Kid-Tested Writing Lessons for Grades 3-6: Daily Workshop Practices That Support the Common Core State Standards

“These are the tried and true lessons I return to year after year. The lessons that students said made a difference in their writing and that will bring power and beauty to your students’ writing and to your writing classroom.” Leslie Blauman, author of The Inside Guide to the Reading-Writing Classroom

“What’s wrong with a little mentorship?” Leslie Blauman asks. Reap the benefits of her years as a Public Education and Business Coalition (PEBC) teacher with 31 of her best kid-tested and approved lessons that lead to great student writing. Not only are these research-based writing lessons kids’ self-proclaimed favorites, they incorporate mentor texts, support the Common Core State Standards, and are research-based.

Four lesson clusters reflect Leslie’s core beliefs for teaching:

• writing narratives, informative texts, and opinion pieces/arguments
• a love of language, word play, vocabulary, and poetry
• writing fictional narratives
• writing research-based nonfiction.

Use these generative lessons as a springboard―giving them your personal stamp―and watch as they lead to great writing for authentic purposes and in testing situations. 

Click here to save 15% when you buy Leslie's Kid-Tested Writing Lessons and her Inside Guide to the Reading/Writing Classroom together.

An internationally-known speaker, workshop leader, and consultant, Susan Zimmermann is coauthor of educational bestsellers Mosaic of Thought (1997 and 2007 2nd edition), 7 Keys to Comprehension, and Comprehension Going Forward (2011), books that are changing the way reading is taught in classrooms throughout America. She cofounded and served as the Executive Director of the Denver-based Public Education and Business Coalition, an organization that has spearheaded ground-breaking comprehension work. During her time there, she initiated numerous programs to improve the quality of public schools, including the Reading Project, which provides many of the examples in Mosaic of Thought and 7 Keys.

Susan is also the author of Keeping Katherine; Writing to Heal the Soul, winner of the Colorado Book Award; and Grief Dancers, finalist for the Colorado Book Award and winner of the Exceptional Parent symbol of excellence for its "profound contribution to human understanding and dignity." These wise and inspiring books grew out of Susan's personal experience raising her profoundly handicapped daughter Katherine who had Rett syndrome.

Currently a full-time speaker, writer, and education consultant, Susan has given hundreds of workshops, keynotes, and summer institutes in nearly every state and throughout Canada. She has worked with international schools in Mexico, the Philippines, Romania, Japan, Vietnam, and Indonesia. Visit her Heinemann Speakers page for more information.

A lover of the wilderness and believer in the transformative power of the outdoors, she has been a trustee of the Colorado Outward Bound School and served as the board chair of The Women's Wilderness Institute, an organization that provides wilderness learning experiences for adolescent girls and women. Susan is a graduate of Yale Law School and mother of four. She lives in the foothills west of Denver.

For more information on Susan Zimmermann visit her Web site at www.susanzimmermann.com.

A Colorado teacher for more than 25 years, Leslie Blauman's classroom is a model site for staff development in reading, writing, and thinking through the Denver-based Public Education and Business Coalition (PEBC). She is a state and national literacy consultant; has presented at IRA, NCTE, and CCIRA. Leslie is coauthor of the Heinemann title Comprehension Going Forward and the author of Kid-Tested Writing Lessons for Grades 3-6 and The Inside Guide to the Reading-Writing Classroom, Grades 3-6.