Writing Retreat. This scaffolding prior to the event can be designed to help participants refine, adjust, or modify their writing plans and help build an early connection to a veteran...
Author: Keri Franklin Summary: In this article, Keri Franklin provides ideas and methods to prepare student authors for meaningful peer conferences which promote social talk in students’ responses to peers’ writings. Students benefit from peer conferences by receiving ideas from an audience of peers and more feedback than one teacher...
Author: Christian Knoeller Summary: In this article, Christian Knoeller describes a metaphor writing assignment that offers an effective alternative to instructional materials that present writing processes in overly simple and mechanical ways. Knoeller argues that metaphor enables examinations of how we compose and revise, how we go beyond static processes,...