In this piece, 3rd grade teacher Olivia Eastwood reflects on how Releasing Writers (formerly ThinkSRSD) has transformed how she teaches writing and how her students write after she adopted it this year.
I love how you structured this piece Olivia! I'm feeling a little bummed because last year I was working whole class with a group of students 4 days a week so we did Releasing Writers and this year I only see my students 2x per week but this piece made me want to keep trying to figure out how to use Releasing Writers even if I have to get creative about how we do it in reading intervention.
yes! there are two different acronyms for organizing (one for information/ opinion and one for narrative), but we really heavily focused on info and opinion in 3rd!
it’s called CSPACE- definitely a little less straightforward and took me longer to wrap my head around, but essentially uses the story elements to help them compose the story!
The shift from students asking “what do I do next?” to students knowing their next steps without being told is the most significant change described here, because it represents the difference between a writing curriculum that produces compliance and one that builds genuine authorial agency. What would it mean for how schools approach writing across the curriculum if the primary design question was not what format to use but what process students need to internalise?
I love how you structured this piece Olivia! I'm feeling a little bummed because last year I was working whole class with a group of students 4 days a week so we did Releasing Writers and this year I only see my students 2x per week but this piece made me want to keep trying to figure out how to use Releasing Writers even if I have to get creative about how we do it in reading intervention.
I use it while tutoring some kids- it’s definitely adaptable!! i received some good advice from the facebook group too!
Do you use Releasing Writers with all types of writing?
yes! there are two different acronyms for organizing (one for information/ opinion and one for narrative), but we really heavily focused on info and opinion in 3rd!
What acronym do you use for a narrative. I've only learned about TIDE for opinion and informational.
or dissect a narrative that already exists!
it’s called CSPACE- definitely a little less straightforward and took me longer to wrap my head around, but essentially uses the story elements to help them compose the story!
The shift from students asking “what do I do next?” to students knowing their next steps without being told is the most significant change described here, because it represents the difference between a writing curriculum that produces compliance and one that builds genuine authorial agency. What would it mean for how schools approach writing across the curriculum if the primary design question was not what format to use but what process students need to internalise?
How do you determine the grammar your teaching and where do you get your writing topics?
I also have used Writing Revolution to supplement some sentence level work!
we use CKLA so I mostly use those topics- with some supplements! Joining the ThinkSRSD facebook was also super helpful when starting.
This is a great question Whitney and something I've been trying to figure out too.