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Teach Writing Well
How to Assess Writing, Invigorate Instruction, and Rethink Revision!
Any successful writer will tell you that the key to writing well is revision. Any elementary school teacher will tell you that the real challenge of writing instruction is teaching kids how to revise. Ruth Culham is both a successful writer and a writing teacher, and she’s discovered how to teach writing and revision in a way that’s accessible to both teacher and students: First read the writing, assess it using the traits of writing, then teach the writers and guide revision decisions using traits as a common language and map.
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Any successful writer will tell you that the key to writing well is revision. Any elementary school teacher will tell you that the real challenge of writing instruction is teaching kids how to revise. Ruth Culham is both a successful writer and a writing teacher, and she’s discovered how to teach writing and revision in a way that’s accessible to both teacher and students: First read the writing, assess it using the traits of writing, then teach the writers and guide revision decisions using traits as a common language and map.
This book shows you how to assess and teach writing in a way that’s practical and doable—and best of all, see results.
Part 1 walks you through the traits of writing and their key qualities, showing step by step how to read students’ writing and offer feedback that nudges them forward through the revision process. Chapters will help you address challenges students face within each mode of writing (narrative, expository, persuasive), and provide tools young writers can use to evaluate their own writing and make revision decisions accordingly.
Part 2 dives into instruction, offering specific guidance for how to use what you’ve learned from reading student writing to design lessons that scaffold students toward making their own craft decisions and revisions. In addition, there’s an entire chapter devoted to mentor texts that you can use to model traits and key qualities for your students.
Traits-based revision lies at the heart of this book, as it’s been at the heart of Ruth’s career in writing instruction. Rethinking revision is what will ultimately help you to teach writing well.
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Ruth’s deep respect for our writers shines through and her sage advice for celebrating those writers in intentionally responsive ways makes us privy to the powerful professional discoveries that will gently nudge us all to teach writing well.
About the Author(s)
Table of Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I: Read the Writing
- Chapter 1 Thinking Back and Thinking Forward with the Traits of Writing
- Chapter 2 Formative Assessment: The Heart of the Matter
- Chapter 3 Modes of Writing: Their Challenges and Why They Matter
- Chapter 4 Tools and Talk to Guide Revision
- Part II: Teach the Writer
- Chapter 5 Rethinking Revision: The Real Work of Writing
- Chapter 6 Invigorate Writing Instruction
- Chapter 7 Reading Like a Writer
- Appendix A: Sample Writing Papers for Practice
- Appendix B: Reproducible Tools
- References
- Index