It can sound scary and impossible, but it's not!

In this first episode with Mrs. Michelle Ruhe of Coach from the Couch, we share the power of peer feedback to:

• enhance writing quality
• engage students and
• distribute the feedback workload

You will hear about the transformative potential of peer feedback in fostering student ownership and improving writing through collaborative learning.

Listen in to this and next week's episode for practical and effective tips on implementing peer feedback in your writing classroom.

Michelle Ruhe is a 20+ year veteran elementary educator dedicated to helping others find the joy in teaching--because confident, happy educators are the key to inspiring confident and successful students! She wants others to love teaching as much as she does...and wouldn't dream of doing anything else!

Michelle has experience as a classroom teacher, instructional coach and virtual consultant and holds great knowledge of literacy!

About Melissa:

Melissa is an enthusiastic educator and continuous learner with over 19 years' experience in education. Her passion and expertise is transforming writing programs so that teachers are confident in writing instruction and student writers thrive! She strongly believes teachers are the key to effective instruction and their writers are their best resources.

Melissa knows that too often, explicit writing instruction is pushed aside in elementary education, and she feels it is her calling to help schools make it front and center, providing teachers with the knowledge and support necessary to implement effective and engaging writing instruction.

Teaching to Transform, LLC was founded by Melissa in 2018 and partners with school districts to provide professional development in writing instruction.

If you would like to learn more or refer Melissa to your district, check out her website below!

Website and Blog Read the latest blog posts and find out more about services provided by Melissa

Instagram Follow Melissa for tips and support with writing instruction!

YouTube Find out more about teaching writing as you watch webinars and model lessons taught by Melissa

LinkedIn Connect with Melissa!

Can't stand the mess? Then get out of the kitchen!

I couldn't help but think of that saying when writing show notes for this episode!

Just like I over-supported my children when baking cookies to avoid the "mess" of little hands, writing teachers often over-scaffold their writers.

If you have ever said, "I taught you how to do that!" or "We've been over this!", it's very likely you have provided too much support for your writers.

In this episode, I share what over-scaffolding can look like in writing instruction and why it is so important to allow students to "get into the mess" of writing and truly take hold of the skills they need as writers.

Be ready to get messy and provide more opportunities for writing growth in your students.

I recently had a teacher I am coaching say, "That's going to be hard for me," when we discussed allowing students to try multiple drafts on different topics for their informational books.

I completely understand why this fabulous teacher was hesitant...and there are so many reasons!

But the truth is, we all need repeated practice to improve our skills, and developing skills as writers is no different!

In this episode, I share the importance of increasing the volume of student writing as well as providing opportunities for students to cycle through the writing process over and over again.

You will hear about the significance of:

• Setting expectations for volume
• Focusing on student goals
• Making revision a bigger part of the process
• And more!

I will also share helpful advice for those nagging worries that I know are lurking in your mind!

Melissa saved one of the best, but possibly "scariest" writing conference for last!

The Research-Decide-Teach conference originates from Lucy Calkins and is a highly effective method for truly meeting your writers' needs and moving them forward as writers.

In this final installment of the Writing Conference Series, Melissa discusses how to gather information from students, make instructional decisions, and effectively teach targeted strategies during a writing conference.

Melissa provides an overview of the RTD conference, a comparison of RTD to other conferences previously discussed in the series, an example of a student conference and practical tips for implementation.

Listen to hear:

• Melissa's encouragement for trying this new conference
• How to use unit goals to help make conference decisions
• The importance of trusting your teacher intuition
• The benefit of strong pedagogy and student agency

This episode will take away the fear of making "in the moment" decisions and help you to implement this conference with success!

About Melissa:

Melissa is an enthusiastic educator and continuous learner with over 19 years' experience in education. Her passion and expertise is transforming writing programs so that teachers are confident in writing instruction and student writers thrive! She strongly believes teachers are the key to effective instruction and their writers are their best resources.

Melissa knows that too often, explicit writing instruction is pushed aside in elementary education, and she feels it is her calling to help schools make it front and center, providing teachers with the knowledge and support necessary to implement effective and engaging writing instruction.

Teaching to Transform, LLC was founded by Melissa in 2018 and partners with school districts to provide professional development in writing instruction.

If you would like to learn more or refer Melissa to your district, check out her website below!

Website and Blog Read the latest blog posts and find out more about services provided by Melissa

Instagram Follow Melissa for tips and support with writing instruction!

YouTube Find out more about teaching writing as you watch webinars and model lessons taught by Melissa

LinkedIn Connect with Melissa!

Are you looking for more than "use describing words" and "tell me more" when it comes to helping students elaborate in their writing?

In this episode, Melissa dives into strategies for improving writing elaboration for students by first considering a few overall understandings and techniques for opinion, narrative and informational writing and then sharing specific strategies for ways to elaborate.

Emphasizing the importance of purposeful writing and understanding the audience, Melissa offers a range of techniques and specific strategies tailored for different genres. She also introduces practical elaboration strategies like twin sentences, using question words, and acting out scenarios, along with more advanced techniques such as developing characters in narratives and organizing information in informational texts.

This episode is jam-packed with helpful elaboration strategies for writing in the elementary and middle school classroom!

AND! Listen in for a chance to receive a FREEBIE-Melissa's writing strategies one pager!

About Melissa:

Melissa is an enthusiastic educator and continuous learner with over 19 years' experience in education. Her passion and expertise is transforming writing programs so that teachers are confident in writing instruction and student writers thrive! She strongly believes teachers are the key to effective instruction and their writers are their best resources.

Melissa knows that too often, explicit writing instruction is pushed aside in elementary education, and she feels it is her calling to help schools make it front and center, providing teachers with the knowledge and support necessary to implement effective and engaging writing instruction.

Teaching to Transform, LLC was founded by Melissa in 2018 and partners with school districts to provide professional development in writing instruction.

If you would like to learn more or refer Melissa to your district, check out her website below!

Website and Blog Read the latest blog posts and find out more about services provided by Melissa

Instagram Follow Melissa for tips and support with writing instruction!

YouTube Find out more about teaching writing as you watch webinars and model lessons taught by Melissa

LinkedIn Connect with Melissa!

Raise your hand if you have felt unsure, ill-equipped, or stressed out when making decisions about writing instruction.

Teachers tend to place too much responsibility on themselves when it comes to instruction in general, and definitely with writing instruction! This creates unnecessary stress that can be alleviated by establishing student autonomy and agency.

Involving students in their learning and putting more of the responsibility on them will:

• Increase engagement and motivation
• Make learning stick
• Lesson your mental load
• Increase student growth

In this episode, Melissa shares examples of ways to include writers in their learning that you can implement tomorrow.

About Melissa:

Melissa is an enthusiastic educator and continuous learner with over 19 years' experience in education. Her passion and expertise is transforming writing programs so that teachers are confident in writing instruction and student writers thrive! She strongly believes teachers are the key to effective instruction and their writers are their best resources.

Melissa knows that too often, explicit writing instruction is pushed aside in elementary education, and she feels it is her calling to help schools make it front and center, providing teachers with the knowledge and support necessary to implement effective and engaging writing instruction.

Teaching to Transform, LLC was founded by Melissa in 2018 and partners with school districts to provide professional development in writing instruction.

If you would like to learn more or refer Melissa to your district, check out her website below!

Website and Blog Read the latest blog posts and find out more about services provided by Melissa

Instagram Follow Melissa for tips and support with writing instruction!

YouTube Find out more about teaching writing as you watch webinars and model lessons taught by Melissa

LinkedIn Connect with Melissa!

What does a conference sound like you ask? Listen in to hear Melissa provide a detailed example of a "Re-teach Conference."

Quite often, the strategies you have taught are not being implemented in each student's independent writing pieces.

The purpose of a "Re-teach" conference is to provide follow-up, explicit instruction on a previously taught writing strategy from a whole-class mini-lesson.

Because the strategy being used has already been taught, the preparation is quite minimal...WINNING!

In this episode, Melissa will discuss how and why to choose this conference for your writers as well as the benefits of implementation.

Not only is the Re-teach conference easy to put into practice, it is also highly effective for your writers!

About Melissa:

Melissa is an enthusiastic educator and continuous learner with over 19 years' experience in education. Her passion and expertise is transforming writing programs so that teachers are confident in writing instruction and student writers thrive! She strongly believes teachers are the key to effective instruction and their writers are their best resources.

Melissa knows that too often, explicit writing instruction is pushed aside in elementary education, and she feels it is her calling to help schools make it front and center, providing teachers with the knowledge and support necessary to implement effective and engaging writing instruction.

Teaching to Transform, LLC was founded by Melissa in 2018 and partners with school districts to provide professional development in writing instruction.

If you would like to learn more or refer Melissa to your district, check out her website below!

Website and Blog Read the latest blog posts and find out more about services provided by Melissa

Instagram Follow Melissa for tips and support with writing instruction!

YouTube Find out more about teaching writing as you watch webinars and model lessons taught by Melissa

LinkedIn Connect with Melissa!

"I don't know what to write about!" is what is heard in classrooms all over.

In this episode, Melissa emphasizes the importance of supporting students in having the independence to generate their own ideas for writing.

She discusses the negative impacts of consistently providing students with topics and offers practical strategies to help students generate ideas on their own. When students are involved in creating their own topics, their engagement is increased.

Highlighting the significance of understanding the purpose behind different types of writing, Melissa provides techniques such as:

• using emotions
• studying the world around them
• making lists of their most important things in life
• asking big questions
• and taking inspiration from reading

This is such an important episode for all writing teachers from Kindergarten to High School!

About Melissa:

Melissa is an enthusiastic educator and continuous learner with over 19 years' experience in education. Her passion and expertise is transforming writing programs so that teachers are confident in writing instruction and student writers thrive! She strongly believes teachers are the key to effective instruction and their writers are their best resources.

Melissa knows that too often, explicit writing instruction is pushed aside in elementary education, and she feels it is her calling to help schools make it front and center, providing teachers with the knowledge and support necessary to implement effective and engaging writing instruction.

Teaching to Transform, LLC was founded by Melissa in 2018 and partners with school districts to provide professional development in writing instruction.

If you would like to learn more or refer Melissa to your district, check out her website below!

Website and Blog Read the latest blog posts and find out more about services provided by Melissa

Instagram Follow Melissa for tips and support with writing instruction!

YouTube Find out more about teaching writing as you watch webinars and model lessons taught by Melissa

LinkedIn Connect with Melissa!