In this book, a teacher/writer/cartoonist provides tools for helping students write about people, places, events, and even abstractions so that their readers can hear, see smell, touch, and taste their topics. The author demonstrates ways to use figurative language, movie techniques, moment-by-moment narration, hypothetical scenarios, and dialogue to make any kind of writing come alive on the page.Author's lively, original, reproducible middle-school-based comic strips make key points about writing through humour.Classroom-tested idea produce powerful, engaging writing and raise test scores.Writing exercises included here inspire even reluctant readers to use vivid imagery.

"The performing and visual arts have much to offer writing studies in terms of process, creativity, design, delivery, and habits of mind (and body). This collection is intended for teachers and researchers of writing in and across the disciplines, in both secondary and post-secondary settings, and for those outside of writing studies who wish to infuse more writing into their performing and visual arts curricula and courses. Contributors showcase ways of knowing and doing in the performing and visual arts. This collection expands on the concepts and ideas from the special issue of the journal Across the Disciplines (https://wac.colostate.edu/atd/special/arts/), especially in terms of writing pedagogy, assessment, and secondary-school connections in the performing and visual arts. Contributors also offer teachers in the performing and visual arts practical designs and strategies for teaching writing in their fields"--

In their first edition of Mentor Texts, authors Lynne Dorfman and Rose Cappelli helped teachers across the country make the most of high-quality children's literature in their writing instruction. Mentor Texts: Teaching Writing Through Children's Literature, K-6, 2nd Edition the authors continue to show teachers how to help students become confident, accomplished writers by using literature as their foundation. The second edition includes brand-new Your Turn Lessons, built around the gradual release of responsibility model, offering suggestions for demonstrations and shared or guided writing. Reflection is emphasized as a necessary component to understanding why mentor authors chose certain strategies, literary devices, sentence structures, and words. Dorfman and Cappelli offer new children's book titles in each chapter and in a carefully curated and annotated Treasure Chest. At the end of each chapter a Think About It'sTalk About It'sWrite About It section invites reflection and conversation with colleagues.The book is organized around the characteristics of good writing'sfocus, content, organization, style, and conventions. The authors write in a friendly and conversational style, employing numerous anecdotes to help teachers visualize the process, and offer strategies that can be immediately implemented in the classroom. This practical resource demonstrates the power of learning to read like writers.

Contains a collection of specific classroom strategies & suggestions for teaching writing to elementary school students according to an eight-stage process. Specific techniques for teaching each stage of the writing process & descriptions of proven approaches for using these techniques are also included. "A wonderful resource, a labor of love from a large & talented group of educators." Had its beginnings in the California Writing Project at the Univ. of California, Irvine. Best Seller! Illustrated.

Featuring a wealth of real-life examples, the book helps readers to understand the default strategies students bring to the classroom, and to work collaboratively on developing these into strategies for successful writing.

2014 Outstanding Academic Title, Choice "What’s going on in this picture?" With this one question and a carefully chosen work of art, teachers can start their students down a path toward deeper learning and other skills now encouraged by the Common Core State Standards. The Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) teaching method has been successfully implemented in schools, districts, and cultural institutions nationwide, including bilingual schools in California, West Orange Public Schools in New Jersey, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. It provides for open-ended yet highly structured discussions of visual art, and significantly increases students’ critical thinking, language, and literacy skills along the way. Philip Yenawine, former education director of New York’s Museum of Modern Art and cocreator of the VTS curriculum, writes engagingly about his years of experience with elementary school students in the classroom. He reveals how VTS was developed and demonstrates how teachers are using art—as well as poems, primary documents, and other visual artifacts—to increase a variety of skills, including writing, listening, and speaking, across a range of subjects. The book shows how VTS can be easily and effectively integrated into elementary classroom lessons in just ten hours of a school year to create learner-centered environments where students at all levels are involved in rich, absorbing discussions.

"Our purpose in this handbook is to help you, the evolving artist, learn to articulate your concepts and ideas, and also to argue for and earn your place in the world of art."--Preface pg. ix.

This timely book offers a host of minilessons that focus on comprehensive written communication as one of the essential skills for success. These fresh minilessons explore how to help students go beyond fuzzy thinking and generic voice, and organize their thoughts, solve problems, identify key ideas, and reflect on different perspectives. The book argues that writing is important to help students communicate ideas to others, as well as document their own thoughts. This buffet of minilessons gives teachers ideas to add to their teaching repertoire so they can help their students' work shine a little brighter.

"Any teacher can use this book regardless of the reading program a district may be using. It brings the various practices of reading and writing together in a practical and useful way." -Betty Ann Collinge, Kindergarten/First Grade Teacher Green Acres Elementary School, North Haven, CT "This book′s major strengths include straightforward writing, clear discussion of topics, excellent graphic samples, strong attention to a balanced perspective, and practical ideas." -Jennifer Trujillo, Assistant Professor, Teacher Education Fort Lewis College "The book is easy to follow and very accessible. It is not too esoteric or philosophical, yet includes important theory and knowledge about learning. The suggestions are excellent, relevant, and inclusive." -Karen Heath, Literacy Coordinator Barre Schools, VT Use these practical strategies to help students develop strong reading and writing skills! Reading is a complex process. And in today′s increasingly diverse classrooms, each student has unique learning needs. In the face of these challenges, how can teachers ensure that all students develop essential literacy skills? How to Teach Balanced Reading and Writing provides practical, research-based strategies for all aspects of literacy education. Presenting best practices in an easy-to-use format, literacy expert Bonnie Burns supplies guidance for providing direct instruction in phonics, using authentic texts, building word recognition, strengthening comprehension, and implementing writing across the curriculum. Aligned with the National Reading Panel Report (2000) and Reading First legislation, this book offers strategies to use with students at all developmental levels. This second edition has been extensively revised to include · A discussion of language acquisition Strategies for assessing phonemic awareness Techniques for developing fluency Increased attention to the needs of diverse learners Additional instructional activities in every chapter Because of its flexibility, this book is suitable for both novice and experienced teachers. Its friendly, accessible format also makes it an ideal text for preservice teachers and students in education courses.

In this highly readable and provocative book, Thomas Newkirk explodes the long standing habit of opposing abstract argument with telling stories. Newkirk convincingly shows that effective argument is already a kind of narrative and is deeply "entwined with narrative." --Gerald Graff, former MLA President and author of Clueless in Academe Narrative is regularly considered a type of writing-often an "easy" one, appropriate for early grades but giving way to argument and analysis in later grades. This groundbreaking book challenges all that. It invites readers to imagine narrative as something more-as the primary way we understand our world and ourselves. "To deny the centrality of narrative is to deny our own nature," Newkirk explains. "We seek companionship of a narrator who maintains our attention, and perhaps affection. We are not made for objectivity and pure abstraction-for timelessness. We have 'literary minds" that respond to plot, character, and details in all kind of writing. As humans, we must tell stories." When we are engaged readers, we are following a story constructed by the author, regardless of the type of writing. To sustain a reading-in a novel, an opinion essay, or a research article- we need a "plot" that helps us comprehend specific information, or experience the significance of an argument. As Robert Frost reminds us, all good memorable writing is "dramatic." Minds Made for Stories is a needed corrective to the narrow and compartmentalized approaches often imposed on schools-approaches which are at odds with the way writing really works outside school walls.