Contains a collection of specific classroom strategies & suggestions for teaching writing to elementary school students according to an eight-stage process. Specific techniques for teaching each stage of the writing process & descriptions of proven approaches for using these techniques are also included. "A wonderful resource, a labor of love from a large & talented group of educators." Had its beginnings in the California Writing Project at the Univ. of California, Irvine. Best Seller! Illustrated.

"Writing allows each of us to live with that special wide-awakeness that comes from knowing that our lives and our ideas are worth writing about." -Lucy Calkins Teaching Writing is Lucy Calkins at her best-a distillation of the work that's placed Lucy and her colleagues at the forefront of the teaching of writing for over thirty years. This book promises to inspire teachers to teach with renewed passion and power and to invigorate the entire school day. This is a book for readers who want an introduction to the writing workshop, and for those who've lived and breathed this work for decades. Although Lucy addresses the familiar topics-the writing process, conferring, kinds of writing, and writing assessment- she helps us see those topics with new eyes. She clears away the debris to show us the teeny details, and she shows us the majesty and meaning, too, in these simple yet powerful teaching acts. Download a sample chapter for more information.

The concept of writing as process has revolutionized the way many view composition, and this book is organized by the stages of that process. Each section begins with a well-known author presenting specific techniques, followed by commentaries which include testimonials, applications of writing techniques, and descriptions of strategy modifications all contributed by classroom teachers. The book includes the following sections and initial chapters: Section 1 (The Process): "Teaching Writing as a Process" (Catherine D'Aoust); Section 2 (Prewriting): "Clustering: A Prewriting Process" (Gabriele Lusser Rico); Section 3 (Prewriting in Different Subjects): "Prewriting Assignments Across the Curriculum" (Jim Lee); Section 4 (Showing, Not Telling): "A Training Program for Student Writers" (Rebekah Caplan); Section 5 (Using Cooperative Learning to Facilitate Writing): "Using Structures to Promote Cooperative Learning in Writing" (Jeanne M. Stone and Spencer S. Kagan); Section 6 (Writing): "Developing a Sense of Audience, or Who Am I Really Writing This Paper For?" (Mark K. Healy); Section 7 (Teaching Writing in the Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Classroom): "English Learners and Writing: Responding to Linguistic Diversity" (Robin Scarcella); Section 8 (Domains of Writing): "Teaching the Domains of Writing" (Nancy McHugh); Section 9 (Writing the Saturation Report): "Using Fictional Techniques for Nonfiction Writing" (Ruby Bernstein); Section 10 (Point of View in Writing): "A Lesson on Point of View...That Works" (Carol Booth Olson); Section 11 (Writing the I-Search Paper): "The Reawakening of Curiosity: Research Papers as Hunting Stories" (Ken Macrorie); Section 12 (Critical Thinking and Writing): "Reforming Your Teaching for Thinking: The Studio Approach" (Dan Kirby); Section 13 (Sharing/Responding): "Some Guidelines for Writing-Response Groups" (Peter Elbow); Section 14 (Reader Responses): "Dialogue with a Text" (Robert E. Probst); Section 15 (RAGs for Sharing/Responding): "Using Read-Around Groups to Establish Criteria for Good Writing" (Jenee Gossard); Section 16 (Rewriting/Editing): "Competence for Performance in Revision" (Sheridan Blau); Section 17 (Revising for Correctness): "Some Basics That Really Do Lead to Correctness" (Irene Thomas); Section 18 (Building Vocabularies): "Word-Sprouting: A Vocabulary-Building Strategy for Remedial Writers" (Barbara Morton); Section 19 (Evaluation): "Holistic Scoring in the Classroom" (Glenn Patchell); and Section 20 (Evaluation Techniques): "Some Techniques for Oral Evaluation" (Michael O'Brien). Contains over 100 references. (EF)

2014 Outstanding Academic Title, Choice "What’s going on in this picture?" With this one question and a carefully chosen work of art, teachers can start their students down a path toward deeper learning and other skills now encouraged by the Common Core State Standards. The Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) teaching method has been successfully implemented in schools, districts, and cultural institutions nationwide, including bilingual schools in California, West Orange Public Schools in New Jersey, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. It provides for open-ended yet highly structured discussions of visual art, and significantly increases students’ critical thinking, language, and literacy skills along the way. Philip Yenawine, former education director of New York’s Museum of Modern Art and cocreator of the VTS curriculum, writes engagingly about his years of experience with elementary school students in the classroom. He reveals how VTS was developed and demonstrates how teachers are using art—as well as poems, primary documents, and other visual artifacts—to increase a variety of skills, including writing, listening, and speaking, across a range of subjects. The book shows how VTS can be easily and effectively integrated into elementary classroom lessons in just ten hours of a school year to create learner-centered environments where students at all levels are involved in rich, absorbing discussions.

Ace your grammar, improve your grades―125 simple exercises for grades 6, 7, and 8 Grammar is an essential part of the sixth, seventh, and eighth grade curriculum. With The English Grammar Workbook for Grades 6, 7, and 8, students will build a strong foundation for understanding the concepts of grammar and using them effectively when reading, writing, or speaking. This grammar workbook offers students the flexibility to learn at their own pace while providing the structure they need to successfully retain essential grammar rules, such as parts of speech, sentence structure, phrases and clauses, active and passive voice, mood, punctuation, writing style, and more. Inside the pages of this grammar workbook, you’ll find: Basics and building blocks—Students can progress at their own pace and build their knowledge as they go. Engaging lessons and reviews—Strengthen students’ learning and skill retention with simple reviews after every three lessons. Practical quizzes and answers—Prepare students for real-world grammar usage with helpful quizzes and an easy-to-navigate answer key. Make learning the fundamental concepts of grammar easy and organized.

This book explores what writing for pleasure means, and how it can be realised as a much-needed pedagogy whose aim is to develop children, young people, and their teachers as extraordinary and life-long writers. The approach described is grounded in what global research has long been telling us are the most effective ways of teaching writing and contains a description of the authors’ own research project into what exceptional teachers of writing do that makes the difference. The authors describe ways of building communities of committed and successful writers who write with purpose, power, and pleasure, and they underline the importance of the affective aspects of writing teaching, including promoting in apprentice writers a sense of self-efficacy, agency, self-regulation, volition, motivation, and writer-identity. They define and discuss 14 research-informed principles which constitute a Writing for Pleasure pedagogy and show how they are applied by teachers in classroom practice. Case studies of outstanding teachers across the globe further illustrate what world-class writing teaching is. This ground-breaking text is essential reading for anyone who is concerned about the current status and nature of writing teaching in schools. The rich Writing for Pleasure pedagogy presented here is a radical new conception of what it means to teach young writers effectively today.