your daily write

YOUR DAILY WRITEWhy writing everyday—essentially upping the quantity of words you write—can change how you feel about your life.

YOUR WRITING

Take 15 minutes to write about:• when you like writing• what you write• what you wish you wrote• where you write• how often you write

WAYS TO GET YOURSELF WRITING

• Morning Pages (Julia Cameron)• First line generator: http://writingexercises.co.uk/firstlinegenerator.php

• One sentence Journal• Teachers Write! • Start a blog• Slice of Life: Two Writing Teachers blog• Find a piece of writing that is like what you’d like to write and re-type it on your computer.

• Write about your classroom• Pitch a magazine so that you have a deadline and topic

MORNING PAGES• Open your laptop or

take out paper and a pen.

• Write for 20 minutes without stopping.

• Get everything out, don’t worry if it is negative or trivial. It’s about getting it all out.

FIRST LINE GENERATORWRITINGEXERCISES.CO.UK/FIRSTLINEGENERATOR.PHP

Generate a line. Write in any form you want. non-fiction

fictionpoetry

WRITE ONE SENTENCE ABOUT WHAT YOU’VE

LEARNED SO FAR

START YOUR OWN BLOGhttp://moranreflections.blogs

pot.com

SLICE OF LIFE WRITINGHTTPS://TWOWRITINGTEACHERS.WORDPRESS.COM

A storytelling technique that offers insight into an ordinary person’s life.

A story about a small segment of one’s day, a poem that tells about a small moment in time, a collection of words and photos that describe a scenario.

When I met my husband, he was not a reader. People were shocked that I could be so in love with someone who didn't read. What would we talk about? How could we understand each other?

I'll never forget the moment one evening after having read to the kids when he said, "I wonder if I'd be different if someone had read to me like that."

Without skipping a beat I said, "I think you can find out. I think if you read the books you could have read, you can relive that time and change with each book."

The next night I gifted him with a stack of books many by Gary Paulson, an author I knew he would have loved as a 10 year old. He read each one like a drowning person gasps at air. I couldn't talk to him or get him to do anything else. He would simultaneously put one book down and pick up the next.

The way he talked changed. He discussed character action and traits as evidence of his thinking. He started asking bookstore owners to help him locate books that were like this or that. He talked about plot and writing qualities as someone who'd been reading all his life. The tipping point came when he got up from a dinner party at our house to pull books down that he thought our guests might enjoy. He shared his loves.

It is possible to get back what you thought you lost. I've witnessed it.

A Slice of Life

Stop and write a topic

Now write your slice of life for 30

minutes.

USING A MENTOR TEXT• Find a piece of something you love—wish you had written

—want to write• Open up a doc and re-write it• Print it and study how it looks on the page• Deconstruct it and identify what it’s got• Copy the format for your own piece

WRITE ABOUT YOUR CLASSROOM

• Teachers know more than anyone else what goes in a classroom. They know what is effective. They know how to motivate children.

• But they aren’t writing about it

• Why?

Teacher research is practical, action-based research. It enables educators to follow their interests and their needs as they investigate what they and their students do.

NEA - Teacher Research Could Change Your Practice

www.nea.org/tools/17289.htm

• What are you curious about in your classroom?

• What puzzles you in your classroom?

• What problems do you want to solve in your classroom?

• What seems most or least successful about your teaching?

Research Questions

Research Journal entries

• Descriptions of events and interactions in the classroom

• Quotations, phrases, conversations

• Surprising, confusing events or statements

• Reflections on observations, tentative theories, assumptions

• Thoughts about the research process — what’s working, what isn’t

• Ideas about teaching

WHAT COULD YOU RESEARCH?

Has it been written about recently?

SETTING WRITING GOALS

Ben Franklin’s Schedule

SET A WRITING GOAL YOU CAN ACHIEVE BEFORE

JANUARY 1, 2016• Specific: I will write every day

• Measurable: Three chapters of my early chapter book

• Achievable: I will need to write 2-3 pages per week

• Relevant: This is in line with what I do

• Timebound: By January 1, 2016

MY LAST MET GOALI challenged myself to get some of my

teacher beliefs published. Then I found an outlet and pitched them.

WHAT WILL YOUR NEXT GOAL BE?