Two Writing Teachers Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

This episode explores practical executive functioning tools that support students’ writing and goal-setting success. Inspired by Valerie Bolling's book, Goal Setting in the Writing Classroom: Building Student Agency, Independence, and Success (Stenhouse Publishers, 2025), Stacey highlights seven strategies—such as making timelines, using timers, and tracking progress—that help improve organization, focus, and motivation. These tools build essential skills for writing and lifelong executive functioning. Drawing on personal experience, the episode shows how goal-setting applies both in and out of the classroom. Tune in to learn how to help students develop confidence and independence with their writing goals.

GO DEEPER!

• TWT Podcast Episodes That Deal with Executive Functioning
  • Accommodations for Access to Writing Instruction
  • Build Executive Functioning with Time Management Techniques
  • Build Writing Confidence with the "Ready, Do, Done" Model
  • Co-Create Writing Goals
  • Help K-8 Students with Executive Functioning Needs: A Conversation with a Colleague
  • Unlock Strategies for Task Initiation
• TWT Blog Posts That Explore Executive Functioning
  • Contingency Maps for Writing Workshops
  • From Memory to Mastery
  • Hands in the Air: How Gestures Support Writing Instruction
  • Routines Build Capacity
  • Writing and Working Memory: Reflective Practice

Send us Fan Mail

Please subscribe to our podcast and leave us ratings/reviews on your favorite listening platform.

You may contact us directly if you want us to consult with your school district. 

• Melanie Meehan: meehanmelanie@gmail.com 
• Stacey Shubitz: stacey@staceyshubitz.com

Email us at contact@twowritingteachers.org for affiliate or sponsorship opportunities.

For more about teaching writing, head to the Two Writing Teachers blog.

In this episode, Melanie talks with TWTBlog co-authors Sarah Valter and Leah Thomas about ways to infuse writing experiences in students' lives beyond classroom instruction. 

GO DEEPER:

Finding Wider Audiences for Student Work

This or That: Inspiring Writers to Learn About Themselves

Extracurricular Writing Clubs

Classroom Slice of Life Story Challenge

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Send us Fan Mail

Please subscribe to our podcast and leave us ratings/reviews on your favorite listening platform.

You may contact us directly if you want us to consult with your school district. 

• Melanie Meehan: meehanmelanie@gmail.com 
• Stacey Shubitz: stacey@staceyshubitz.com

Email us at contact@twowritingteachers.org for affiliate or sponsorship opportunities.

For more about teaching writing, head to the Two Writing Teachers blog.

In this special episode, Melanie turns the tables as she interviews Stacey about her forthcoming book, which helps parents understand how to make the school system work for their child with disabilities. Hear about the personal passion that fueled this project, get an overview of the book’s three-part structure, and demystify the language of special education. The episode concludes with a discussion on the vital role of self-care, agency, and advocacy for parents, underscoring the book’s unique focus on caregiver well-being and empowerment.

Go Deeper:

• Follow Stacey on Instagram, where she shares tips for parents and caregivers.
• Sign up for emails from Guilford Press, which will publish Stacey's book, to stay in the know about new releases.

Send us Fan Mail

Please subscribe to our podcast and leave us ratings/reviews on your favorite listening platform.

You may contact us directly if you want us to consult with your school district. 

• Melanie Meehan: meehanmelanie@gmail.com 
• Stacey Shubitz: stacey@staceyshubitz.com

Email us at contact@twowritingteachers.org for affiliate or sponsorship opportunities.

For more about teaching writing, head to the Two Writing Teachers blog.

Test prep can be fun! Here are a couple of ways to use media and bring some joy into writing as you prepare students for summative assessments.

The Two Writing Teachers blog post mentioned in this episode is: 

Some Narrative Writing Fun

Send us Fan Mail

Please subscribe to our podcast and leave us ratings/reviews on your favorite listening platform.

You may contact us directly if you want us to consult with your school district. 

• Melanie Meehan: meehanmelanie@gmail.com 
• Stacey Shubitz: stacey@staceyshubitz.com

Email us at contact@twowritingteachers.org for affiliate or sponsorship opportunities.

For more about teaching writing, head to the Two Writing Teachers blog.

In this Conversations with a Colleague episode, Pam Koutrakos joins Melanie to talk about interactive writing and its power to grow writers. 

Here are several Two Writing Teachers blog posts and past podcast episodes that deal with the topics discussed in this episode:

• Step Up Interactive Writing (…And Sneak In More Spelling, Vocabulary, and Grammar)
• Conferring Toolkits: Class Stories, Shared Writing and Interactive Writing
• Interactive Writing: Don’t Close the Door
• Shared Writing: Expanding the Reach with Small Groups

Send us Fan Mail

Please subscribe to our podcast and leave us ratings/reviews on your favorite listening platform.

You may contact us directly if you want us to consult with your school district. 

• Melanie Meehan: meehanmelanie@gmail.com 
• Stacey Shubitz: stacey@staceyshubitz.com

Email us at contact@twowritingteachers.org for affiliate or sponsorship opportunities.

For more about teaching writing, head to the Two Writing Teachers blog.

Just as your classroom library has books that kids can grow into, we can give students paper choices with the knowledge that they’re working to outgrow the paper they’re using. In today's Tip for Tomorrow, find out how paper can be used as an accommodation for students in writing workshop. 

Check out these Two Writing Teachers blog posts for more information about the topics we discussed in today’s episode:

• All About the Paper.
• Creating Classroom Environments: Paper Choices
• Gifts from the Heart
• Paper Choices for Opinion and Argument Writing: Reaching Your Writers
• Paper Choices: What’s up with that?
• Supporting Multimodal Composition in the Writing Workshop: Simple Ways to Begin
• The Promise of a Writer Maker Space
• Writing as a Gift Center

Send us Fan Mail

Please subscribe to our podcast and leave us ratings/reviews on your favorite listening platform.

You may contact us directly if you want us to consult with your school district. 

• Melanie Meehan: meehanmelanie@gmail.com 
• Stacey Shubitz: stacey@staceyshubitz.com

Email us at contact@twowritingteachers.org for affiliate or sponsorship opportunities.

For more about teaching writing, head to the Two Writing Teachers blog.

Send us Fan Mail

Please subscribe to our podcast and leave us ratings/reviews on your favorite listening platform.

You may contact us directly if you want us to consult with your school district. 

• Melanie Meehan: meehanmelanie@gmail.com 
• Stacey Shubitz: stacey@staceyshubitz.com

Email us at contact@twowritingteachers.org for affiliate or sponsorship opportunities.

For more about teaching writing, head to the Two Writing Teachers blog.

We have a new feature, Conversations with a Colleague, to share today! In this episode, Leah Koch, who is one of our newest Two Writing Teachers co-authors, joins Stacey to talk about student-led small groups, as well as goal setting with primary writers. 

Here are several Two Writing Teachers blog posts and past podcast episodes that deal with the topics discussed in this episode:

• A Few Tips for Small Group Instruction: Expanding the Reach With Small Group Work
• Ideas for planning Small Group Instruction
• Increase the Number of Teachers in the Room with Student-Led Small Groups
• Increasing Student Agency as Writers: A Digging Deeper Dialogue
• Small Groups, Big Engagement: Expanding the Possibilities and Potential 
• Student Agency, Self-Assessment, and Small Group Instruction
• The Power of Goal-Setting

Send us Fan Mail

Please subscribe to our podcast and leave us ratings/reviews on your favorite listening platform.

You may contact us directly if you want us to consult with your school district. 

• Melanie Meehan: meehanmelanie@gmail.com 
• Stacey Shubitz: stacey@staceyshubitz.com

Email us at contact@twowritingteachers.org for affiliate or sponsorship opportunities.

For more about teaching writing, head to the Two Writing Teachers blog.

The 16th Annual Slice of Life Story Challenge, or SOLSC, will begin on Wednesday, March 1st, 2023 at Two Writing Teachers. Participants, who we call Slicers, chronicle moments by living a wide-awake life for 31 days in March. They publish their writing on their own blog, share a link to their story daily over at Two Writing Teachers, and then provide at least three other Slicers with comments on their blogs. 

In today's pod, you'll learn more about the challenge and how you can join us so that you part of a global community of educators who write and share stories.

LINKS:

• Overview of the 16th Annual SOLSC
• Things to Think About When Creating a Blog for the SOLSC
• Tips to Help New Participants Hit the Ground Running in March
• FAQs about the SOLSC (Scroll down to the part of the page that says "Challenge #2.)

Send us Fan Mail

Please subscribe to our podcast and leave us ratings/reviews on your favorite listening platform.

You may contact us directly if you want us to consult with your school district. 

• Melanie Meehan: meehanmelanie@gmail.com 
• Stacey Shubitz: stacey@staceyshubitz.com

Email us at contact@twowritingteachers.org for affiliate or sponsorship opportunities.

For more about teaching writing, head to the Two Writing Teachers blog.

In this Tip for Tomorrow, you'll learn how to help students create and use a personal editing checklist that will help them fix up their writing in ways that meet them where they are as writers.

For more on personal editing checklists and the editing minute, check out these posts on Two Writing Teachers:

• Something Do-Able to Try: The Editing Minute
• Three Ways to Introduce Personal Editing Checklists in Writing Workshop
• Using Personal Editing Checklists At Home

Send us Fan Mail

Please subscribe to our podcast and leave us ratings/reviews on your favorite listening platform.

You may contact us directly if you want us to consult with your school district. 

• Melanie Meehan: meehanmelanie@gmail.com 
• Stacey Shubitz: stacey@staceyshubitz.com

Email us at contact@twowritingteachers.org for affiliate or sponsorship opportunities.

For more about teaching writing, head to the Two Writing Teachers blog.