Don't forget these gifts!

I hope you are enjoying your winter holidays. One of the things my kids always do is gather their gifts and take a picture. It's fun to look back at these pictures and remember.

At the beginning of November, I set a goal to send a newsletter with a freebie each week until the end of the year. I've had so much fun creating and developing resources to make teaching writers manageable and enjoyable.

Just like my kids line up their gifts and snap a photo in order to remember, I wanted to recap the gifts I've given in the past two months.

You can find them all on my website.

1. What to do when students have nothing to write: Finding Topics: A Guide for Teachers (my second ebook). Elsie tweeted, "Just out! A fabulous guide for teachers. Help students who have nothing to write about."
2. A True Confession about Grading Student Writing (my first vlog): JUMP IN: Great Teaching Begins in the Pool (my first ebook from Spring 2016)
3. What to say in a writing conference: Video Training: 3 Secrets to Powerful Conferences and a PDF of my Conference Question Cheat Sheet. Jennifer Court left this comment, "You have provided quick and meaningful information to implement into classrooms with easy steps. I appreciate that what you have suggested could happen tomorrow in any classroom."
4. Teach students to think in parts: 5 Storyboard Templates
5. Quick & Meaningful Writing Assessment: A mini-course on Happy Teaching with Ruth Ayres. Maggie Chase said, "Ruth is down to earth, encouraging and knowledgeable about the realities and practicalities of grading students' written work."
6. How to make student stories fun to read: Video Training: Stories Have Struggles
7. How to stop hearing I CAN'T WRITE! from your students: 10 Tiny (But Mighty) Celebrations

You can pick up any of these free resources on my website. (No worries...you won't receive double emails from me -- my email list provider has superhero capabilities and takes care of things like that.)

While you're on the resource page of my website, you'll also see the link to my YouTube channel where I house all of my video minilessons. You might want to check that out, too. Teachers tell me the video minilessons are super helpful to use in writing workshop.