Let me help you plan a writing celebration!

Are you looking for a fast way to plan a formal writing celebration?

Sometimes at the end of the year, it can feel overwhelming to plan one more thing. The truth of the matter is you have time to make a plan for a meaningful writing celebration.

I know because I've helped lots of teachers make quick plans for powerful writing celebrations.

Last weekend I found myself with a little extra time, so I began imagining ways I could help more teachers plan an end of the year writing celebration.

By the end of the weekend, I created a new mini-course. It's designed to be a fast guide to help you plan a writing celebration. I pretended that we had time to grab a cup of coffee and chat through a celebration for your classroom. I created a few videos inspired by the conversations I've been having with teachers in my neck of the woods.

Then I thought about the things I would offer to print for your students. I created a handful of PDFs and added them to the mini-course.

In just an hour or two, you'll have a meaningful writing celebration planned for your students.

Check out the Fast Guide to Writing Celebrations. Because I'm trained in education and not in business, there's an insane early bird price for the mini-course.

For just a few dollars, you'll learn:

• Celebration messages to anchor your celebration
• The three components to a genuine celebration -- 
  • Response
  • Reflection
  • Rejoicing
• A process for planning a meaningful writing celebration

And you'll get:

• 5 video lessons (each around 5 minutes)
• A printable PDF of the Celebration Messages
• A Response Sheet for primary grades
• A Comment Sheet for upper grades
• A list of Interview Questions for Writers to use as a reflection
• A template to guide you in planning a formal celebration

Leave a comment and let me know about your plans to celebrate your students as writers. Happy teaching, everyone!

It's Really Real! {CELEBRATE This Week: 181}

I'm glad you are here to celebrate! 

Share a link to your blog post below and/or use #celebratelu to share celebrations on Twitter. Check out the details here. Celebrate This Week goes live on Friday night around 10(ish). Consider it as a weekend celebration. Whenever it fits in your life, add your link. 

Please leave a little comment love for the person who links before you.

*****

I launched my first course from the Discover. Play. Build. PD School. Less than 12 hours later and 68 people have enrolled!  I can't wait to hear your stories. Will you share them with me? Leave a comment and let me know how conferring with student writers impacts YOU. There are a ton of ways it impacts children, but I'd love to hear the ways it impacts you.

I'll go first.

Conferring changes me because I hear children's stories. I realize there is so much more to a child than learning the academics. When they share their stories or interests, I remember the reasons I wanted to be a teacher. I wanted to make the world better one child at a time. It starts with knowing their stories. From there, I help them tell their stories better. I teach them to use their voices to change the world. And in some small way, it makes me know stories matter. Every story matters.

Thanks for celebrating with me. I can't wait to hear your celebrations about how conferring impacts you.

Special Extras! CONFERRING NOTES 101 is OPEN for Registration

I just sent this out to my Email Pals. My zany writing group convinced me to open the cart early for CONFERRING NOTES 101. There's a special bonus that's open for 12 hours. Read on!

Hi everyone!

The FB LIVE event was SO MUCH FUN! My writing group was true to form -- zany and fun. They talked me into opening the cart early for CONFERRING NOTES 101.

That's right, the full version of CONFERRING NOTES 101 is open! Just click the link!

My writing group insisted on a special bonus. So if you join the course before 9:00 am (Eastern), then you will get:

• 15% off registration
• A 10 minute online coaching call
• A copy of CELEBRATING WRITERS

Make sure to use the coupon code: FBBONUS

The course has instant (and lifetime) access. You also get all of kinds of awesome encouragement and ideas for conferring. Check out the details on the course page. Here's what you get when you register:

• 5 course sections to organize the complex topic of conferring with student writers into manageable portions.
• 20 step-by-step video lessons that will help you establish a personalized note system, develop your skills during a conference, and analyze your notes as data.
• Videos of primary and intermediate writing conferences with the thinking behind each move highlighted, along with how the conferring notes for those conferences were written.
• A 40 page handbook filled with ready-to-use conference records, notes and quotes, and cheat sheets to help you put this to use tomorrow!
• A private Facebook group just for course participants so you can get the encouragement, feedback & extra help you need.
• Instant access to everything right away at a "go at your own pace" schedule to fit what works for you.
• Forever access to everything because sometimes summer is the best time to dive in.
• Unlimited email access to Ruth for one month.
• Discussion questions for teams at the end of each section so you can discuss ideas deeper and create a culture of encouragement and support.
• Earn up to 15 Professional Growth Points for professional development.

Remember: FBBONUS

Click here.

After 9:00 am (Eastern) all the FB bonuses go away. (Although, there will still be a FASTMOVER discount of 15% for 24 hours.)

Thanks again for the FUN on FB Live!

Shine on,

Ruth

Conferring Notes 101 LITE

My son Jay L.O.V.E.S. football. He is a hardcore football player. We love this about Jay, because he spent more than 7 years of his childhood bumping around the foster care system. So many kids from hard places don’t know how to follow their passions. Not Jay, though -- he has football.

Last summer Jay went to football camp for the first time. At football camp, Jay participated in many drills. In fact, most of the time at camp was spent in drills. Jay came home with a series of drills to practice. (He still practices them, in fact.)

I’ve never seen Jay run a drill during a game. The drills aren’t part of the game plan, but they are essential to becoming a better football player.

I’ve been putting together a course to help teachers lift the level of their conferences. It is called Conferring Notes 101. I am so excited about this course, that I wanted to share it. So I’m taking some of the best content and putting together a three session Conferring Notes 101 LITE version.

What does this have to do about Jay's football drills?

You can think of Conferring Notes 101 LITE as an intense camp to lift the level of your conferring. Just like Jay ran lots of drills at football camp, we’re going to set up a simple paper system so we can “run some practice drills” as teachers of writers.  I offer a step-by-step guide to setting up a trusty go-to conferring note system.

Will you do two things?

1. Sign up for the CONFERRING NOTES 101 LITE course. It is free and some of my best work in supporting teachers to lift the level of their conferring. Just fill out the form above.
2. Tell a friend! Share this with the teachers across the hall or in your department or in your school. Or post about it on social media -- Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, SnapChat (whatever your preference). Here is the link: http://bit.ly/con101LITE and the hashtag is #conferringnotes101. Feel free to tag me, just get the R before the E in my last name! [@ruth_ayres]
   
   

Click to Tweet

Once you sign up, you’ll be on the list to get the Conferring Notes 101 LITE sessions as they release. You don’t want to  wait too long, though, because they are only available for a short amount of time. I’d hate for you to miss it!

Dreaming Big {CELEBRATE This Week: 179}

I'm glad you are here to celebrate! 

Share a link to your blog post below and/or use #celebratelu to share celebrations on Twitter. Check out the details here. Celebrate This Week goes live on Friday night around 10(ish). Consider it as a weekend celebration. Whenever it fits in your life, add your link. 

Please leave a little comment love for the person who links before you.

***

Oh boy!
Have you ever had news that feels so big that you're a little nervous to say it out loud?
I think this is a sign of a dream coming true.

It only makes since that I whisper the news to you, this sweet community of people who celebrate.

It's been a big dream of mine to offer online course for teachers to help make teaching writers manageable. I've been dreaming this dream for awhile. Sometimes dreams feel more like wishes. Sometimes dreams feel impossible.

And every now and then dreams come close to coming true.

Lean in, my friends. I'm not sure I can say it above a whisper yet.

I'm getting ready to launch my first online course from Discover. Play. Build. 

The heart of writing workshop is conferring. Not surprisingly, the hardest part of writing workshop is conferring. If we want to make teaching writers more manageable, then we tackle conferring.

I've walked alongside hundreds of teachers who have learned and refined the art of conferring with writers. Strengthening conferring skills transforms writing instruction from vague ideas to clear teaching points and precise differentiation.

The fastest way to make this transformation is to learn to keep solid conferring notes. Conferring notes expedite the process because they hold us accountable to lifting the level of conferences, and they support more growth in students as writers.

Soon I plan to open a free 3 session mini-course to give a taste of the bigger course, Conferring Notes 101. It's been super fun to put together. For the free mini-course videos, I'm wearing some of my favorite writer shirts and sharing the best content from the course. I want it to have the feel and mindset of Saturday morning. No hurries and time to reflect. (We can ignore Andy who says if I really want to look like a writer, I'd be in yoga pants, a worn sweatshirt, a ball cap and wrapped in a quilt. That Andy -- he *thinks* he's funny.)

You might want to pick up my free training, 3 Secrets to Powerful Conferences, by filling out the form below. (This is different than Conferring Notes 101.) It's a good taste for how the sessions will go. Plus, we'll be Email Pals (if we aren't already), and you'll be among the first to know when the mini-course goes live!

Thanks for showing up each week and celebrating. It's nice to know that no matter the week, we can find reasons to celebrate.

What to Say in a Writing Conference

Our days are full of predictable conversations. You can probably predict your first conversation of the day. You probably know how a conversation is going to go with a spouse, parent, or child after school. You might know how the conversation at lunch is going to go with your colleagues. You have a good idea of how your next conversation with a cashier is going to go.

Conversations are predictable.

Writing conferences are predictable conversations too. There are conversational moves teachers and students make in a writing conversation. When everyone knows the way a conference conversation goes, it becomes more powerful.

Because of this, I consider a minilesson about the structure of a writing conference to be essential. Students must know the way a conference conversation will go. This takes away anxiety and creates a safe place for students to learn how to be stronger writers. 

I created a video minilesson about What to Say in a Writing Conference for you to use with your students.

To simplify the conversation, consider a writing conference as having two parts.

Part 1: Figure out what students are doing as writers.

Part 2: Help them do it better!

Every time I have a conference, I navigate through these two parts. I ask an open-ended question to get students talking about their writing work, and then I look at the writing to see if the work lines up with the talk. (Part 1)

Then I affirm the work students are doing as writers, and teach them something they can use as a writer. (Part 2)

It won't take long for us to run into a student who doesn't have much to say in a conference. It's why we often want a list of questions to ask in a conference. I've learned that the right question is only part of the secret to getting kids to talk in conferences.

Don Graves said, "A student should have more energy for writing after a conference than before." The way to get kids to talk in conferences is to figure out how to increase their energy for writing during a conference.

I've created a mini-training video of 3 Secrets to Powerful Writing Conferences. Sign up below and also get a list of my go-to questions to ask during a writing conference.