This curriculum-based collection of lesson plans is designed to build student confidence for articulating their unique ideas and sensibilities about the world through literary expression. For this book, Jimmy Santiago Baca, one of the foremost poets in America today, collaborates with two National Writing Project Fellows and literacy…

For many secondary students, writing effectively is the most elusive of the critical literacy skills needed for college and career readiness. And for many teachers, revision is the most difficult part of the writing process to tackle. How can adolescent writers be guided to revisit their work, to identify the weaknesses in their writing drafts,…

The author cuts through the pressurized, strategy-overloaded, fluency-crazed atmosphere surrounding reading instruction to lay out the reading and writing workshop practices that are most effective in developing readers in the primary grades. She shares the daily how-tos needed to sustain a literacy block that engages children in authentic reading…

Describes a method of helping students to invent characters in the context of a creative writing workshop for undergraduates. Considers how students draw composition characters for which they can write a profile using the surrealist technique of "exquisite corpses." Uses student work to illustrate how such characters feed into the story…

This book has an easy-to-follow-format. It supports teachers through six workshops by sharing specific strategies, procedures, and materials that worked best for students and teachers in classroom writing workshops. The book discusses the routines that helped organize and support a workshop; and presents strategies for anecdotal record-keeping,…

According to this book, writing is a process of "uneducation," rather than education. The book cites the secret of creativity as subtracting rules for writing, not adding them. Most people are baffled at how to teach this, since teaching and "uneducation" appear contradictory--but experience in Zen meditation, which is…

This book dares educators to rethink their beliefs about how they design writing workshops, use writer's notebooks, choose appropriate genres, teach spelling, help students connect their reading to their writing, and even edit and publish students' writing. Filled with stories and work samples of real children in a diverse urban setting, the book…

Designed to create and maintain an effective classroom writing workshop, this book explains how to teach young writers style and genre characteristics, composing skills, conventions, and the many aspects of the writing process itself. The second edition includes more information, models, and examples in the expository genre, as well as elaborating…

Suggests that the best writing curriculum for second language students is one that balances content and form, that calls for an attention to writing process and to written product, and that draws on knowledge from both teacher and student. Describes the "focus on form" approach the author uses in her mainstream basic writing class, as well as some…

This book offers guidance for poets at every stage of development. It is a book about a person's shaping his or her memory and passions, pleasures, obsessions, dreams, secrets, and sorrows into poems. The book contains chapters on the language and music of poetry, the art of revision, traditional and experimental techniques, and how to get poetry…

The four videotapes and a viewing guide cover all the practical components necessary for establishing and implementing a successful writing workshop, including the importance of choice, creating a risk-taking environment, the difference between skills and craft, the writer's notebook, the writing conference, revision, the role of literature, and…

Suggests that keeping a writer's notebook can be a unit of study in itself and that students can learn to use the notebook as a workbench for drafting, crafting, revising, and editing. Describes the author's work using writer's notebooks across several classrooms and grade levels. (RS)

This handbook seeks to provide a practical, readable guide to teaching writing across a broad range of ages and grade levels (K-8). The handbook's seven chapters cover each stage of the writing process in detail, from setting a purpose for writing to drafting, revising, editing, and producing a "finished" product. Its goal is to provide…

Designed to help teachers empower students to become thinkers, writers, and especially authors, this book helps teachers develop a writer's mindset in grades 2-6 students. It supports and guides teachers from the week before school through the spring Young Author's Conference that recognizes writing achievement. Chapters in the book are: (1) Kids…

Describes an expository writing lesson, taught in the context of a modified writing workshop, that motivates needy students to compose meaningful essays. Explains that this approach promotes self-pacing and independent learning. Concludes that this method helps struggling readers see themselves as writers. (PM)