Resource Topics

Teaching Writing - General Resources on Teaching Writing

Book Review: Teaching with Fire and Leading from Within, both edited by Sam M. Intrator and Megan Scribner

August 2008
Caroline Griswold
Caroline Griswold reviews Teaching with Fire: Poetry That Sustains the Courage to Teach and Leading from Within: Poetry That Sustains the Courage to Lead, and finds that the books succeed in their intention to sustain and inspire those in serving professions. More ›

Book Review: Three Books Frame Content Area Literacy in Discussion of 21st Century Literacies

October 2008
Ken Martin
Three books on content area literacy instruction aim to help teachers think about the literacy demands of all content areas while framing their arguments in a larger discussion of 21^st century literacies. More ›

Michigan Sites Collaborate on Book Project

May 2008
The Michigan state network of sites partnered with the Michigan Reading Association to publish a book focusing on the examination of student work as a starting point for teaching writing. Six chapters by teacher-consultants are included here. More ›

NWP Collaborates to Publish Early Literacy Activity Book—Our Book By Us!/Nuestro Libro ¡Hecho Por Nosotros!

June 2008
A new hands-on book for preschoolers provides parents and caregivers with a resource in English and Spanish that engages young children in reading and writing to support their early literacy development. More ›

Resources for Teaching About the Presidential Election

August 2008
These resources have been selected to help you and your students learn about the 2008 presidential election and the issues at stake. More ›

Book Review: A Guide to Creating Student-Staffed Writing Centers: Grades 6–12

December 2007
Stephen Gordon
This book by Richard Kent provides a thorough how-to guide for teachers interested in starting student-staffed writing centers in their schools. More ›

Handbook of Research on Writing, Edited by Charles Bazerman

July 2007
Charles Bazerman
The Handbook of Research on Writing advances the field by aggregating broad-ranging, interdisciplinary, multidimensional strands of writing research into a common intellectual space. More ›

Remembering Alex McLeod

Fall 2007
Ed Osterman
Alex McLeod's name may not be well known these days. His contributions to the profession may have become invisible with the passage of time. But his influence is no less important. More ›

A Little Praise, a Very Long Way

The Voice, 2005
Heather Hollands
Heather Hollands tells the story of her tenth grade student Joey, who hated to write. Her encouragement, along with an assignment that captured his imagination, transformed him into a budding young writer. More ›

Southside Elementary Writing Focus: Site-Based Leadership Reforms the Writing Curriculum

National Writing Project At Work, March 2005
Robert McGinty, Nancy Remington
The story of an inquiry-centered approach to professional development, designed and led by teachers, that could be a model for any school. More ›

Leap of Faith

The Voice, 2004
Kristen Hawley Turner
Turner describes how her mother, a veteran English teacher, mentored her in the seemingly impossible task of mastering writing. Now an English teacher herself, Turner mentors students to help them achieve their own writing success. More ›

When Writing Gets Real (by the “Fellow Who Collected Rejections”)

The Voice, May-June 2003
Richard Hartwell
When Hartwell's students complained about the California testing cycle, he asked them to direct their complaints to the California Department of Education (CDE) in the form of business letters. More ›

Conformity Meets Creativity

The Voice, May-June 2002
Kathy Woods
Junior high students can be tough to teach, but Kathy Woods shows how writing can break down their defensiveness and reveal a different side. More ›

The Diversity of Writing

The Quarterly, Spring 2002
Charles Bazerman
Bazerman writes of the various things writers do with words, describing a trajectory as writers enters a complex and deepening engagement with a "symbolic environment" that coincides with the culture's social, economic, and civic possibilities. More ›

Walking the Walk with Baby Steps

The Voice, March-April 2002
Kris Parsons
After feeling like many of her classroom innovations were disasters, Parsons realizes that by starting small, and building on insights about what is working and why, she can become the teacher she wants to be. More ›

A Voice That Is Heard: Living the Writing Project Philosophy as Coaches

The Quarterly, Summer 2001
Sidnie Myrick
Myrick describes how the key to successful coaching is the belief that a coach is no more and no less than a partner in this process. More ›

Fifteen Minutes of Fame: A Lifetime of Memories

The Voice, November-December 2001
Dorothy Franklin
When Franklin and her seventh grade class were invited to participate in a documentary, she worried that the cameras and microphones would stifle classroom participation. Instead, the experience raised her students' self-esteem and expectations for themselves. More ›

I Am Professor McGonagall

The Voice, November-December 2001
Karen Brown
For Harry Potter, turning a desk into a pig first starts with turning matches into needles. For Brown, the magic is helping her students turn commas, capitalization, and periods into graceful works of prose. More ›

Jump the Track

The Voice, March-April 2001
Jane Hancock
Hancock recounts how her ostensibly low-performing students managed to hold their own when held to a higher standard, despite bureaucratic efforts to the contrary. More ›

Our Writing Lives: Steeltown Sister

The Voice, May-June 2001
Walt Peterson
Sister Eugene, a tough-as-nails big-hearted nun in Pittsburgh's St. Michael's High School, shows one future writing project teacher that inspiration comes in many forms . . . and is found where it is needed. More ›

Works in Progress: First-Year College Students after EN101

The Quarterly, Spring 2001
Helen Collins Sitler
Sitler wonders whether her first-year college students are transferring the writing knowledge they take from her class to new contexts when they leave it. Her study concludes that they are making appropriate transfers. More ›

Apples for the Teacher

The Voice, March-April 2000
Emmet Rosenfeld
Rosenfeld describes how "an apple from the teacher" can inspire student writing in a variety of forms. More ›

Note-Taking and Note-Making in Freshman Composition

The Quarterly, Winter 2000
Mark Farrington
Teaching writing in a college class linked to a psychology course, Farrington discovers that by requiring students to read the text before they attend the lecture he can convert them from "note-takers" to "note-makers." More ›

Writing Teachers Wear Many Hats

The Voice, March-April 2000
NWP teachers find metaphors for their writing roles, including fireman, doctor, coach, and contractor. More ›

Mina P. Shaughnessey: Her Life and Work, by Jane Maher

The Quarterly, Spring 1999
Melanie Hammer
Hammer reviews this biography of the influential author of Errors and Expectations, finding that Maher creates a three-dimensional portrait of the woman who was in some ways "the mother of all developmental educators." More ›

Teaching the Most Important Things

The Quarterly, Spring 1999
Don Gallehr
Gallehr says the most important things he teaches are "love of writing, learning the writer's mind, fitting the writing into your dream, and building on what works." More ›

What Coaching Football Taught Me about Teaching Writing

The Voice, November-December 1999
Dan Holt
Like a football coach, writes Holt, a writing teacher can't stand on the sidelines. A teacher should get excited about student writing the way a coach gets excited about a game. More ›

Book Review: In the Middle: New Understanding about Writing, Reading, and Learning, by Atwell

The Quarterly, Fall 1998
Chris Street
Street finds this new edition of Atwell's book to be thorough in every respect, from its detailing of minilessons to its inclusion of 17 appendixes. More ›

Sounding Board: The Writing Teacher as Confidant

The Quarterly, Spring 1997
Coleen Armstrong
Armstrong sees her job not just as correcting grammar and spelling but also as reassuring students, offering support, and providing a safe sounding board for them. More ›

One Teacher's Timeless Resolutions

The Voice, Summer 1996
Carol Jago
Jago promises herself to return every parent phone call, avoid sarcasm, "read in class when my students are reading," and more. More ›

Seeing Students, Seeing Culture, Seeing Ourselves

Voices from the Middle, September 1996
Jane Zeni, Joan Krater
The authors of this article devise strategies to improve the writing skills of their African-American students. They learn that the most important of these is "getting to know our kids and letting them know us." More ›

The More Things Change...Or Do They?

The Quarterly, Spring 1996
Excerpts from Brereton's collection of documents, The Origins of Composition Studies in the American College, 1875–1925: A Documentary History, demonstrate that hotly debated issues surrounding compositions instruction 100 years ago are still with us. More ›

The Sound of Shackles Shaking: Toward Student-Centered Writing

The Quarterly, Winter 1994
Joan Martens
Teacher Joan Martens wonders what it would take to shake the indifference of her students, who come with the attitude of victims—passive about an environment they feel unable to control and hardened to the plight of others. Her realization that her own imposition of writing agendas on her students was contributing to their apathy stirs her to make her class more student-centered and to take a deeper responsibility for what happens in our society and in her own life. More ›

Turning Telling into Knowing: Teacher and Student Literacy Stories

The Quarterly, Fall 1993
Margrethe Ahlschwede, Joy Ritchie
The authors, directors of the Literacy Project for teachers, encouraged teachers to write their own reading and writing histories and look closely at their students' histories and daily practices as readers and writers. More ›

Writers' Workshop in the Primary Grades

The Quarterly, Winter 1993
Liz Stafford
In a case study, Stafford describes how writing and writing workshop were the central dynamic for reducing a student's anger and building that student's feelings of security. More ›

Writing on Your Own: It's Lighter on You

The Quarterly, Spring 1991
Carla Asher
Asher investigates how her students' understanding of what writing is and what it's for was at variance with that of writing done in the culture of the school. How was it different? More ›

Journal Partners

The Quarterly, Summer 1990
Stephen Jubb
Jubb describes his students and the journal partnering strategy he brings to his classroom. He advocates journaling as providing an opportunity for student success, individualizing curriculum, and encouraging students to make meaning for themselves. More ›

Book Review: In the Middle, by Nancie Atwell

The Quarterly, January 1988
Barbara Grant
Grant reviews the first edition of Atwell's classic, stating, "Atwell's teaching practices involve dangers because in her classroom the student's role changes through acquiring ownership of the reading and writing process." More ›

“Whose Writing is it Anyway”? Kids Love To Write...Don't Wait Until They Read

The Quarterly, June 1986
Diane Borgman
Borgman describes the joy of working with kindergarten writers entirely unburdened by the bogeyman of first–draft correctness. As these children cannot read, they have no sense that their writing and spelling are not correct. More ›

Metaphor, Self-Image and the Writing Teacher

The Quarterly, March 1986
Agnes McDonald
McDonald shows how "we can use metaphor to help us restructure our thinking and radically change our teaching styles and the way we approach everything we do in the classroom." More ›

What Do We Teach When We Teach Writing?

The Quarterly, June 1986
Carol Booth Olson
Olson finds no answer to this question. "A teacher's job is to empower students to tap their natural [language] resources—not to put language into their heads, but to help them express what's already there." More ›

"Only Connect..." The Bridge of Expressive Writing

The Quarterly, July 1985
Katherine E. Alton, Susan Stitham
The writers analyze the symbiotic relationship between expressive and transactional writing: "Through expressive writing students are able to find their voice and thoughts in preparation for transactional writing that honestly and clearly discusses ideas." More ›

The Other Lesson: Teaching What We Don't Know

The Quarterly, January 1985
Kim Stafford
Stafford distinguishes between "overt" lessons—what the teacher is asking the student to do—and "covert" lessons—the implied learning in the assignment, for good or bad, that goes beyond the teacher's strategy and instructions. More ›