Find out how just a few minutes of purposeful, responsive teaching can have a big impact with your students. Jennifer Serravallo's Teaching Writing in Small Groups details essential practices for optimizing groups that help you:
- value each child's language and literacy practices
- develop relationships with your writers
- teach with efficiency
- increase student engagement
- improve independence
- develop social support amongst students
- provide space to give and receive feedback.
First, Teaching Writing in Small Groups lays the foundation for success. Jen shows how to create groups for maximum effectiveness and how to make what you teach responsive, clear, and sticky. Then she streamlines differentiated instruction with a menu of small-group options for providing just-right support:
- strategy lessons
- guided writing
- shared writing
- interactive writing
- inquiry groups
- reflection groups
- coaching writing partnerships and clubs
Jen has thought of it all. Twelve videos with writers from Kindergarten to seventh grade from in-person and online classrooms model each type of small group, selected passages and forms are available in the Online Resources in Spanish, downloadable skill-progression note-taking forms provide focus for instructional decision making, and her "Take It to Your Classroom" feature supports implementation for individuals or study groups.
Read Jennifer Serravallo's Teaching Writing in Small Groups because the question isn't whether small groups work, but how to make the most of them.
About the Author: Jennifer Serravallo is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Reading Strategies Book and The Writing Strategies Book, which have been translated into Spanish, French, and Chinese. These and her other popular books and resources help teachers make goal-directed responsive strategy instruction, conferring, and small group work doable in every classroom. Her newest titles are Teaching Writing in Small Groups, A Teacher's Guide to Reading Conferences, Understanding Texts and Readers, and the assessment and teaching resource Complete Comprehension for Fiction and Nonfiction. Jen is a frequently invited speaker at national and regional conferences and travels throughout the US and Canada to provide full-day workshops and to work with teachers and students in classrooms. She is also an experienced online educator who regularly offers live webinar series and full-day online workshops, and is the creator of two self-paced asynchronous online courses, most recently Strategies in Action: Reading and Writing Methods and Content. Jen began her career in education as an NYC public school teacher. Now as a consultant, she has spent the last fifteen+ years helping teachers across the country create literacy classrooms where students are joyfully engaged, and the instruction is meaningfully individualized to students' goals. Jen is also a member of Parents Magazine Board of Advisors for education and literacy. Jen holds a BA from Vassar College and an MA from Teachers College, where she has also taught graduate and undergraduate classes. Learn more about Jen and her work at Hein.pub/serravallo, on Twitter @jserravallo, on Instagram @jenniferserravallo, or by joining The Reading and Writing Strategies Facebook Community.
