More About Teachers & Writers Collaborative
About Teachers & Writers
MISSION Teachers & Writers Collaborative (T&W) seeks to educate the imagination by offering innovative creative writing programs for students and…
Workshops & Professional Development
Teachers & Writers Collaborative (T&W) provides school-based and after-school writing programs led by professional writers for K-12 students, professional development…
Resources
Books T&W has published resources about the teaching of creative writing for more nearly 50 years. With more…
NY Poetry Out Loud
What is Poetry Out Loud? Poetry Out Loud (POL), an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts and the…
Step
By Angelica Rosa This essay appears in Girls Write Now: Two Decades of True Stories from Young Female Voices, published by Tin House Books in October 2018. On my street, growing up, it took under thirty-two steps to walk straight to any store. After school, as I passed my friends walking together, or with…
Math Meets Verse: Counting, Decoding, & Rhythm
by Alice Pencavel T&W teaching Alice Pencavel offers a lesson plan that lets students connect language and equation, demystifies difficult language with concrete numbers and rhythms, and fosters collaboration among students. In so doing, the lesson elicits a physical pleasure associated with Shakespeare. Guiding Questions: What feelings arise from the music? How fast/slow is it?…
2 Night Songs and a Morning Scream
My Night Song by Jonathan V. (2nd grade) I hear my brother snoring It scares me I hear my dog bark all day long I can’t stand it I hear the moon singing jazz While it goes down I hear the dirt flow through the wind My Morning Poem by Mikaela W. (2nd grade)…
Preparing to Perform: Practicing Peer Feedback
by Erika Luckert At the end of most T&W programs, we hold a celebration that launches an anthology of student work and features performances of poems by a selection of student readers. While not every student will perform their work onstage, it’s important to me as an educator that every student feels a part of…
A Home in the Classroom: 2018 Teacher of the Year Mandy Manning on Community, Love, and Building a Refuge in Her Classroom
by Wynne Kontos Mandy Manning, the 2018 National Teacher of the Year, is perhaps most famous for the moment during the awards ceremony at the White House when she gave President Donald Trump a stack of letters written by her students, who are immigrants and refugees new to the United States. At a time when…
Bats in the Belfry
Bats in the Belfry by Jayden (7th grade) I have always wondered what it feels like when you die. What channels it? I have been thinking about this ever since my mother died on April 3, 2013. Yet, I have faced worse challenges than this. Welcome, take a seat while I talk to you about…
Connecting the Written and Visual
by Jason DeHart As both a middle grades and college English instructor, I have found that using well-chosen visuals when introducing writing modes can create powerful, and even entertaining, opportunities for students to begin drafting. Images can be used in a variety of ways; for the purpose of this lesson plan, I will discuss guiding…
Writing by Hand: Deepening Student Engagement with the Word and the World
by Greg Graham In an age when digital literacy is viewed as the holy grail of education, and when teachers are urged to jump aboard the digitrain or get run over by it, Heather Sellers is one of the few voices bucking the trend, extolling the benefits of writing the way human beings have written…
The Crumpled Paper Exercise: Collaborative Storytelling
by Alice Pencavel T&W teaching artist Alice Pencavel’s crumpled paper exercise engages students with the process of collaborative storytelling. The lesson enables students to harness a greater aptitude for spontaneity and deepens their understanding of story structuring. Grades: 6th and up Materials/Set Up: One writing utensil and sheet of paper per student. Desks should be…
Sports Poems
by Erika Luckert We rarely think of sports as a subject for poetry, and yet, when I speak to devoted sports fans or athletes about their passions, they invariably wax poetic. I recently taught a residency at a middle school where one of the most impressive poems was written by an avid sports fan, Julio….