Contains lessons and teaching strategies that help students bring organization, facts, and flair to their informational writing.

From setting the stage to engaging the classroom in understanding the writing process, this book covers what teachers need to know to instruct students in expository writing. The book is ideal for teachers who are looking for an easy and logical way to teach expository writing in the elementary grades especially for at-risk students who have such limited background knowledge. Each lesson is designed to teach writing in executable steps that produce a high student success rate. Through the use of the direct instruction model, each leasson plan follows a five-step process: skill instroduction, modeling, guided practice, structured practice, and independent practice. Most of the lesson plans include examples to make teacher preparation as painless as possible. Following the 50 carefully designed and explicit lesson plans are a wealth of resources including a template for the Writer's Notebook, Night Writes journal entries, word of the day entries and expository writing prompts.

Why you need a writing revolution in your classroom and how to lead it The Writing Revolution (TWR) provides a clear method of instruction that you can use no matter what subject or grade level you teach. The model, also known as The Hochman Method, has demonstrated, over and over, that it can turn weak writers into strong communicators by focusing on specific techniques that match their needs and by providing them with targeted feedback. Insurmountable as the challenges faced by many students may seem, The Writing Revolution can make a dramatic difference. And the method does more than improve writing skills. It also helps: Boost reading comprehension Improve organizational and study skills Enhance speaking abilities Develop analytical capabilities The Writing Revolution is as much a method of teaching content as it is a method of teaching writing. There's no separate writing block and no separate writing curriculum. Instead, teachers of all subjects adapt the TWR strategies and activities to their current curriculum and weave them into their content instruction. But perhaps what's most revolutionary about the TWR method is that it takes the mystery out of learning to write well. It breaks the writing process down into manageable chunks and then has students practice the chunks they need, repeatedly, while also learning content.

If you want to learn how to shoot a basketball, you begin by carefully observing someone who knows how to shoot a basketball. If you want to be a writer, you begin by carefully observing the work of accomplished writers. Recognizing the importance that modeling plays in the learning process, high school English teacher Kelly Gallagher shares how he gets his students to stand next to and pay close attention to model writers, and how doing so elevates his students' writing abilities. Write Like This is built around a central premise: if students are to grow as writers, they need to read good writing, they need to study good writing, and, most important, they need to emulate good writers. In Write Like This, Kelly emphasizes real-world writing purposes, the kind of writing he wants his students to be doing twenty years from now. Each chapter focuses on a specific discourse: express and reflect, inform and explain, evaluate and judge, inquire and explore, analyze and interpret, and take a stand/propose a solution. In teaching these lessons, Kelly provides mentor texts (professional samples as well as models he has written in front of his students), student writing samples, and numerous assignments and strategies proven to elevate student writing. By helping teachers bring effective modeling practices into their classrooms, Write Like This enables students to become better adolescent writers. More important, the practices found in this book will help our students develop the writing skills they will need to become adult writers in the real world.

Program for instruction in expository writing.

Writing is the vehicle for communication. In addition to promoting the need for good communication skills, the teaching of the writing process provides opportunities for students to develop clear thinking skills. Writing is also a developmental process that each student can successfully experience at different levels when approached systematically. Based upon this premise, this Action Tool presents the five stages of writing: prewrite, write, revise, edit, and publish in a manner that allows writing to be taught as a process. Strategies for Teaching Writing: An ASCD Action Tool makes writing in the classroom manageable. The tools provide a step-by-step approach to teaching the writing process. The tools include complete how-to-use instructions, suggestions, classroom examples and cross-curricular activities. Using the tools, teachers can grant students time to write, to process their thoughts and develop a way to analyze their thinking using cognitive reasoning instead of impromptu thought. The Action Tool also provide teachers with assessment strategies to assess students participation and progress at each stage of the writing process.

Highly-effective, field-tested lesson plans that will help transform struggling elementary and middle school students into skilled writers

Gretchen Bernabei has taught middle school and high school for 30 years. She is a coauthor of the bestselling Crunchtime: Lessons to Help Students Blow the Roof Off Writing Tests-and Become Better Writers in the Process; Why We Must Run with Scissors: Voice Lessons in Persuasive Writing; and Sparklers: High Scoring Test Essays and What They Teach Us, and author of Reviving the Essay: How to Teach Structure Without Formula; Lightning in a Bottle; and The Good Writer's Guide. Gretchen is also a contributing author of Teaching the Neglected "R."