Reflections: May 28, 2021 — This project this year has been interesting and fun. I have learned much about Writing Assistance tools and have considered how to use them most effectively in my classroom. I have learned much from my colleagues and mentors in this project, but mostly, I learned from my students. Using a…

May 25, 2021 Spending the first three quarters of this year exploring Writing Assistance tools on the computer allowed me to think deeply about feedback and what kind of feedback improves student writing. I had my own ideas, feeling like the teacher feedback was the most important in terms of…

Why are my 8th-grade students using writing assistance tools? Are they using these tools to improve their writing? To revise? Or are they using these tools to get a quick fix in terms of correctness in their writing?These are the questions going on in my mind when I think…

Listen to your writers! What motivates an 8th grader to want to use a revision tool such as Writer’s Workbench or any other writing assistance tool? As I have been using this tool this past semester, I notice that some students will go to the Writer’s Workbench analysis on their…

Over my 34 years of teaching students, I have found one thing in common: most students want to be good writers — they want to have a well-written piece that they can be proud of and that they can share with their peers. I have found this true with students…

A First Look at Writers Workbench — My experience with writing assistance tools reaches as far as Microsoft Word, and using the grammar, thesaurus, and the find key! I am “old school” — a writer’s words and ideas are their own, and they alone should decide if they want to change their ideas. But as we turn…