Resource Topics

Teaching Writing - Writing Processes - General

Featured Resources

How to Start a Novel? Write the Whole Thing in a Month

August 2008
Grant Faulkner
Lynn Jacobs, a teacher–consultant with the Northern California Writing Project, leapt into National Novel Writing Month in 2007 to fulfill her lifelong dream of writing a novel. The experience informed not only her writing process, but her teaching as well. More ›

Lifebook Journals Help Students Write Fluently

May 2008
Tricia Hall
A teacher inspires her second grade students to write by having them keep "Lifebooks" modeled after Marissa Moss' Amelia's Notebook. They love it, and their entries later become the bases of longer pieces. More ›

Beyond Handbooks and Textbooks—Teaching About Writing

September 2007
Randy Koch
Composition instructor Randy Koch argues that the guidance given by most writing handbooks is too general to be useful to students, who need to be taught such basics as how to vary sentence structure and how to show rather than tell—before they start writing their first draft. More ›

Additional Resources

Hey Matt! There's a Reason We Write Like Every Day!

February 2007
Molly Toussant
Fifth grade teacher Molly Toussant realized with chagrin that she habitually mouthed her precepts about teaching writing in the same rote way she had recited the Apostles' Creed in Sunday school, and that her students had no idea why they had to write "like every day." So she wrote this explication in which she shows, with many examples, how her teaching practices result from her five guiding beliefs about writing. More ›

They Have to See It to Write It: Visualization and the Reading-Writing Connection

November 2007
Elizabeth Dinkins
Frustrated by her students’ reluctance to write, a seventh-grade teacher shows them how to “see” what they’re reading and draw what they want to write about—and they begin to think like writers. More ›

The How of Writing: First-Graders Learn Craft

The Quarterly, 2005
Glorianne Bradshaw
Bradshaw finds that Arnold Lobel's Frog and Toad books provide the right text for modeling sentences with her third-graders. She goes on to describe other models to demonstrate onomatopoeia, the "good beginning," and more. More ›

Book Review: Felt Sense: Writing with the Body, by Sondra Perl

The Quarterly, 2004
Sheridan Blau
Sheridan Blau reviews Sondra Perl's Felt Sense: Writing with the Body, which guides writers to gain access to preverbal intuitive knowledge through attention to bodily experience. More ›

Book Review: About the Authors, by Katie Wood Ray with Lisa B. Cleaveland

The Quarterly, 2004
Sherry Dolgoff
Sherry Dolgoff reviews About the Authors: Writing Workshops with Our Youngest Writers, by Katie Wood Ray with Lisa B. Cleaveland, a book for teachers of kindergarten through second grade that specifies how to set up the classroom, how to introduce and teach writing to younger children, and how to assess the final products. More ›

Driving Home at Midnight in a Dense Fog: Using Metaphor to Explore Writing Processes

The Quarterly, 2004
Christian Knoeller
For many students, the use of similes and metaphors is restricted to the realm of poetry and art. Christian Knoeller, guided by the work of Lakoff and Johnson, understands that metaphor has a life beyond literature. He wants his college students to appreciate that metaphor can be viewed as a cognitive tool and can provide a way of getting a handle on everyday concepts. In this article, Knoeller illustrates this notion by demonstrating how his students use metaphor to dig deeper into an understanding of what they do when they write. More ›

Uncovering Truths Beneath a Found Poem

The Quarterly, 2004
John Hundley
Hundley gives a step-by-step recipe of how he took what could have been a throwaway day and used it to help his students create "found poems," showing how a collaborative, student-centered learning environment promotes success. More ›

Writing a Bicycle

The Quarterly, 2004
Kathleen O'Shaughnessy
O'Shaughnessy, who also works with teachers, offers tips and exercises for teachers so that the process of sharing classroom expertise can become easier. More ›

Writing in the Wilderness Without a Guide: How Not to Use Journals in the College Composition Classroom

The Quarterly, 2004
John Levine
The proprietary value of a journal is lost on students who don't know what journals are all about. In this article, John Levine shares his struggle to direct his students toward meaningful journal writing. More ›

Writing Spaces: Expanding the One-Story House

The Quarterly, 2004
Elizabeth Leiknes
The principles of the writing process are everywhere, not just in writing. Whether learning a backhand stroke or doing a math problem, one moves through steps from tentative experiments to revision, correction, and "publication." If this process applies to anything, Elizabeth Leiknes claims, it can apply to renovating a house. In this piece, Leiknes makes the connection between her ongoing efforts to create a new home for herself and what her students need to know about developing a piece of writing. More ›

TR 29. Negotiating Academic Discourse

National Center for the Study of Writing and Literacy Technical Report, 2003
Linda Flower
This report discusses the difficulties experienced by many college freshmen as they seek to negotiate the transition from a writing process based on comprehension and response to a more fully rhetorical, constructive process. More ›

Because Writing Matters: A Book That Shares What We Know

The Quarterly, Winter 2003
Art Peterson
This NWP book pulls together the concepts that have generated the successful practice of writing project teachers and makes the case for what needs to be done to advance the teaching of writing in schools. More ›

Book Review: Teaching Powerful Writing, by Bob Sizoo

The Quarterly, Winter 2003
Pen Campbell
Campbell compares Sizoo's book to a homemade fruit cake packed with short, well-crafted personal narratives by teachers and professional writers and a wealth of practical tools for teaching. More ›

Book Review: Within and Beyond the Writing Process..., by Dornan, Rosen & Wilson

The Quarterly, 2003
Christian Knoeller
Christian Knoeller reviews Within and Beyond the Writing Process in the Secondary English Classroom by Reade W. Dornan, Lois Matz Rosen, and Marilyn Wilson. More ›

Completing the Paradigm Shift to Process Writing: The Need to Lead

The Quarterly, Winter 2003
Samuel Totten
According to Totten, writing reforms have not brought a "paradigm shift" in the way writing is taught. He details how, with the leadership and support of districts and administrators, this can happen. More ›

From Communion to Communication: Connecting Heart and Brain in the Learning Process

The Quarterly, Spring 2003
Richard L. Graves, Sherry Swain
In this case study, Sherry Swain and Richard Graves demonstrate the idea that for skill learning to stick it needs to have an emotional component. "Learning at its best grows out of the moment . . . it is both communal and individual and . . . it occurs naturally." Working with first-grader DeScott and his classmates, the authors illustrate how their "dialogic" approach leads students to take chances and experiment with language much in advance of grade level expectations. More ›

Book Review: Lighting Fires: How the Passionate Teacher Engages Adolescent Writers

The Quarterly, Winter 2002
Kerry A. Hoffman
More ›

Creative Copying, or in Defense of Mimicry

The Quarterly, Fall 2002
Rebecca Dierking
A student question about the difference between plagiarism and mimicry leads Dierking to a deeper understanding of her students' need for clarity. More ›

Imitation as Freedom: (Re)Forming Student Writing

The Quarterly, Spring 2002
Paul Butler
More ›

Imitation in Progress

The Quarterly, Spring 2002
Sherry Swain
More ›

Waiting It Out: Months of Writing in a First Grade Classroom

The Quarterly, Spring 2002
Debra E. Weller
More ›

Who, What, When, and Where of Writing Rituals

The Quarterly, Fall 2002
Kathleen O'Shaughnessy, Connie McDonald, Harriet Maher, Ann Dobie
More ›

Back to Square One: What To Do When Writing Workshop Just Doesn't Work

The Quarterly, Winter 2001
Glorianne Bradshaw
More ›

Everything I Know About Teaching Language Arts I Learned at the Office Supply Store

The Quarterly, Spring 2001
Kathleen O'Shaughnessy
In the chaotic real world of the classroom, the tiny things matter. Tiny things make the difference between feeling scattered and lost or competent and in control. In this article, Kathleen O'Shaughnessy describes classroom practices and ideas using ordinary office supplies. More ›

The Writing Process Rejected

The Quarterly, Spring 2001
Orlean R. Anderson
More ›

Working With Beginning Writers

The Quarterly, Summer 2001
Alisa Daniel
First-grade teacher Alisa Daniel writes that students need to see their teachers write. They need to see the struggles, the thought process, the actual writing process that begins in the writer's mind and ends up on the paper. More ›

Writing Within a Community

The Voice, January-February 2001
Kim Bridgford
Kim Bridgford describes how the act of sharing writing—with just one person or a group—gives writers necessary feedback and provides them with a sense of the larger community. More ›

How Did You Do That? The Secrets of Strong Writers

The Quarterly, Spring 2000
Dean Smith
More ›

Lessons in Literacy: What a Five-Year-Old Taught Her Teacher-Mom

The Quarterly, Spring 2000
Eve Newsome
More ›

My Laptop Ambivalence: Some Speed Bumps on the High-Tech Road to Writing

The Quarterly, Summer 2000
Susan Cvengros Mortensen
Mortensen details and evaluates the transition of her seventh grade writing students as they adapt to the use of laptop computers. More ›

Peterson's Credo

The Quarterly, Spring 2000
Alina Sivorinovsky
More ›

Reflective Friday: Time Out to Think

The Quarterly, Fall 2000
Kim Douillard
Once a week, Douillard leads her students through a series of reflective strategies that involve brainstorming, reflective writing, sharing, imagining, dialogue journaling, and more. More ›

See You Next Year: The Writing Process in the Looping Classroom

The Quarterly, Winter 2000
Alisa Daniel
More ›

Struggling to Compose: How Children Regard Themselves as Writers

The Quarterly, Fall 2000
Anne Alpert
Anne Alpert decided that instead of asking her students questions about their writing, she would ask them questions about how they saw themselves as writers. More ›

Teaching in Two Worlds: Critical Reflection and Teacher Change in the Writing Center

The Quarterly, Spring 2000
Dale Jacobs
Jacobs reflects on ways his experience working in a college writing center led him to revise his approach to classroom teaching, leading him to a pedagogy that was more student centered and focused on individuals. More ›

Book Review: How to Catch a Shark, by Donald Graves

The Quarterly, Fall 1999
Bob Sizoo
More ›

Sustaining Urgency

The Quarterly, Winter 1999
Jan Isenhour
More ›

The Truth About Lightning Bugs: What Our Children Know

The Quarterly, Spring 1999
Kim Patterson
Patterson argues that students from rural and economically deprived backgrounds come to school with valuable experience to share. The teacher's job is to find ways to use this knowledge and experience. More ›

Writing Workshop and Real-World Learning: A Deweyian Perspective

The Quarterly, Summer 1999
Jo-Anne Kerr
In this case study, Kerr links the theory of John Dewey to the format of writing workshop. Students develop into proficient writers while also learning life skills useful in contributing to society. 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 ›

Let's Take Another Look at the Fish: The Writing Process as Discovery

The Quarterly, Fall 1998
Bob Tierney
Tierney describes some writing strategies that place concepts of a lesson in long-term memory by building connections to what students know and linking to their emotional concerns. More ›

Scribe to the Prophet

The Quarterly, Spring 1998
Kim Stafford
More ›

The Parallel Universes of Theory and Practice: One Teacher's Journey

The Quarterly, Spring 1998
Beverly Paesano
Frustrated that the traditional approaches she'd been taught "did not help children write more fluently," the author describes her evolution as she came to understand the work of Britton, Moffett, and others. More ›

Pruning Too Early: The Thorny Issue of Grading Student Writing

The Quarterly, Fall 1997
Stephanie Wilder
More ›

Surfing the Net: A Writing Workshop for Middle School

The Quarterly, Summer 1997
Jean Boreen
Boreen makes a case for the need to prepare preservice and beginning teachers to use computers as learning tools in writing classrooms. More ›

The Letter Exchange: Balancing Responsibility in the Writing Classroom

The Quarterly, Winter 1996
Margaret Perrow
More ›

Writing for the Rest of Us

The Quarterly, Spring 1996
Art Peterson
More ›

Revisited article: One Student's Writing Process

The Quarterly, Winter 1995
Alice Kawazoe
In the 1990 article reprinted here, Alice Kawazoe describes the process through which a response partner helps a Cambodian English language learner to tell his story. In her afterword she looks more deeply into the essence of dialogue as a technique for teaching writing. More ›

Revisited article: Worshipping False Gods

The Quarterly, Winter 1995
Bob Niebuhr
In this article from 1987, Bob Niebuhr, then co-director of the Long Island Writing Project, responds to an English Journal article by Raymond Rodriguez and lays out what it means to be a "process teacher." More ›

Mozartians, Beethovians, and the Teaching of Writing

The Quarterly, Spring 1993
Diane Christian Boehm
In this essay from 1993, Diane Christian Boehm directly confronts the myth of the sequential writing process, finding that writers create as "Mozartians" or "Beethovians," or sometimes a little of both. Agreeing with Donald Murray, she claims that "Our job... is not to teach students how to write, but to teach how to teach themselves to write." That is, we need to help each of our students find a writing process that works for her. More ›

TR 59. Constructing a Research Paper: A Study of Students' Goals and Approaches

National Center for the Study of Writing and Literacy Technical Report, 1992
Jennie Nelson
This study of twenty-one college freshmen considers the processes involved in writing an academic research paper in order to determine whether "high-investment" reading and writing processes such as note-taking led to higher-quality papers. More ›

TR 63. "Whistle for Willie," Lost Puppies, and Cartoon Dogs: The Sociocultural Dimensions of Young Children's Composing, or Toward Unmelting Pedagogical Pots

National Center for the Study of Writing and Literacy Technical Report, 1992
Anne Haas Dyson
Drawing on data from an urban elementary school, Dyson suggests that the "process" approach to teaching writing may be too rigidly implemented to allow for the needs of young writers in multicultural classrooms. More ›

OP 25. Peeking Out from Under the Blinders: Some Factors We Shouldn't Forget in Studying Writing

National Center for the Study of Writing and Literacy Occasional Paper, 1991
John R. Hayes
This essay reminds educators and researchers of the range of factors that have a crucial impact on how writers write. It combats a narrowing of focus as researchers become preoccupied with more specialized research interests. More ›

TR 53. The Case of the Singing Scientist: A Performance Perspective on the "Stages" of School Literacy

National Center for the Study of Writing and Literacy Technical Report, 1991
Anne Haas Dyson
This case study looks at an African-American child in an urban K/1 classroom who used writing activities to perform, rather than simply to communicate. The study examines the links between oral performance and literacy pedagogy. More ›

TR 17. Written Rhetorical Syntheses: Processes and Products

National Center for the Study of Writing and Literacy Technical Report, January 1989
Margaret Kantz
Kantz analyzes the composing processes and written products of three undergraduates and gives quantitative analyses of a group of seventeen undergraduate research papers. More ›

TR 20. Forms of Writing and Rereading from Writing: A Preliminary Report

National Center for the Study of Writing and Literacy Technical Report, July 1989
June Barnhart, Joyce Hieshima, Elizabeth Sulzby
The authors report on a study of young children's use of five emergent forms of writing—scribble, drawing, nonphonetic letter strings, phonetic or invented spelling, and conventional orthography. More ›

TR 30. Expanding the Repertoire: An Anthology of Practical Approaches for the Teaching of Writing

National Center for the Study of Writing and Literacy Technical Report, May 1989
Kathleen McCormick
These classroom approaches help students explore their assumptions about their reading and writing processes, become more aware of the cognitive and cultural implications of their choices, and find alternative approaches to the writing task. More ›

TR 32. Foundations for Creativity in the Writing Process: Rhetorical Representations of Ill-defined Problems

National Center for the Study of Writing and Literacy Technical Report, June 1989
Linda J. Carey, Linda Flower
This paper examines the composing process of expert writers working in expository genres. Taking a problem-solving perspective, the authors address the concept of creativity in writing as it is embedded in ordinary cognitive processes. More ›

OP 04. The Construction of Purpose in Writing and Reading

National Center for the Study of Writing and Literacy Occasional Paper, 1988
Linda Flower
This paper discusses two interrelated concerns: how writers find their sense of purpose, and whether readers are aware of or are affected by writers' purposeful text construction. More ›

TR 09. Individual Differences in Beginning Composing: An Orchestral Vision of Learning to Write

National Center for the Study of Writing and Literacy Technical Report, August 1987
Anne Haas Dyson
Looking in depth at three first-graders during classroom journal time, Dyson explores the interconnections of the children's speaking, writing, and drawing as indications of their developing acquisition of written language. More ›