Resource Topics
Teaching Writing - Writing Processes - General
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The How of Writing: First-Graders Learn Craft
The Quarterly,
2005
Glorianne Bradshaw
After hearing a college professor and a high school teacher describe their strategies for teaching writing—using best-selling texts to generate more interesting articles, and having students create sentences modeled after great sentences taken from literature—Glorianne Bradshaw was inspired to adapt their techniques for her first grade class. She found that Arnold Lobel's Frog and Toad books provide just the right text for modeling great sentences. She went on to create a variety of successful techniques, described in this article: Show Not Tell, onomatopoeia, the Good Beginning, The view, and others.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Because Writing Matters: A Book That Shares What We Know
The Quarterly,
Winter 2003
Art Peterson
A new book, Because Writing Matters, created by the National Writing Project, pulls together the concepts and theory that have generated the successful practice of NWP teachers and makes the case for what needs to be done to advance the teaching of writing in American schools.
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Book Review: Teaching Powerful Writing, by Bob Sizoo
The Quarterly,
Winter 2003
Pen Campbell
Pen Campbell reviews Teaching Powerful Writing by Bob Sizoo.
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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.
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Completing the Paradigm Shift to Process Writing: The Need to Lead
The Quarterly,
Winter 2003
Samuel Totten
Largely as a result of the National Writing Project, thousands of teachers have been introduced to and affected by what researchers know of the best practice in the teaching of writing. Yet, according to Samuel Totten, the writing reforms that have occurred in individual classrooms have not taken hold to the point where there has been a "paradigm shift" in the way writing is taught. In this article, Totten argues that this "shift will not be made anytime soon without the full leadership, support, and resources of district and school administrators." This piece details the steps that can make this happen.
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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.
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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.
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Book Review: Lighting Fires: How the Passionate Teacher Engages Adolescent Writers
The Quarterly,
Winter 2002
Kerry A. Hoffman
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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.
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Imitation as Freedom: (Re)Forming Student Writing
The Quarterly,
Spring 2002
Paul Butler
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Imitation in Progress
The Quarterly,
Spring 2002
Sherry Swain
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Waiting It Out: Months of Writing in a First Grade Classroom
The Quarterly,
Spring 2002
Debra E. Weller
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Who, What, When, and Where of Writing Rituals
The Quarterly,
Fall 2002
Kathleen O'Shaughnessy, Connie McDonald, Harriet Maher, Ann Dobie
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Back to Square One: What To Do When Writing Workshop Just Doesn't Work
The Quarterly,
Winter 2001
Glorianne Bradshaw
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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.
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The Writing Process Rejected
The Quarterly,
Spring 2001
Orlean R. Anderson
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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.
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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.
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How Did You Do That? The Secrets of Strong Writers
The Quarterly,
Spring 2000
Dean Smith
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Lessons in Literacy: What a Five-Year-Old Taught Her Teacher-Mom
The Quarterly,
Spring 2000
Eve Newsome
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My Laptop Ambivalence: Some Speed Bumps on the High-Tech Road to Writing
The Quarterly,
Summer 2000
Susan Cvengros Mortensen
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Peterson's Credo
The Quarterly,
Spring 2000
Alina Sivorinovsky
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Reflective Friday: Time Out to Think
The Quarterly,
Fall 2000
Kim Douillard
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See You Next Year: The Writing Process in the Looping Classroom
The Quarterly,
Winter 2000
Alisa Daniel
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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.
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Teaching in Two Worlds: Critical Reflection and Teacher Change in the Writing Center
The Quarterly,
Spring 2000
Dale Jacobs
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Book Review: How to Catch a Shark, by Donald Graves
The Quarterly,
Fall 1999
Bob Sizoo
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Sustaining Urgency
The Quarterly,
Winter 1999
Jan Isenhour
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The Truth About Lightning Bugs: What Our Children Know
The Quarterly,
Spring 1999
Kim Patterson
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Writing Workshop and Real-World Learning: A Deweyian Perspective
The Quarterly,
Summer 1999
Jo-Anne Kerr
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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.
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Let's Take Another Look at the Fish: The Writing Process as Discovery
The Quarterly,
Fall 1998
Bob Tierney
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Scribe to the Prophet
The Quarterly,
Spring 1998
Kim Stafford
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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.
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Pruning Too Early: The Thorny Issue of Grading Student Writing
The Quarterly,
Fall 1997
Stephanie Wilder
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Surfing the 'Net: A Writing Workshop for Middle School
The Quarterly,
Summer 1997
Jean Boreen
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The Letter Exchange: Balancing Responsibility in the Writing Classroom
The Quarterly,
Winter 1996
Margaret Perrow
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Writing for the Rest of Us
The Quarterly,
Spring 1996
Art Peterson
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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.
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