Karen is available to teach workshops and give demonstration lessons at your school. She typically spends 2 hours with teachers after school or a full day while school is in session. Most recently, schools have been hiring Karen to spend 4-day residencies at their buildings to demonstrate lessons or coach teachers. Karen also creates summer institutes lasting 1-10 days. Embedded staff development works! Here are Karen's most popular workshops. She also can custom-tailor one to your staff's needs.

Nonfiction Writing

Main idea books, nonfiction books and theme essays (to name a few projects) help children construct an understanding of the concepts of nonfiction text.  Writing and reading go hand in hand naturally as participants will see in this writing workshop.  Have fun, write better and comprehend better as a result of completing these short units. Lesson plans and rubrics provided.

Literary Analysis = Comprehension: Read Like an Author; Write Like a Reader

For children to understand literary elements, they have to analyze them in their reading, justify their thinking and incorporate them into personal writing.  In this workshop, I will model some of the minilessons and projects I use to help students analyze texts and improve their own writing in many different genres as a result.

Launching a Writing Program

Managing time, scheduling, procedures, motivating kids to write - these are the most often asked questions about getting started. After teaching writing to intermediate kids for over two decades, I have some ideas I'd love to share that work for me. I involve teachers in talking through problems and possible solutions and encourage them to partner with one another. I share videotaped interviews of students. By listening to students, we can examine what is working and what needs work.

Introduction to Daybooks

Using writer's notebooks in the elementary classrooms, especially grades 3-5, at one time was new for me, too. Who knew I could contribute my ideas to a book about using reflective notebooks named Thinking Out Loud on Paper? (Our Writing Project calls these notebooks... daybooks... in tribute to Donald Murray.) Showing children and teachers how to collect seed ideas for all kinds of writing, from stories to content-area projects, is now one of my loves. As co-director of the summer Teacher Research Institute at our Writing Project, I make filming children one of my priorities as well, and I will share those clips with teachers. For, it is through our own writing that we learn to teach writing and it is by listening to students, we find out what's working and what needs work.

Using Daybooks in All Content Areas to Improve Comprehension and Recall

Think more deeply about daybooks in Karen's second session. Virtually eliminate worksheets and workbooks as students and teachers create personal textbooks for observing, learning, and thinking in and out of the classroom. Karen, co-author of Thinking Out Loud on Paper: The Student Daybook as a Tool for Fostering Learning (Heinemann 2008), will share ideas for assessing students' metacognition, knowledge about their own thoughts and the factors that influenced their thinking, recorded in the daybooks. See videotapes of students reflecting in all content areas to improve comprehension, recall, and writing in the content areas.

Children CAN Revise and LOVE It!

Often when children just begin to help one another with writing, their suggestions make the writing worse. Sometimes, they just don't know what to say at all. The students need an understanding of how to help one another through good modeling. I have presented my strategies for helping kids help one another at several national writing conferences. My workshops on revision focus on management for the teacher and conferencing strategies for the students including a new, manageable way of conferring with many students at one time.

Spelling Investigations

I believe that spelling lists take time away from solid spelling instruction. Students who can't spell need to discover spelling patterns and rules through structured teaching activities. We have so little time for instruction! Let's put our time to good use! I have put together a spelling investigation workshop and handout which will help kids and teachers begin to explore their spelling habits together. The greatest by-product is that kids begin to enjoy spelling and improve spelling in their writing. I have been using these strategies with success in classrooms since 1979!

Tame the Grammar Dragon With Style!

The mechanics dragon raises its ugly head every time we read student papers. We resist the urge to slay it with our red pens because we know from experience that it doesn't work longterm. However, we have to do something! In this workshop, Karen shares her ideas for improving style, spelling, and grammar in writing adapted from NC's DPI, Constance Weaver, Diane Snowball, Stack the Deck, and Karen's own work. Learn about implementing editing workshop as part of the writing workshop. Teach style as a way of knowing and breaking the rules. Karen shares minilessons for teaching students to find their own spelling and grammar errors so that the students work harder than the teachers. Take home a lengthy handout to get started.

Planning Strategies that Address Multiple Learning Styles

Often children (and adults) don't realize the importance of planning stories. On the other hand, sometimes teachers' planning requests are too structured for children. What balance can we strike? What can we learn from authors about how much we need to plan and how much we need to let stories evolve? I can introduce your students to several techniques so they can choose a planning strategy that works for them.

Imaginative Writing

Donald Graves writes of teachers who don't let their students write imaginative stories until second semester. I was one of those teachers. Imaginative writing is hard for me, but it's not for kids. Graves advises us to let imaginative emerge naturally. In this workshop I stress the similarities between personal and imaginative writing. I help teachers explore the imaginative elements of writing. I bring a bibliography of books that help everyone get started.

A resource for people passionate about helping students write well, compiled by Karen Haag

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How to reach Karen

Call: 704-549-1428

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