“It’s a great thing in life to find someone who can help you with your writing”. Lucy Calkins
What is the purpose of reading and writing partnerships? How do they enhance your workshop teaching? Are they necessary to a successful workshop? Is it helpful to be with the same partner during a unit or even longer? How can I refine my partnerships so my students can benefit from them in more meaningful ways?
These are some of the questions you might be contemplating as you either refine your partnerships or begin the process of establishing them. Here are some helpful tools depending on the topic you are interested in exploring.
Establishing Workshop Partners:
- Workshop Partnership Planning Sheet (Literacy Lovin’ Lab Creation)
- Writing Surveys–How to set up partnerships? (Looking at student work and conversations with students)
- Setting up Partnerships–Basics (from Anna Cockerille–TCRWP Staff Developer, Author of Grade 4 Unit–Bringing History to Life
Refining Writing Partnerships–Talk and Routines:
- Setting Up Writing Partnerships for Success (Looking at the reasons why partnerships are important and things to consider to make the partnerships successful)
- Effective Writing Partners (How to create effective partnerships from a 5th-grade\ teacher’s perspective)
- Meeting with Partners to Support Revision
- Small Group Partnerships (Teacher’s College of Reading and Writing Project)
Writing Partnership Anchor Charts:
I love the simple language with visuals for students to understand how partnerships work. The star post-it notes can extend your work throughout the year.
Another way to organize your thinking about partnerships, possibly appropriate for 3rd and up. Another simple way for a student to understand the routine of how partnerships work.
A great way to show your own students modeling the behaviors on your chart. This could be a great activity where you can have the students model what to do and what not to do with the final picture reflecting how partnerships can work.
Have you read the Reading and Writing Strategies book by Jennifer Seravallo? They both have over 300 strategies for emergent writers in PK/K to 8th grade.
Here is a list of chapters in the Writing Strategies book:
Getting Started
Goal I: Composing with Pictures (18 strategies)
Goal 2: Engagement: Independence, Increasing Volume, and Developing a Writing Identity (27 strategies)
Goal 3: Generating and Collecting Ideas (38 strategies)
Goal 4: Focus/Meaning (25 strategies)
Goal 5: Organization and Structure (40 strategies)
Goal 6: Elaboration (45 strategies)
Goal 7: Word Choice (31 strategies)
Goal 8: Conventions: Spelling and Letter Formation (22 strategies)
Goal 9: Conventions: Grammar and Punctuation (35 strategies)
Goal 10: Collaborating with Writing Partners and Clubs (19 strategies)
