Andrea Knight

Teacher · Learner · Author

No More Mentor Texts?

"Because texts don't mentor ... authors and illustrators do." (Lisa Cleaveland) I love this book ... and if you teach writing in a K-1 classroom, you should get this book, too. (Ask your principal. That's my answer to all the $$ questions.😉) Teaching writing is a favorite of mine, so this book was really interesting to me and it got me thinking about how a small shift in our planning and … [Read more...]

A Must Have Text for K-1 Writing Teachers

I'm always on the lookout for those must have texts. I recently ordered four new picture books for writing workshop, sight unseen, and I ended up only liking one of them. (I have to stop buying books I haven't actually looked through.) But lucking out on this one book made up for the other three. And actually, I don't just like this book... I LOVE IT! It's not even new. But I just discovered … [Read more...]

Mentor Texts for Small Moments

It's really important to have great mentor texts for small moments as you plan out this writing unit. It can be challenging for young writers to focus in on one small moment in time. Many kids tend to write the same way they tell stories. They can go on and on, and are often distracted by unrelated tangents. Been there? 👉 Tip: One of my favorite ways to show the small-moment-non-example is … [Read more...]

Lap Book Templates for Kids

There's really no middle ground here. You're either a lap-book-loving teacher or you're not. I've heard, "I LOVE them!" and "I HATE them!" but never, "Yeah, they're kind of okay, I guess."😂 Teachers on the thumbs-down-side cringe at the thought of lap books because they seem tedious and labor intensive, like scrapbooking. I totally get the scrapbooking thing... that's way too much work. I have … [Read more...]

A Big Bag of Writing Ideas

My last post, Gathering Writing Ideas: 5 Tips to Generate Ideas, really should've been 6 tips because I totally forgot about this idea... A Big Bag of Ideas. This idea is similar to the strategy of using children's literature to generate writing ideas, but instead I use my own personal treasures to stimulate thinking about topics. It's super simple, but very effective. All you'll … [Read more...]