Julie Wollman

Now Vice President for Academic Affairs at Worcester State College, Julie Wollman has been an elementary school teacher and college professor of language arts and reading. As her ReadWriteThink lessons demonstrate, she is committed to engaging students of all ages in meaningful, purposeful writing across the curriculum. She believes that all writers need real audiences and that genuine feedback motivates writers to do their best work. A member of NCTE, she highly values the professional development and classroom-focused research that the organization makes possible.

Julie is the author of the NCTE book Family Message Journals: Teaching Writing through Family Involvement.

Lessons on ReadWriteThink

Family Message Journals Teach Many Purposes for Writing (K-2)
Family Message Journals are tools for learning, thinking, and self-expression. By writing several messages with varied purposes, students begin to experience that journal writing can serve many purposes—it can help them remember; make sense of new information and ideas; and recognize, develop, and share personal thoughts and reactions.

Launching Family Message Journals (K-2)
This lesson introduces Family Message Journals, a tool for encouraging family involvement and supporting writing to reflect and learn. First and second graders are led into composing through demonstration, guided writing, and finally independent writing of messages that they will bring home for family to read and write a reply.

Letter Poems Deliver: Experimenting with Line Breaks in Poetry Writing (3-5)
Letter poems make poetry accessible, meaningful, and fun. Letter poems are also an apt medium for exploring a defining characteristic of poetry—line breaks. Students explore letter poems and experiment with writing letters as poems, using the placement of line breaks to enhance rhythm, sound, meaning, and appearance.

Persuasive Writing: What Can Writing in Family Message Journals Do for Students? (K-2)
Composing messages with varied purposes helps children discover the power of writing. When students recognize what writing can do for them, motivation to write increases. This lesson engages children in using writing to their families as a persuasive tool to get what they want and need.

What Makes Poetry? Exploring Line Breaks (3-5)
Learning poetry's special characteristics helps students understand, appreciate, and compose poetry. One defining characteristic of poetry is use of line breaks. Students explore various poems and why the lines are broken where they are. Then they experiment with varied line breaks and how they affect rhythm, sound, meaning, and appearance.

What’s the Difference? Beginning Writers Compare E-mail with Letter Writing (K-2)
E-mail is increasingly popular among beginning writers who find electronic communication highly engaging. Educators also consider e-mail a powerful medium for literacy learning, but e-mail style and conventions differ from traditional writing. Students explore the differences between e-mail and letter writing and experiment with their own messages.

Write Right Back: Recognizing Readers’ Needs and Expectations for E-mail Replies (K-2)
Beginning writers find electronic communication highly engaging, and educators recognize the power of e-mail as a tool for literacy learning. E-mail is well-suited to teaching audience awareness—understanding what readers need to know to make sense of a reply message and using the reply function as a way to contextualize replies.