This workshop is an introduction to IWT's core writing-based teaching practices. The day is composed of sessions focusing on such topics as invention strategies, coaching the writing process, and revision. The workshop also addresses the questions and concerns that our teacher-participants bring with them, particularly when it comes to the role writing plays in their own classroom(s). IWT workshops are fully experiential, bringing together a range of teachers to write together, exchange ideas, and respond to one another’s work. Through these activities, they become more aware of the composing process and of their students’ struggles to acquire the ability to produce expressive, well-developed, and engaged writing. This workshop is for secondary and college teachers of language arts, English, and composition. Teachers of all subjects who want to understand how writing generates thinking are also invited to participate.

This workshop offers an introduction to writing strategies that help students gain a better understanding of complex ideas, historical documents, literary texts, and mathematical problems. In other words, this workshop offers faculty models for how to implement writing practices into discipline-specific classrooms. These writing practices, which can be used in the classroom or for homework assignments, support close reading of documents and literary texts; allow students to make personal connections to people, places, and events they study; and encourage students to learn from one another. This workshop focuses on ways to use writing to develop an understanding of a text, a first step in creating finished essays, critical analyses, or research papers. Participants explore how writing-to-learn practices invite us to reconsider how we teach—to explore how the academic lecture, collaborative learning, and the act of listening exist in relation to one another and to writing.

Focusing on mathematical and scientific texts, this workshop presents writing strategies that help students gain a better understanding of complex ideas. Specific STEM-related writing practices, which can be used in the classroom or homework assignments, support close reading of texts of all genres and allow students to make personal connections to the numbers, formulas, and scientific cases and experiments they study. Working together on pertinent texts and activities, teachers experiment with the use of student journals and classroom writing assignments to stimulate engagement with the language, ideas, and mathematical or scientific practices relevant to the subjects they teach. This workshop focuses on ways to use writing to develop understanding—an important first step in learning to be more conscious and reflective of the process of mathematical proof or scientific experimentation. Participants also explore how writing-to-learn practices invite us to reconsider how we teach—to explore how the academic lecture, collaborative learning, and the act of listening exist in relation to one another and to writing in the classroom.