CCIRAblog

We Are Teaching Writers

By Jennifer Vincent, 2026 CCIRA Featured Speaker

By Jen Vincent

”I decided to switch topics, so I started over,” a student writer shared with the class.

My shoulders tightened, so I paused and took a breath before responding. “Yeah, okay, writers do that. Sometimes an idea isn’t working and you need to switch gears,” I said.

It was the end of independent writing time, and I was doing a quick check in with the class, calling on each student to share how they spent their time. Students shared that they made progress or added dialogue or added details…and then this.

This group of 6th grade student writers had already been working on their personal narratives for some time. I knew starting over was going to make it harder for this particular student to make it through their process before the quarter deadline, but I wholeheartedly believe in allowing students space to find their own way. Even though I started to feel the tension in my body, I trusted the student writer and didn’t add my stress to their process.

With over 20 years in education, you might imagine that taking this in stride would come easily by now, but I often find myself still unlearning and re-learning, especially when it comes to time.

Guiding Over Dictating

Take this example. If the student starts over and doesn’t end up with a finished piece or with a piece as polished up as it could be, that is a great learning opportunity for them. If the student starts over and finds momentum from the shift, that is also a great learning opportunity for them. I have a sense of what starting over might mean, but if my goal is to empower student writers to trust themselves as they learn to live the life of a writer, then I need to allow them to make choices and learn from the consequences. As a guide, I can notice and ask questions and help them learn as they reflect.

In my book Living the Life of a Writer: 6 Practices Student Writers Have, Know, and Do, I invite you to allow me to be your guide as well. Throughout the book, I offer opportunities for you to pause and reflect on your lived experiences and how they may or may not influence you as a writing teacher. Reflection is a powerful tool that allows us to re-vision our writing instruction. In reflecting, we take an honest look back in order to make a plan to move forward. We are not simply hitting refresh and hoping for a new outcome. Instead, we are reconnecting with purpose and making changes that are aligned with our student needs. Hitting refresh in this way is reenergizing.

Speaking of reflection, I’d like to invite you to pause and reflect now. Allow yourself to explore these questions in a free write and see how you might re-vision how you support student writers.

A Moment to Reflect

Recall times in your teaching when a student made a writing choice that didn’t match what you would have done or what you would have suggested.
What did it feel like in your body when this happened?
Looking back now, what advice do you have for yourself so that you might give students space to explore their process?

Trusting The Process

Writers know that writing is a process is one of the practices I share in Living the Life of a Writer. While writing seems like a linear process, any writer will tell you that it’s much more complex than that. Sure, we brainstorm, choose an idea, draft, revise, edit, publish…but each of these might take more time than we anticipate. We might find ourselves making progress and then needing to redirect. We might think we’re almost done and then decide to scrap something and rewrite.

Our job is to trust that writing is a process and to give student writers space to find their way (with our guidance) so that they also develop trust in the process. We know there are deadlines to meet and standards to grasp and curriculum to cover. Yes, we are teaching writing skills, but more importantly, we are teaching writers.

Jen Vincent (she/her/ella) is a writer, educator, entrepreneur, and lover of life who celebrates the human experience through writing. With extensive experience in special education, curriculum development, instructional technology integration, teacher coaching, and working with multilingual learners, she currently serves as a 6th-8th grade Middle School Social Studies/Language Arts Teacher for Bannockburn School, a K-8 district in a northern suburb of Chicago. She is a National Board Certified Teacher in Early/Middle Childhood Literacy and an active member of the National Council of Teachers of English. In 2024, she was honored with NCTE’s Don H. Graves Award for Excellence in the Teaching of Writing. As the founder of Story Exploratory, she offers workshops, coaching, and professional development to help writers explore what it means to live the life of a writer. Living the Life of a Writer: 6 Practices Student Writers Have, Know, and Do is her first book on student-centered, inquiry-based writing instruction. Learn more at storyexploratory.com and at @storyexploratory on Instagram.

In Honor of Karen Hartman

In September, we lost Karen Hartman, a fierce advocate for Colorado teachers. Throughout her years at Thornton High School, in the secondary section at NCTE, as director of the Colorado Writing Project, and co-director of The Colorado Language Arts Society, Karen never gave up. Here, four friends pause to pay tribute. We all gathered at CCIRA with Karen regularly over the years, and hope this post will remind you of the power of teaching communities. We hope to see you this February in Denver.

No recipes

by Penny Kittle

Karen and I stayed up late eating her layered carrot cake at her dining room table after the fall CLAS conference in 2023. What makes this frosting, rich and creamy, yet light? I asked. She snickered. Karen didn’t believe in recipes, only in cooks, in instinct, in practice. You cannot replicate someone else’s good work; you must learn to calibrate on your own. Watch the pots that boil. Add salt. If your baking didn’t produce what you’d hoped, adjust. You are better off examining your own moves than criticizing or blaming the raw materials. Sit beside a student and listen, nudge, support. Celebrate their creations. I will miss those conversations, her blue eyes centered on me, her easy laugh, her love of a good story. I will miss her stacks and stacks of books and her joy in sharing them.

Karen had left her high school classroom when I met her; she was a teacher of teachers where she remained for decades. Karen helped me persist in writing through joy and challenge. Nothing is harder, she said, than composing your ideas, your stories, and your hopes. She wrote with teachers at every meeting, every conference, every opportunity. We both echoed Don Graves, You have stories to tell that no one can tell but you. Once teachers realize how important those stories are to them, Karen believed, they’ll put time to write in every lesson plan. (You say you don’t have time? Some new bloated textbook adoption in your district tells you this? Karen would have a response for that and it might have exceeded her self-imposed 5-f*cks-a-day rule.) Karen knew the emptiness of teaching that centers curriculum instead of students. She had zero patience for anyone who dictated the moves of teachers in our complex work. And she’d tell you: blue eyes sparking, searching, fierce and kind at once.

Karen believed in CCIRA. Teaching can be isolating work. We need each other. Conferences put teachers in conversation, and this one in particular, has always centered teacher research and experience. Quality ingredients are essential in cooking well, and a conference composed of authenticity, spontaneity, gatherings at coffee stands and in small sessions to explore and think are key to community. CCIRA cooks. They invite speakers to remind us how large and diverse this work is—spread across countries and generations and innovations. We gather. We learn together. CCIRA simultaneously affirms our instincts about learning as it challenges them. I leave inspired every time.

I know this: Karen Hartman’s love for teachers and their students will reverberate in my life always. I raise a glass to my friend; I raise it high. May we all live our lives with such courage, kindness, and generosity.

A Cherished Friend

By Stevi Quate

Karen was my cherished friend and feisty colleague. Without her by my side, my writing – personal and professional – wouldn’t have been the same. The flights to conferences and evenings after the sessions wouldn’t have been the same. And the professional literature we studied together wouldn’t have had the same impact. She nudged me and others to do what was best for students and not to take short cuts, and when she saw practices that disengaged students, she spoke out. Her impact on me and on educators around the globe was robust.

Dave Wendelin, former CLAS President and Director for the National English Honor Society for Secondary Schools (http://www.nehs.us/), recognized the impact Karen had on, literally, thousands of educators:

I doubt there has been a more dedicated teacher and student advocate than Karen Hartman. Strong in opinion and visionary, Karen has unpacked the work of thousands of educators across the country…She had little patience for any barriers that might limit the independent decision-making of teachers as they nurtured their students.

Along with teaching at the University of Colorado at Denver, presenting at numerous conferences including CCIRA, editing CLAS’ journal Statement and serving as English Department Chair at Thornton High School, Karen poured her energy into keeping Colorado Writing Project* fresh and relevant. As the director for more than a quarter of a century, she mentored and modeled and encouraged – and fed us her famous chocolate chip cookies.

A common theme from teachers in the summer workshops was gratitude. Here’s what Hayley, a teacher in one of her projects, said about Karen:

I wanted to thank you for opening my eyes to a new and better way of teaching writing. With only two years of teaching under my belt, I am always looking for the best practices; however, no staff development or PLC has come close to the type of life-changing experience this has been. Thank you.

It wasn’t just new teachers who expressed their gratitude. For instance, Alice wrote:

Your mom was one of my most memorable professors in grad school and was a wonderful mentor to me for many years after. She got me involved and taught me what it meant to be a professional educator. Even now, 23 years into the profession, I draw upon all she taught me. Her legacy is a great one.

It wasn’t just Colorado educators who were impacted by her vision. Back in the early 90s, CCIRA invited several teachers from South Africa to the conference. After attending one of Karen’s sessions, they wanted to learn more, so Karen invited them to attend one of CWP’s two-week workshops. Not only did Karen sponsor their visit, but she also housed and fed them and made them feel at home. At the end of the two weeks, those educators wanted to share the CWP experience with their colleagues back in the very poor township outside of Dundee, South Africa. So the next summer, Sheila Kaehny and I joined Karen for this adventure.

During those two weeks, we learned side by side with the teachers. Mornings would begin with gathering together in a large circle. Someone would begin a song and eventually everyone joined in. Often a few teachers would move into the circle center dancing to the impromptu singing. For the rest of the day, the writing project looked like what we did back in Colorado: teachers would study professional literature about teaching writing and write themselves. From the participants’ writing, Karen learned that one teacher needed to increase the number of cows he owned before we could woo his future wife. Karen weaved his story into a personal narrative that she shared back in Colorado, causing insight into a different culture.

Just recently one of South African educators called Karen her “global mama” and mourned her loss:

So sad to hear the news about the passing away of our dearest friend and mother, grandmother from ashore. May her spirit live long for generations to come. Karen will be dearly missed around the globe.

My cherished friend and feisty colleague created a legacy to be celebrated and will, indeed, be missed.

*To get an idea about CWP, watch this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xFHjPm0qYI) made by one of the teachers who studied with her.

Going Online

By Sarah Zerwin

On a series of sunny June days in 2020, I sat on my back deck with my Google Classroom screen shared with Karen via video chat. We worked together for hours to transition the Colorado Writing Project curriculum from a two-week in-person workshop to a four-week online experience with both synchronous and asynchronous elements. Like everything else in education during that time, CWP had to pivot on a dime from what it had always been to something we had never imagined it would need to be. But Karen was determined—determined to offer a meaningful experience for teachers, regardless of the restrictions and challenges imposed by the pandemic.

And that was Karen. Determined to offer a meaningful professional development experience to teachers. For many summers, that’s exactly what she did with the Colorado Writing Project, for teachers all across Colorado (and then for teachers across the country once we had the online curriculum built out!). As CWP director for many years, Karen was keeper of the grail—the CWP curriculum. When I came on board around 2010 and found myself at Karen’s dining room table with the other teacher consultants during the annual spring retreat, I was amazed to learn that the curriculum document in the binder in front of me was about three decades old, built and revised by literal legends of the Colorado English Language Arts world. I didn’t feel worthy.

Fueled by Karen’s chocolate chip cookies, bottomless bowls of chocolate, and both a breakfast and lunch buffet, we made our way through each day of the two week curriculum, updating as needed to adjust to the evolving needs of teaching writing. I worked madly to upload the intricately-woven document onto my brain, amazed to see the inner workings of the most meaningful professional learning experience I had ever done myself as a CWP participant. Would I ever be able to actually bring this curriculum document to life and honor the legacy it represented?

But Karen’s confidence in me made it all possible. Karen saw capabilities in me that I didn’t see. Her encouragement and support are a huge reason I was able to persist through several years trying to get to what eventually became my first book for teachers. In every opportunity I have, I channel Karen’s dedication to serving up professional learning experiences that challenge teachers, honor them as professionals, and care for them as human beings. In every moment planning for what happens in my classroom, I channel Karen’s dedication to pedagogy that challenges my students, honors them as readers and writers, and cares for them as human beings.

See it was all so clear to Karen.

Karen put in the work because it mattered for teachers and their students and the authenticity of their experiences in the classroom. That was it. That was all. And that is everything.

An Unsent Letter to My Mentor By Sheila Kaehny

Dear Karen,

I remember a chilly April morning at the Teen Lit Conference when we met at the Tivoli before our traditional “What’s New In Young Adult Lit” presentation. You were at a table in the back, with a thick stack of handouts (yellow for you, green for me) and your red tote bag filled with thick hardovers decorated with sticky notes marking passages for read-aloud.

I remember your smile, your Diet Coke with lime, your etched silver earrings and matching necklace, and your perfect pink fingernails.

You were always excited to present our new YA titles, to share books to get kids reading. In your earnest “this is what’s best for kids” voice, booktalking was your gift. You were a natural teacher, and it came through in your carefully crafted presentations. I saw it in your writing conferences with kids and adults and when you listened and coached, helping people find answers. You loved it all. Both teaching and teachers annoyed you every once in a while, too, but you loved it (and all of us) just the same.

You presented at CCIRA every year. In your world, continuous improvement was teachers gathering together at conferences like the Fall Writing and CLAS for professional development. Do you remember how cranky I was about giving up my Saturday morning soccer to participate in a weekend conference? “Sheila, dear,” you said to me, “you can play soccer next weekend. You need this right now.” And you were right. No matter how exhausted I was after a long weekend of learning, I left each conference energized, buzzing with ideas.

Because of you and all those years of CWP summer writing workshops, hundreds of teachers across Colorado set aside worksheets and five paragraph essays and replaced them with authentic, meaningful instruction.

No one has had a greater impact on my life as a teacher than you, Karen. You picked me as your student teacher; you hired me at Thornton High School. I am grateful you kept me afloat with all those late night phone calls and words of encouragement whenever I lost faith in teaching. You were my steadying force. I wanted to be like you. You eventually roped me into being your Program Chair for CLAS (multiple times), and you made me a consultant for CWP. I loved teaching and going on safari with you in South Africa.

And now, I know you’d like me to pay it forward, and you’d like for us all to speak up a little bit more. You’d want veteran teachers to encourage young teachers to give a little time outside of school to their professional learning, to engage in the community, and to find the joy in teaching.

You had so many more books to read and writer’s notebooks to fill, Karen. So much more advice to give and criticisms of the current state of the world to post on Facebook. Your shoes are too big to fill. You wanted to make everyone’s life better through reading and writing and teaching, and I believed you could do it. Heck, I watched you do it.

Oh, how I miss you, my friend.

Love from your other daughter, Sheila

Ice Cream, Penguins, and Other Thoughts on the Growth Mindset

By: Cara Mentzel, CCIRA 2026 Featured Speaker

This week was the first week of kindergarten. As a fun, low stakes activity and covert assessment, I played a How To Draw youtube video from Art for Kids Hub. If you’re not familiar with the channel, it features a young, perky dad, Rob, who step-by-step and side-by-side draws with one of his kids. I chose the ice cream cone video because the weather has been in the nineties all week–recess has been as invigorating as an hour in a frying pan. In times like these drawing and thoughts of ice cream are always welcome.

The class was sitting on the rug with clean sheets of paper on clipboards, and fresh beginning of the year pencils. Rob had just begun. He’d drawn one stroke, the top arc of a scoop of ice cream. Immediately, students began to stir. Erase. Even harumph! I quickly realized that this wasn’t as low stakes as I thought it would be! I paused the video. I explained that everyone’s ice cream cone would look different, just like everyone in our class is different. Still, one student became audibly frustrated. He’d already flipped his paper over and tried on the other side. He continued to erase his work. He kept drawing the arc narrow, like a popsicle. I couldn’t actually see the tears welling up in his eyes, but I felt them. He shouted, “This doesn’t look like an ice cream cone!” and “This is wrong!” To which I unhelpfully replied, “Friend, there’s no wrong way to be an ice cream cone. Ice cream is always delicious.” He looked at me like a 16-year-old who was just told they can’t take the car.

Perhaps Carol Dweck of Growth Mindset fame would have praised my struggling student’s perseverance, “I love how you keep trying,” she might have said, placing a focus on the behavior instead of the outcome. But for my part, I was worried about inadvertently praising perfectionism. A kindergartner becoming dysregulated over the first step of an ice cream cone drawing could be a red flag. There’s a lot of common ground between perseverance and perfectionism, and the distinction feels significant. While perseverance often looks like rallying with continued effort or remaining steadfast in the face of a challenge, striving for perfection is different. Striving for perfection can be futile, especially when perfection is so often ill-defined—what does a perfect ice cream cone actually look like anyway?! I agree with my husband when he says, “Perfection is the enemy of the good.” So while perfectionists may persevere, perseverance can be healthy in its own right. As author/activist Glennon Doyle might say, we need perseverance to do hard things. I’m finding that there is a need to draw more nuanced distinctions when applying growth mindset principles. Not only between perfectionism and perseverance, but between growth in general and applying a growth mindset.

Growth vs. Growth Mindset

I first heard of the growth mindset early in my career during a professional development training. It was presented in opposition to a fixed mindset. The growth mindset emphasizes intelligence and talent as traits that can be developed, whereas the fixed mindset emphasizes inherent intelligence and talent–essentially, with the latter you get what you get and there’s little you can do about it. When compared to a fixed mindset, the growth mindset is the obvious winner, no arm-twisting needed.

The part of this distinction that speaks to me the most is when Dweck describes how these perspectives impact our relationship to effort and challenge. If something is hard, people with a fixed mindset feel inadequate, while someone with a growth mindset sees that difficulty as an opportunity, something to overcome. The other element I appreciate about the growth mindset is the focus on process over outcome, what your favorite Hallmark card or motivational poster might call the value of the journey over the destination. What I find important about the value of the process is that we have more control over the process. Ask any author who put years of hard work into their project, for their book never to make it to a bestseller’s list—better yet, to a shelf in a bookstore. We don’t often have control over the outcome, but we can exercise control over many of the steps along the way. Not the least of which is simply showing up to do the work. In its best iteration, the growth mindset is an empowering perspective, one that develops agency, confidence, and work ethic.

Nowadays, I don’t hear the growth mindset mentioned with its fixed counterpart. I see it on a screen looming large over a staff meeting. It’s mentioned in the context of DDI practices and assessment. Objectives, targets, goals. After all, every student gets to make at least a year’s worth of growth, and if there’s an achievement gap, then the struggling students need to make more than a year’s growth to catch up. But just because we are looking at growth in addition to proficiency (as measured by test scores), doesn’t mean we’re applying a growth mindset. While we are valuing growth, we are still focused on the outcome. We are still asking, is it enough? How can we do better? Do more? If teachers are feeling like they need to do more and do better all the time, is it any surprise that students feel the same. As long as we are always trying to get more out of our students, it doesn’t surprise me that those very students often come to school anxious and depressed. If we want what’s best for our students, how do educators “win”? When it comes to holding high expectations for growth, are we damned if we do, damned if we don’t?

The Educator Perspective vs. The Perimenopausal Perspective

Before I attempt to answer the above question, let me back up and get personal. I’m 51 now and perimenopausal. Why is that important? Apart from the fact that I probably won’t remember the above question that I have just promised to address, it’s important because I’ve been reevaluating my relationship to growth. And frankly, I’m not as fond of it as I used to be! I’m questioning what feels like a fixation in our culture on improvement, on getting better and doing better. I’ve been asking myself how I came to value growth to the extent that I do? To put hard work on a pedestal and boast about being a lifelong learner. For years now I’ve just assumed this perspective was correct. I mean, duh, of course progress is important. But maybe I don’t want to be a lifelong learner every day. Maybe I want to be a mid-lifelong learner, or someone who guiltlessly indulges in naps and the latest new stream on Apple TV? I mean, as my favorite comedian Gary Gulman likes to say, “The thing they don’t tell you about life is…It’s Every. Single. Day.”

I spent months entertaining the possibility that a focus on growth isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. What if I just wake up in the morning telling myself “I’m good. I worked hard to get where I am. I have an effective skillset. I have built instincts I trust, and now, well, I’m good!” With this mindset learning can be more of an osmosis activity, organic, no longer driven by the motor that says improvements must be made, but by simple joy, curiosity, gentle observation. Instead, I realized that my relationship to growth was inextricably linked to a belief that I was lacking. Lacking! After all this time. All these family holidays. All this therapy. And all this professional development training! This is when I started to think about our students.

Whether you’re learning to use the potty, a planner, or a 3-D printer, students are in school to learn. And let’s be honest, they have so much to learn! As educators, how do we acknowledge their room to grow, without also sending them the message that they are lacking. Furthermore, if the distinction is difficult for a grown-up like me to internalize, someone who could buy a cute condo with a rooftop deck for the money she’s spent on therapy, then how are we supposed to help our students internalize it?

Is the Glass Half Empty or Half…Empty?

Most students are inundated with what they don’t know and teachers are inundated with measuring it. Carol Dweck might say, but it’s not what they don’t know, it’s only what they don’t know yet. This is where the glass metaphor is helpful. I think we’d agree that it’s important to see the glass half full. As teachers we praise a student’s existing skillset. We understand their background knowledge anchors their future learning and provides the resources from which they will grow. Still, when it comes to the growth mindset, the empty part of the glass is also key. In a high stakes academic environment, our challenge is to authentically help students see the empty as “The Magical Yet?” (picture book by Angela DiTerlizzi). The empty as opportunity, not inadequacy.

In terms of a solution, my mind draws parallels between our approaches to behavior modification and our approach to student growth. Perhaps because the growth mindset places a focus on behavior and character. For example, we were taught to deliberately distinguish between a child doing something “bad” (poor choices) and a child being bad. In the same way, maybe students need to distinguish between the skills they can cultivate, the information they can gain, and their identity or self-worth. Ultimately, the distinction between failing—a part of the learning process—and being a failure.

Similarly, PBIS taught us that for every one redirection of behavior, we needed eight positive reinforcements. I’ll never forget this professional development training when I tried to calculate how this 1:8 ratio would work in my class of 29 students! If I draw the parallel from this behavior modification approach to student growth, I notice that we need far more emphasis on student self-worth, than we place on their growth alone, not only when they are in kindergarten and social and emotional learning is primary, but all along their academic trajectories. There’s a sisyphean quality to this task, and ironically, perseverance is required of all stakeholders.

When my boys started high school anxiety was already at an all time high. I recommended they only take one AP or IB class a semester. I asked them to pick one class they sincerely cared about and were willing to go above and beyond to tackle. I saw high school as life training. While I still had proximity and influence in their lives I wanted to ensure their focus remained on our shared values: humor, gratitude, balance, grit, and creativity, to name a few. It is so easy to get swept up in the high stakes of college prep, in the competition, in the drive for college “acceptance” and a strong GPA. As a parent and educator, it wasn’t easy to keep my priorities straight and remember the behaviors I wanted the boys to practice in those years. But I tried. We tried. I think our efforts mattered.

Maybe what needs to be explicitly taught is that when you value opportunities for growth you are valuing yourself. The minute an emphasis on growth eclipses a sense of self, take a minute to go back to the drawing board. Reset. Instead of trying to draw the ice cream cone like Rob, try and draw the worst ice cream cone you can imagine. Or, know when to stop drawing and treat yourself to an actual ice cream cone. I’ll admit, I ate a lot of ice cream in the time I spent writing this essay.

Today I’m of the belief that it’s possible to wake up and say, “I’m good,” but also to remain a learner. I’m aware of the impact of practicing what I preach, that is to say that I know modeling is a high leverage instructional strategy. In the kindergarten classroom it’s impossible not to be a learner. Yesterday, at recess I sat next to a four-year-old student. I asked her what she’s been wondering about lately. She said penguins.

“What about penguins?” I asked.

“I want to know what their scales are made of.”

“Um…penguins have feathers, Honey,” I said, and added the term of endearment to soften the blow to her tiny ego.

“NOT penguins,” she corrected, “pang-wins!”

We went back and forth on the pronunciation more times than I’m comfortable admitting.

“Describe a penguin to me,” I finally said. She described what I pictured as an armadillo. And then something stirred in a deep, curvy crevice of my brain, a fact from long ago. Wait… I took out my phone. I searched “armadillo and p-” And voila! The search suggested pangolin.

“Pang-uh-lun!” I shouted with proper annunciation.

“Yeah, penguin,” she replied.

Eventually I read straight from Google that pangolin scales are made of keratin-

“Keratin!” she exclaimed with perfect pronunciation. “I know keratin!”

To redeem myself I added, “Yeah, the same stuff your nails are made of!”

She replied with the side eye.

Looks like someone’s still got a lot to learn.

Cara Mentzel has her master’s degree in elementary education with an emphasis on children’s literacy. She has spent over 15 years in elementary schools as a literacy specialist and a classroom teacher in Boulder, Colorado. While currently an empty nester, Cara raised a Brady Bunch of boys with the love of her life and now looks for every opportunity to surround herself with children. In this very moment she is probably sitting criss-cross applesauce in her kindergarten classroom, and poorly playing Down By the Bay on the ukulele. Her upcoming keynote presentation at CCIRA’s 2026 conference is titled, The Complete Idiom’s Guide to Being a Literacy Educator in 2026: Finding the Spring in Your Step.

Cara’s debut memoir, Voice Lessons: A Sisters Story, was a Good Reads Choice Award nominee in 2017. She has since co-authored two picture books with her sister, Idina Menzel, Loud Mouse and Proud Mouse. Her humorous personal essays are featured in The Empty Next, on Substack.

Digging Deeper with Sentence Level Instruction: Teaching the Reading and Writing Connection

By: Aimee Buckner Haisten, 2026 CCIRA Featured Presenter

At the start of every school year, I felt both excitement and exhaustion. Those first weeks are filled with routines, resetting expectations, and getting a classroom community up and running again. Yet, they’re also invigorating—the chance to begin anew with fresh ideas, renewed energy, and a rekindled passion for teaching. As educators, we’re fortunate to have this cycle of continual reflection and growth embedded in our profession.

In recent years, I’ve applied this same mindset to my own practice, especially in teaching writing. I returned to the role of learner—reading research, exploring new perspectives, and reconnecting with core principles that help students develop their voice and clarity as writers. While I once focused on using notebooks to nurture student identities and launch writing projects (Stenhouse Publishers, 2005, 2009, 2013), my latest fascination has centered around the power of the sentence.

A sentence, after all, holds remarkable capacity. It can reveal a theme, capture a writer’s complex idea, or unlock deeper understanding for the reader. The research is clear – spending time on sentence level instruction – analysis and construction-is key to developing students’ writing skills (Anderson & LaRocca, 2017; Collins & Norris, 2017; Graham, 2020; Graham & Alves, 2021; Graham & Harris 2015; Hochman & Wexler, 2017; Sedita, 2023). By embracing the reciprocity between reading and writing—studying how syntax and semantics shape meaning—we can help students see sentences not as isolated grammar drills but as dynamic building blocks of language.

Too often, reading and writing are taught in silos, separated by subject blocks, test preparation, or curriculum pacing. This disconnect can obscure how closely these skills inform and strengthen each other. When we instead highlight their interconnectedness, we unlock more meaningful learning opportunities.

To bridge this gap, I’ve begun using a simple classroom routine – Sentence Digs – inspired by Anderson and La Rocca’s (2017) and Charles and Lily Fillmore’s work (2012). It follows a three-step process—Take Apart, Put Together, Apply—and it encourages students to engage deeply with language. They analyze sentence structure, explore its function and meaning, and reflect on the writer’s choices, all while remaining anchored in the texts they’re already studying.

This routine doesn’t rely on complicated materials or elaborate planning. Its power lies in the questions it prompts and the clarity it brings. Students not only gain insight into how sentences communicate meaning—they also learn how to craft their own with intention and precision. Rich, well-constructed sentences are gold mines for both readers and writers. And when we treat them as such, we give our students tools not just to comprehend the world around them, but to express their own complex ideas within it.

For example, you might be studying inventors in social studies or electricity in science and find yourself reading Bright Dreams: The Brilliant Ideas of Nikola Tesla by Tracey Dockray (2020). A sentence dig lesson might look like this:

Focus: Understanding the impact of a cause/effect sentence.

Using conjunctions to create cause/effect sentences.

Showcase Sentence: Nikola and Westinghouse were chosen | to illuminate the Chicago’s World Fair | since their AC cost much less | than Edison’s DC.

Ask: In this sentence, the author uses abbreviations that they expect the reader to know. In the context of electricity, what does AC and DC mean? AC refers to alternating current and DC refers to direct current; they both indicate how electricity is flowing through a current.

If you prefer, you can organize your chunks on sentence strips. Move them around to help students focus on one chunk and then another. You’ll move them back together later.

Apply

During this part, students quickly apply their new knowledge about the sentence to their reading and writing. These are quick efforts and may be followed up with more practice.

Discuss: Aside from earning money for illuminating the Chicago’s World Fair, why is this a significant event in Tesla’s life?
Writing Focus: Try writing your own sentence with a cause/effect sentence structure. Use the showcase sentence as your model. If you want to engage your students in sentence combining work to build cause/effect sentences, consider using or adapting this Think Sheet.

In my new book, Sentence Digs and during my conference sessions, we’ll dig into rich, well-constructed sentences exploring the routine to support comprehension and better writing. My hope is that every reader and writer, speaker and listener, student and teacher feel confident in their ability to understand and use language in a way that helps them to connect with sentences, texts, each other, and the world.

The unavoidable fact is that our school days are long but our teaching time is short. There is never enough time, so we find ourselves having to prioritize instruction. At a conference recently, a teacher asked me – how important is this work…really? Having short, weekly, explicit routines to teach syntax and semantics of sentences that carry rich meaning will not only support reading comprehension, it will also model for and support students in writing those kinds of sentences. There is gold in this reciprocity. It’s important.

About the Author:

Aimee Buckner Haisten brings over three decades of experience to the field of education, where she has served as a classroom teacher, instructional coach, literacy specialist, published author, and international consultant. Her work has reached audiences across local, state, national, and international platforms, with a focus on elevating reading and writing instruction. Aimee’s contributions have appeared in several peer-reviewed journals, and she is the author of four acclaimed titles with Stenhouse Publishers. Her forthcoming book, Sentence Digs: Teaching the Reading and Writing Connection Through Syntax and Semantics, is scheduled for release in late 2025.

True Student Voice: Helping students be better speakers

By Erik Palmer

voice

1. The sound produced in a person’s larynx and uttered through the mouth, as speech or song. https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/voice

Student voice. What a hot topic! I’ve seen educational conferences with themes such as “Raising Student Voice” (NCTE) and “Speak Up! Finding and Using Our Voices in a Noisy World” (NEATE), social media posts about how to increase student voice, and educational publications with articles about student voice. “Voice” is one of the most popular educational buzz words.

Unfortunately, every single one of the mentions of student voice ignores the first and most important meaning of voice: speaking. The conference with the theme “Speak Up”? Not one strand about oral communication. The “Raising Student Voice” conference had hundreds of sessions with exactly ONE session about how to improve students’ oral communication. Think about that. What an epic fail.

When you see the word voice used by educators, it might mean choice or options as in “give students voice instead of directing their learning.” Sometimes it means opinion as in “we need to value student voice and make them feel comfortable expressing their ideas.” Sometimes it means literary style as in “Hemingway has a unique voice in his writing, and we want students to develop their voice as well.” I’m not arguing with any of those: I think we should give students choices, we should value their opinions, and we should let them have their own style. But we should also give them the gift of being able to verbalize well because when you see the word voice used by everyone else on the planet, it means what you hear.

How can so many people talk about giving students voice without thinking about oral communication? That’s the original and most important voice! How do we declare what we want? How do we express our opinions? Overwhelmingly by speaking. We say things out loud. Often, that speaking is face-to-face, but increasingly digital media is used which expands the reach and importance of verbal communication. Tragically, students don’t speak well. You’ve noticed. Good speaking is not the norm for students. As much as we value writing, speaking is by far the number one way to have an impact.

“All kids can talk already.” “Speaking is not on the Big Test.” “I have never been trained about how to teach speaking skills.” “I have activities where I make students speak so I have this covered.”

These are good excuses for ignoring the direct instruction needed to give students real voice. But the truth is, it isn’t that hard to teach students how to speak well. Just as there are specific lessons to improve writing (punctuation, capitalization, word choice, sentence structure…) and to improve math (common denominator, order of operations…) and to improve reading (setting, metaphor, plot line…) there need to be specific lessons to improve speaking.

I’ll give you one example. The biggest weakness of almost all speakers is that their talks are dull. They speak in a lifeless way. You know that it is difficult to listen to the end of any student podcast.

Lesson one: to demonstrate the importance of adding life to their voices, let students practice with phrases where the meaning can change depending on how it is said.

I don’t think you are dumb. (But everyone else does?)

I don’t think you are dumb. (You know I am?)

I don’t think you are dumb. (You think he is?)

Lesson two: Play this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ouic59Gv0x0 There is a visual of a voice with no life and a visual of a voice with life along with audio modeling the difference. You may have a hard time getting through the 81 seconds of the student’s talk, a great lesson in how weak speaking skills can kill listener interest.

Lesson three: Give a small practice speech where adding life makes a huge difference. Have different students speak encouraging each one to add lots of feeling.

One time, we had a squirrel in our house. When we opened the door to let our dog out, it ran right in. Everything got crazy! The squirrel was running all over! My mom was yelling, “Do something! Do something! Get that thing out of here.” My sister jumped on a chair and stood there crying her eyes out. My dad was chasing the squirrel with a broom from room to room. “Open all the doors!” he yelled to me. “I did already!” I yelled back. Finally, it ran out. After a minute or so, my dad started laughing. “That was interesting,” he said with a chuckle.

All three of those combined might take 40 minutes of instructional time, and every student will learn one of the keys to effective speaking. Will all students master this? Of course not, just as not all master the skills of writing or math or drawing or anything. But all will get better, and all will understand how to communicate better. Many more resources are here: pvlegs.com and in this book: www.routledge.com/9781032757575

Erik Palmer is a professional speaker and educational consultant from Denver, Colorado, whose passion for speaking has been part of every one of his multiple careers. After several years in the business world, he became a teacher, spending 21 years in the classroom, primarily as an English teacher but also as a teacher of math, science, and civics.

The author of several books, Palmer presents frequently at conferences and has given keynotes and led in-service training in school districts across the United States and around the world. He focuses on giving teachers practical, engaging ways to teach oral communication skills and showing education leaders how to be more effective communicators. Contact him here.