What You Know by Heart by Katie Wood Ray

What You Know by Heart by Katie Wood Ray

No one can say it better than Lucy Calkins-Katie Ray has written a wise, comforting, intimate book. It goes to the heart of where good ideas for teaching of good writing originate: from yourself and your own experience.

As Katie shows, the most profound and effective curriculum can result from your own deep understanding of quality writing-what you know about writing through your own and others' writings and through your reading. And the best teaching can result from what you can wrap your heart and mind around and communicate to your students. It is this very personal approach and contagious enthusiasm that Katie brings to bear on creating curriculum for her own writing workshops. Her book shows how you can do it for your own.

In Part One, Katie takes a close look at the lines of thinking you can use to find curriculum in your own writing experiences. In Part Two, she shows how to use the same lines of thinking to find curriculum in your everyday reading life. Along with her own inimitable writing style, Katie sprinkles special features throughout her book as helpful tips for thinking about your own writing workshop and curriculum development, including:

• minilessons and curriculum chunks
• Thinking it Through boxes with questions and things to try
• understandings and strategies
• notebook-keeping tips accompanied by Katie's own handwritten journal entries
• transcripts of interviews with writers
• references for further reading.

Follow Katie's example. Write like a teacher of writing. Read like a teacher of writing. Then teach from your own experience. And watch as you and your students flourish like never before.

Katie Wood Ray supplied teachers materials and PD that altered writing instruction and helped children find a lifetime love of writing for many years as the author of bestselling Heinemann publications such as About the Writers, Study Driven, Already Ready, and In Pictures and In Words, and as a member of Heinemann's Professional Development Services. Katie made the switch to the other side of the desk in 2014, joining Heinemann's vibrant team of editors, where she collaborates directly with authors to create compelling professional books on a variety of literacy issues. Katie is also the series editor for Heinemann's new Classroom Essentials series. Katie works to ensure that each book's tight focus and updated design best serve the material, as she is tasked with imparting foundational, progressive methods to a new generation of teachers. She also collaborated on one of the earliest volumes in the series, A Teacher's Guide to Getting Began with Beginning Writers, with her longstanding colleague Lisa Cleaveland. Katie Wood Ray can be found on Twitter as @KatieWoodRay.