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Practical Potent Help for Writing About Reading—Including Writing Extended Responses on High-Stakes Tests
Tuesday, February 27, 2024 @ 4:00 pm - 5:00 pm EST
Presented by Dr. Lucy Calkins, Robinson Professor of Literacy at Teachers College, Columbia University, Founding Director of The Reading and Writing Project at Mossflower, and Senior Author of Units of Study in Writing and Reading; Jessica Mazzone, Staff Developer at The Reading and Writing Project at Mossflower, and Co-Author of Units of Study in Writing and Reading; and Katy Wischow, Staff Developer at The Reading and Writing Project at Mossflower, and Co-Author of Units of Study in Writing and Reading
Sponsored by Heinemann Publishing
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Many of us remember being stumped about just what it was the teacher wanted us to do in our essays about Hamlet and Pride and Prejudice. Anytime we got an assignment, we’d race to get the CliffsNotes that demystified expectations. These days, instruction that once filled secondary school classrooms has moved into the upper elementary grades, and kids are even more mystified—and more pressured, too, as writing about reading has become high stakes.
In this edWebinar, Dr. Lucy Calkins, one of the world’s foremost teachers of writing, equips you to bring your kids along a logical cross-grade progression of instruction on writing literary essays so that you equip all your students with the skills they need to write insightful essays, including essays on characters, relationships, themes, and author’s craft.
Jess Mazzone and Katy Wischow, two co-authors of the soon-to-be-released Units of Study in Writing, follow this work by sharing high-leverage small groups and a set of potent tools that together can help your students explore the fine points of effective essays, learning about evidence, detail, symbolism, sentence complexity, and the like.
Finally, you see how all of this can help your students feel ready for the expectations of state tests. This recorded edWebinar is of interest to elementary teachers and school and district leaders.
About the Presenters
Dr. Lucy Calkins is the Founding Director of The Reading and Writing Project at Mossflower. She’s been on the faculty at Teachers College, Columbia University for over four decades, as both the Co-director of the Literacy Specialist Program and as the Richard Robinson Professor of Children’s Literature. Dr. Calkins has written 50+ books, including the widely adopted Units of Study curriculum. Dr. Calkins began her career as a teacher for elementary, middle, and high school students, then joined Don Graves as a researcher on the National Institute of Education’s first major study of children as writers. That research has been credited with transforming the teaching of writing, bringing writing workshops, which were once the province of college classrooms, into K-8 classrooms. For decades since then, Dr. Calkins has devoted most of her time to leading organizations that aim to support best practices in the teaching of reading and writing.
Jess Mazzone started her career as a grades 2-5 teacher, a literacy coach, and has since co-authored the Units of Study series. Her role as Social Media Coordinator at The Reading and Writing Project at Mossflower grows out of her extraordinary work partnering with teachers across the world through her literacy Instagram account. Additionally, she continues to serve as a Staff Developer, where she is particularly skilled at helping young learners develop independence by turning their reading and writing notebooks into toolkits full of goals, strategies, resources, and inquiries. Jess is a graduate of Tufts, with an MA in special education from NYU and a certification in Orton-Gillingham.
Katy Wischow started her career teaching middle school in Newark, NJ for more than a decade before starting to work as a literacy staff developer supporting schools around the world. She has co-authored the book Unlocking the Power of Classroom Talk, co-written several Units of Study, and authored the Ida and Jake series in the Jump Rope Readers. She is deeply interested in grammar, helping kids write essays with voice and passion, writing professionally, supporting families with literacy learning, and building strong learning cultures in schools and classrooms. Katy is now a Staff Developer at The Reading and Writing Project at Mossflower where she leads middle school initiatives and several writing projects. Katy is a graduate of Duke University, with an MA in literacy from Columbia University.
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