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…
2018-2019 T&W Partnerships: The New School and New York University
Teachers & Writers Collaborative is pleased to continue our partnerships with the graduate writing programs at The New School and New York University during 2018–2019. Each year, MFA candidates at The New School are chosen as T&W education or editorial associates, while graduate students at NYU receive the Writers in the Public Schools Fellowship. New…
Teaching Across the Curriculum: Reflections on Combining Creative Writing with Science
During the 2011–2012 school year, Teachers & Writers Collaborative partnered with Children First Network 534—a Bronx-based grouping of 33 public schools—to provide twelve writing programs in eight middle schools in Queens and the Bronx. With generous support from the New York Community Trust’s “Beyond Teaching to the Test” initiative, T&W writers taught fiction, poetry, and…
Other Portraits
Self Portrait as Book by Mikaela (8th grade) I am an open book. I am a figure of my author’s imagination or a special memory. I am full of pages and pages of written adventure. Thrilling, fun, freedom are printed on each page. I am unique. My story is unlike any others. I know the…
Poetic Sampling
by Erika Luckert Last year, I facilitated a roundtable discussion on plagiarism and intertextuality in poetry, where a group of teachers and writers talked about the way we use other texts to inspire and fuel our writing. As we talked, we realized that what might be called plagiarism in a formal essay is sometimes a…
A Collection of Haikus
Haiku of Peace by Peter E. (6th grade) A bark for a bite. Just a bullet for a life. A hug ends it all. Helpful Haiku by Aydin A. (6th grade) Here is a haiku There’s seven syllables here And there is five here Earth by Eleanor F. (6th grade) The cold moon…
The Robe: Giving a Struggling Young Writer Permission to Write What He Knows
By Maryann Gremillion William is nine years old, has Asperger’s, and doesn’t like to write. I don’t know much more than this about him as I arrive at his house, wondering if there’s anything I know that’s going to help this child. When the front door opens he says hello quietly, peering at me from…
Completing the Character Puzzle with Vignettes
by Jennie Weng Character analysis is an important skill for writers to learn. However, too often students label characters with one-dimensional terms (e.g., good, bad, funny, evil, protagonist, antagonist). Well-crafted characters are a lot like real people; they are complex. If students can understand this integral component of character analysis, they will not only be…
Advice from Nature: Exploring Writing Opportunities In Outdoor Education
by Harriet Riley “Why is the berry red?” “Why is the bark gone on this side of the tree?” “Where do the squirrels go at night?” “Why is the path all dug up?” “If he could talk, what would the turtle say to me?” City kids have a lot of questions when they experience a…
The Arts of Speech Part 2: Recreating Pictures with Words
by Matthew Baganz In the second part of his Arts of Speech lesson plan, Matthew Baganz shows students how words can create and communicate visual images. Read Part 1 of the lesson plan here. Grade: 3–5 Genre: Descriptive prose Download: The Arts of Speech Part 2: Recreating Pictures with Words Common Core Standard: ELA-Literacy.W.3-5.3 Write narratives…
The Arts of Speech Part 1: Unifying Meaning with Parts of Speech
by Matthew Baganz In Part 1 of The Arts of Speech, Matthew Baganz uses movement and imagery to help children learn the purpose of nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. See Part 2 of the lesson plan here. Grade: 3–5 Download: The Arts of Speech Part 1: Unifying Meaning with Parts of Speech Common Core State…