Elementary Teachers Attend UAB Spring Symposium

Paine Elementary teachers attended the UAB Spring Symposium with Lester Laminack.  The focus was on his book, Writers are Readers: Flipping Reading Instruction into Writing Opportunities.

According to Laminack,writers approach a text with an eye for more than "what's the story here?" Writers look for structure and craft, intention and execution, voice, tone and mood. Writers notice bias and hyperbole, and honesty in content. Writers ARE readers.

Reading and writing are mutually supportive processes, though much of our instruction misses the bonus of that relationship. Efficient readers can be shown how to flip their insights about structure and strategies into more powerful writing. Learning to write using your reader knowledge has important implications for growing more informed and efficient writers.

Simply stated: reading supports writing, and writing supports reading, though teachers often separate the two.  Lester Laminack shared how any reading strategy can be flipped for writing instruction.