Craft & Draft

Welcome everyone to the Craft & Draft podcast! We are so excited to bring you what we love, talking with you about workshop, literacy, writing, reading, and real world teaching. Giving students choices to select their books and writing pieces often feels like the teacher is giving up his or her control of the classroom. Teachers who teach using the workshop format are often misunderstood and f...

Welcome everyone to the Craft & Draft podcast! We are so excited to bring you what we love, talking with you about workshop, literacy, writing, reading, and real world teaching. All the extra stuff makes scheduling the workshop difficult.  How do you find the sweet spot? Jacob opens the show by sharing the best advice he received earlier in his career and still uses today!  Pam shares how her...

Welcome everyone to the Craft & Draft podcast! We are so excited to bring you what we love, talking with you about workshop, literacy, writing, reading, and real world teaching. In this episode, Pam and Jacob answer a listener question about setting norms for the workshop, as it connects to setting up Craft and Draft books. From there, they go on a journey of discussing how purpose comes about...

Welcome everyone to the Craft & Draft podcast! We are so excited to bring you what we love, talking with you about workshop, literacy, writing, reading, and real world teaching. Teachers have good days and bad days. When our days go different than planned, we realize we need to reset. We reset our mind-set, our strategies, and our systems so we can support our students. Jacob shares how dealt...

Welcome everyone to the Craft & Draft podcast! We are so excited to bring to you what we love, talking with you about workshop, literacy, writing, reading, and real world teaching. Neophyte writers struggle to develop their voice or style. Jacob and Pam discuss how they  help students find their writing voices. But before they begin they offer tribute to the 20th anniversary of 9/11. Pam share...

Welcome everyone to the Craft & Draft podcast! We are so excited to bring to you what we love, talking with you about workshop, literacy, writing, reading, and real world teaching. This week Jacob and Pam respond to a question from a listener regarding how do teachers need to bring their parents into the workshop process.  Orienting parents to the ways if the workshop based classroom becomes a...

Welcome everyone to the Craft & Draft podcast! We are so excited to bring to you what we love, talking with you about workshop, literacy, writing, reading, and real world teaching. After 8 days in the new school year, Pam and Jacob are experiencing what they experience most years—resistor students. These students often avoid reading and writing in a variety of ways. Sometimes they do so silent...

Welcome everyone to the Craft & Draft podcast! We are so excited to bring to you what we love, talking with you about workshop, literacy, writing, reading, and real world teaching. The first week of the 2021-2022 school year is behind us! Jacob and Pam reflect on their first week of school. Now they teach in the same school just down the hallway from each other. As they share they reflect on h...

Welcome everyone to the Craft & Draft podcast! We are so excited to bring to you what we love, talking with you about workshop, literacy, writing, reading, and real world teaching. Coming off of two episodes about Craft & Draft nuts and bolts, we wanted to take a more philosophical approach this week. As our focus, we wanted to look at the art and science of teaching, and how it connects t...

Welcome everyone to the Craft & Draft podcast! We are so excited to bring to you what we love, talking with you about workshop, literacy, writing, reading, and real world teaching. We have been thrilled this week with all of the feedback we received about our tutorial on the Craft & Draft journals! So many of you have mentioned you will be using them, and we couldn’t be more excited...

Welcome everyone to the Craft & Draft podcast! We are so excited to bring to you what we love, talking with you about workshop, literacy, writing, reading, and real world teaching. Several of the Craft and Draft listeners have requested more information regarding how to set-up the Craft and Draft Notebook System In this episode Jacob and Pam walk through how to set up the two Notebooks:Craft a...

Welcome everyone to the Craft & Draft podcast! We are so excited to bring to you what we love, talking with you about workshop, literacy, writing, reading, and real world teaching. Structure provides the foundation which enables students to participate rigorously as well as enjoy learning. Designing lessons for such engagement requires the teacher to establish routines, procedures, and practic...

Welcome everyone to the Craft & Draft podcast! We are so excited to bring to you what we love, talking with you about workshop, literacy, writing, reading, and real world teaching. How does freedom to learn in the classroom impact rigor? Jacob and Pam think about this question and begin their discussion by defining rigor. Is it high expectations, such as strict guidelines regarding product and...

Welcome everyone to the Craft & Draft podcast! We are so excited to bring to you what we love, talking with you about workshop, literacy, writing, reading, and real world teaching. Summer is a time to wait and see what will change. Teachers leave for new adventures, new teachers need to be hired, but leadership changes occur, so what you thought was a sure thing is now maybe not so sure anymor...

Welcome everyone to the Craft & Draft podcast! We are so excited to bring to you what we love, talking with you about workshop, literacy, writing, reading, and real world teaching. Today, we are discussing one of the HOT BUTTON issues of English teaching—grammar, and how it should be taught. In this episode, Pam states that grammar has been one of the biggest causes of contention between teach...

Welcome everyone to the Craft & Draft podcast! We are so excited to bring to you what we love, talking with you about workshop, literacy, writing, reading, and real world teaching. In the spirit of summer, we discuss taking breaks. Pam is about to go on a small vacation after working a three week training, while Jacob is staying home and working on his various projects. While we take breaks, w...

Welcome everyone to the Craft & Draft podcast! We are so excited to bring to you what we love, talking with you about workshop, literacy, writing, reading, and real world teaching. Today, Pam and Jacob are tackling another listener question all about GRADES—not a contentious topic at all… Together, Pam and Jacob address the following questions: Do we ever have a student that fails your c...

Welcome everyone to the Craft & Draft podcast! We are so excited to bring to you what we love, talking with you about workshop, literacy, writing, reading, and real world teaching. “Jacob, are you doing any summer PD?’   Jacob and Pam discuss summer PD and share what they are doing professional development this summer.  In this episode Jacob shares how he learns new concepts during the summer....

Welcome everyone to the Craft & Draft podcast! We are so excited to bring to you what we love, talking with you about workshop, literacy, writing, reading, and real world teaching. Building equity among readers requires that teachers must introduce students to texts that reflect the diversity in the classroom.  “Literature transforms human experience and reflects it back to us, and in that ref...

Welcome everyone to the Craft & Draft podcast! We are so excited to bring to you what we love, talking with you about workshop, literacy, writing, reading, and real world teaching It’s now time to think about next year.  A huge question a — How should I set up my workshop? Pam explains the principles that she uses to set up her first day of workshop.  She wants her students to read and write o...

Welcome everyone to the Craft & Draft podcast! We are so excited to bring to you what we love, talking with you about workshop, literacy, writing, reading, and real world teaching. Differentiation is expected in the classroom, but often teachers, especially those new to teaching, are told to differentiate without the guidance needed to bring success. Therefore, differentiation remains one of t...

Welcome everyone to the Craft & Draft podcast! We are so excited to bring to you what we love, talking with you about workshop, literacy, writing, reading, and real world teaching. Another year has flown by, but this was no ordinary year! This year Jacob will be saying goodbye to students he has taught during a two year loop. Workshop drives how we end the year because of the community that th...

Welcome everyone to the Craft & Draft podcast! We are so excited to bring to you what we love, talking with you about workshop, literacy, writing, reading, and real world teaching. In this episode Jacob and Pam share how they have used quick writes in their classes. They utilize Linda Rief’s The Quickwrite Handbook: 100 Mentor Texts to Jumpstart Your Students’ Thinking and Writing. They each h...

Welcome everyone to the Craft & Draft podcast! We are so excited to bring to you what we love, talking with you about workshop, literacy, writing, reading, and real world teaching.  Jacob and Pam talk about how they use poetry in their workshops.  They both discuss how poetry is often undervalued; however, poetry is gold in a writing and reading workshop!  In Jacob’s workshop his students choo...

Welcome everyone to the Craft & Draft podcast! We are so excited to bring to you what we love, talking with you about workshop, literacy, writing, reading, and real world teaching.  One constant is true—CHANGE!  In the reading and writing workshop, the change we desire is for our students to transform their thinking through reading and writing. Jacob shares how the great differentiator in our...