What happens when a bestselling nonfiction children's book author pairs up with a nationally known writing teacher to discuss revision strategies? Magic. Sneed B. Collard III and Vicki Spandel blow the roof off everything you thought you knew about teaching nonfiction writing and the purposes for revision. Dozens of strategy lessons pulled from Sneed's professional writing experience followed by Vicki's classroom-savvy tips and exercises give you the nuts and bolts of teaching revision to make nonfiction writing more meaningful, useful, and enjoyable for the reader. Using a "big-to-small" process of revision, from Big Picture ideas down to individual words, Sneed and Vicki demystify revision and help students become clear, persuasive, compelling-even entertaining-writers. "With your encouragement and guidance," they write, "students will discover the joy of turning their first rough ideas into something readers cannot put down."

Presents practical techniques designed to help teachers of upper elementary grades and up discover and share the power of revision.

Revision is often a confusing and difficult process for students, but it's also the most important part of the writing process. If students leave our classrooms not knowing how to move a piece of writing forward, we've failed them. Revision Decisions: Talking Through Sentences and Beyond will help teachers develop the skills students need in an ever-evolving writing, language, and reading world. Jeff Anderson and Deborah Dean have written a book that engages writers in the tinkering, playing, and thinking that are essential to clarify and elevate writing. Focusing on sentences, the authors use mentor texts to show the myriad possibilities that exist for revision. Essential to their process is the concept of classroom talk. Readers will be shown how revision lessons can be discussed in a generative way, and how each student can benefit from talking through the revision process as a group. Revision Decisions focuses on developing both the writing and the writer. The easy-to-follow lessons make clear and accessible the rigorous thinking and the challenging process of making writing work. Narratives, setup lessons, templates, and details about how to move students toward independence round out this essential book. Additionally, the authors weave the language, reading, and writing goals of the Common Core and other standards into an integrated and connected practice. The noted language arts teacher James Britton once said that good writing floats on a sea of talk. Revision Decisions supports those genuine conversations we naturally have as readers and writers, leading the way to the essential goal of making meaning.

The beautiful Martina Josefina Catalina Cucaracha doesn't know coffee beans about love and marriage, so when suitors come calling, what is she to do? Luckily, she has her Cuban family to help! While some of the Cucarachas offer Martina gifts to make her more attractive, only Abuela, her grandmother, gives her some useful advice: spill coffee on his shoes to see how he handles anger. At first, Martina is skeptical of her Abuela's suggestion, but when suitor after suitor fails the Coffee Test, she wonders if a little green cockroach can ever find true love. After reading this award-winning retelling of the Cuban folktale, readers will never look at a cockroach the same way again. Carmen Agra Deedy delivers a delightfully inventive Cuban twist on the beloved Martina folktale, complete with a dash of café Cubano.

Writing nonfiction represents a big step for most students. Most young writers are not intimidated by personal narrative, fiction, or even poetry, but when they try to put together a "teaching book," report, or persuasive essay, they often feel anxious and frustrated. JoAnn Portalupi and Ralph Fletcher believe that young nonfiction writers supply plenty of passion, keen interest, and wonder. Teachers can provide concrete strategies to help students scaffold their ideas as they write in his challenging genre. Like the authors' best-selling Craft Lessons: Teaching Writing K-8, this book is divided into sections for K-2, 3-4, and middle school (grades 5-8) students. These divisions reflect various differences between emerging, competent, and fluent writers. In each section you'll find a generous collection of craft lessons directed at the genre that's most appropriate for that particular age. In the K-2 section, for example, a number of craft lessons focus on the all-about or concept book. In the 3-4 section there are several lessons on biography. In the 5-8 section a series of lessons addresses expository writing. Throughout the book each of the 80 lessons is presented on a single page in an easy-to-read format. Every lesson features three teaching guidelines: Discussion--A brief look at the reasons for teaching the particular element of craft specifically in a nonfiction context.How to Teach It--Concrete language showing exactly how a teacher might bring this craft element to students in writing conferences or a small-group setting.Resource Material--Specific book or text referred to in the craft lesson including trade books, or a piece of student writing in the Appendixes. This book will help students breathe voice into lifeless "dump-truck" writing and improve their nonfiction writing by making it clearer, more authoritative, and more organized. Nonfiction Craft Lessons gives teachers a wealth of practical strategies to help students grow into strong writers as they explore and explain the world around them. Be sure to look at the When Students Write videotapes too.

Suggesting that all phases of writing, including revision, have a great deal in common across age groups and levels of accomplishment, this book presents 196 specific revision exercises, as well as numerous examples from students and from literature. The first part of the book looks at how the ability to revise develops, and at how people can use one another's responses to improve their writing. The second part of the book offers techniques for adding more material and deepening existing material. The third part of the book is about form, structure, and finishing. Chapters in the book are: (1) A Look at Some Revised Pieces; (2) Revision as a Natural Process; (3) Learning to Revise by Editing Other People's Writing; (4) Learning to Revise by Using Other People's Comments on Your Writing; (5) Going Deeper by Adding; (6) Changing Media for Deep Revision; (7) Deep Revision and Fiction; (8) Revising Nonfiction with Techniques of Fiction; (9) Revising as a Response to Literature; (10) Beginning and Polishing; and (11) Structuring the Longer Work. Examples from literature, a 19-item annotated bibliography, and an index of authors is attached. (RS)

The fifteenth volume in the Art of series takes an expansive view of revision—on the page and in life In The Art of Revision: The Last Word, Peter Ho Davies takes up an often discussed yet frequently misunderstood subject. He begins by addressing the invisibility of revision—even though it’s an essential part of the writing process, readers typically only see a final draft, leaving the practice shrouded in mystery. To combat this, Davies pulls examples from his novels The Welsh Girl and The Fortunes, as well as from the work of other writers, including Flannery O’Connor, Carmen Machado, and Raymond Carver, shedding light on this slippery subject. Davies also looks beyond literature to work that has been adapted or rewritten, such as books made into films, stories rewritten by another author, and the practice of retconning in comics and film. In an affecting frame story, Davies recounts the story of a violent encounter in his youth, which he then retells over the years, culminating in a final telling at the funeral of his father. In this way, the book arrives at an exhilarating mode of thinking about revision—that it is the writer who must change, as well as the writing. The result is a book that is as useful as it is moving, one that asks writers to reflect upon themselves and their writing.