We are a speakers bureau dedicated to exceptional customer service. Learn more >

Ralph Fletcher

Ralph Fletcher has been a mentor to teachers and young writers everywhere. He frequently works with young writers in schools and speaks at education conferences in the US and abroad, helping teachers find wiser ways of teaching writing. Ralph is the beloved author of many bestselling teacher professional books. He has written over fifty books for writing teachers and young readers including, Joy Write, Craft Lessons, What a Writer Needs, Focus Lessons: How Photography Enhances the Teaching of Writing, and Writing Workshop: The Essential Guide. His most recent books are The World’s Loneliest Elephant, a picture book illustrated by Naoko Stoop, Christy Ottaviano Books and A Writer’s Notebook: Unlocking the Writer Within You (HarperCollins). Ralph visits schools and speaks at educational conferences around the world, helping teachers find wiser ways of teaching writing. He also has a passion for nature photography.

Categories: Author and Writer, Educator

To inquire about pricing and availability, please complete the form below.

View Ralph Fletcher's

Videos

Topics

Kid's Writing: A Window Into How Children See the World

Children hold nothing back when they sit down to write. In this 30 minute talk Ralph shares a variety of student writing. This presentation is both humorous and insightful. A great way to begin an educational conference!

Lifting the Chill from the Writing Classroom

In recent years the writing classroom has lost much of its spark and sizzle. Academic genres now proliferate. Choice has become an endangered species. Many teachers report that students don't like writing as much as they did five years ago. This workshop will look at the reasons for this - the standards movement, testing, and the rise of writing programs. We'll explore how expanded choice and "greenbelt writing" can reenergize the writing classroom. Ralph's book Joy-Write: Cultivating High-Impact, Low-Stakes Writing (Heinemann) takes a deep look at this issue.

Making Nonfiction from Scratch

Showing teachers how to help students create non-formulaic nonfiction

Vision and Revision in Creating a Children's Book

Learn the process Ralph goes through in creating a children's book

Engaging Boy Writers

Why they are struggling, and what we can do about it.

The Power of Story

How "Mentor Texts" Can Lift Student Writing

How to Write a Memorable Memoir

The Power of Keeping a Writer's Notebook

Books

Marshfield Memories: More Stories About Growing Up

A heartfelt middle grade companion to Marshfield Dreams that captures the boyhood years of twelve-year-old Ralph Fletcher in relatable episodes of everyday disappointments and triumphs.

You can purchase this book here

Fig Pudding

Clifford Allyn Abernathy III (just Cliff, for short) is the oldest of six kids in a family that does everything—fighting, laughing, playing, eating, telling stories, and celebrating the holidays—in a big, often outlandish, and sometimes poignant way. Taking the family from Christmas to Christmas, the chapters of Fig Pudding, narrated by eleven-year-old Cliff, are complete short stories in themselves—full of quick-paced, hilarious action and the warmth and love of a close-knit family.

You can purchase this book here

Making Nonfiction from Scratch

Do you have students whose nonfiction writing is formulaic, devoid of energy and voice? In Making Nonfiction from Scratch bestselling PD and children’s book author Ralph Fletcher offers a candid critique of how nonfiction writing is often taught in schools and gives teachers the inspiration and strategies they need to help their students write authentic nonfiction.

You can purchase this book here

Writing Workshop: The Essential Guide

Is the writing workshop the only way to teach writing? No. There are a variety of approaches or programs, but none of them matches the writing workshop when it comes to growing strong writers. That's why, despite the pressures of testing, the writing workshop has endured and even flourished in thousands of schools across the country. Today we face a time when as many as ten million new teachers are entering the profession. It is for these teachers, and others who are unfamiliar with writing workshop, that Ralph Fletcher and JoAnn Portalupi wrote this bookas a way to introduce and explain the writing workshop...to reveal what a potent tool the writing workshop can be for empowering young writers.

You can purchase this book here