Science of Writing Blog & Links
Read about the successes we’ve seen with Releasing Writers (formerly think SRSD) with our own students, and in the schools that partner with us
The Magic of TIDE-L
Why TIDE? Guest post by Gr 7 Teacher - Shelby Gale TIDE (topic statement, important evidence, detailed examination, ending) is an organizational strategy used as part of evidence-based writing instruction. TIDE helps students plan and structure their writing. This...
The Essential Role of Our 20-Point Scales
The Essential Role of Our 20-Point Scales For students to take themselves through the writing process and produce a high-quality piece, they need the language to self-regulate — language that they can use to walk themselves through each step and that tells them what a...
The Origin Story of TIDE, and Why We Call it TIDE-L Now
This post is a love letter to Quick Writes - how they came to be, how the field shaped, studied and refined them, and why building them into your weekly routine might be one of the highest-leverage instructional moves you can make - all with TIDE-L at the center!...
Deshler’s Six Steps & POWeR Cycle
In the 1970s, Dr. Don Deshler and his team at the University of Kansas were grappling with a persistent question: how do you make learning stick? Undeterred, they pursued and secured a multimillion dollar federal grant to study and solve it, and won. Decades later,...
Planning Genre Sequences
The Genre Shuffle: How Writing Instructional Planning Has Evolved - And Why Interleaving is Winning By Leslie Laud (think SRSD) and Tina Zampitella (AIM Academy) Leslie Laud is the director of think SRSD, an organization that works to research SRSD (self-regulated...
Show Off When You Show Up!
Recently during an SRSD lesson, the teacher had students work independently, each choosing to revise a current draft or give peer feedback depending on where they were at in the writing process. In a preceding mini lesson, the class had just carefully reviewed an...
Teach SRSD Virtually
SRSD Goes Virtual! Well - I’m guessing none of us had worldwide pandemic on our 2020 Bingo card, but here we are! Since many of us are gearing up for full or hybrid virtual instruction, here are some tips to keep SRSD #GoingStrong!Get Ready - Aim for students to...
Embed Sentence Lessons
You’ve all seen writing from students who struggle at the sentence (syntax/grammar) level – full of fragments, run ons, missing punctuation, unclear ideas etc. Are you wondering what the most powerful, evidence-based and time-efficient approaches are for supporting...
Real World Publishing
Guest blog by Heidi Poulin, Reading Specialist, Holyoke, MA Years ago, our school embraced a new writing initiative - Releasing Writers. We were fortunate enough to work with the team at Releasing Writers to help launch and lead all of us through the implementation....
Collaborative Writes Quick Tune Ups
Guest blog post by Allison Lienert, who taught SRSD at Currey Ingram Academy in Brentwood, Tennessee Hear Allison Lienert's story of learning SRSD from thinkSRSD's team, then honing in on collaborative writes. After many years of teaching SRSD, she has great tips to...
About Us
thinkSRSD is the community of teachers and researchers who use and study SRSD. We offer SRSD in-person professional development and e-learning courses taught by teachers with decades of experience using SRSD. The teachers at thinkSRSD have taught SRSD courses for over 10 years, since offering the very first open enrollment course in SRSD in 2008.
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