Creating Classrooms For Authors

Curricular framework and ideas for classroom reading and writing experiences.

The authors offer ideas and rich descriptions of how their curriculum moved from writing and reading to include inquiry.

The authors offer ideas and rich descriptions of how their curriculum moved from writing and reading to include inquiry.

Educators want young people to grow up knowing that writing is an important and deeply satisfying life skill, one that helps them make more sense of themselves and their world, and one that helps them to communicate effectively. Sadly, too often writing becomes merely an exercise in ‘getting words right’, or writing to teacher-prescribed tasks. Developing Young Writers in the Classroom explores the principles of developing literacy through authorship, allowing children to describe, question and celebrate their own experiences and personal creativity. The book offers detailed guidance, supported by planning documents, poetry and prose, examples of children’s work and stimulating visuals. Inspiring topics explored include: creating a classroom environment which supports an independent writer students’ lives brought into the classroom finding significance in our experiences the use of memoir for recording experiences description in all kinds of writing choosing and writing about a character writing in all curriculum areas linking reading and writing using other authors as mentors and teachers collaborative learning. Illustrated throughout with accessible activities and ideas from literature and poetry, Developing Young Writers in the Classroom is an essential resource for all teachers wishing to inspire writing in the classroom.

This book focuses directly on student empowerment through meaningful research. It fills a specific gap in educational literature by making explicit the relationship between teaching method, classroom practice, and the production of knowledge. Drawing on the best of theoretical innovations over the last decade Students as Researchers places them in a living accessible context. With a sound basis in theory, the book is also extremely practical and accessible for students, giving scenarios and examples that can be used to reveal the workings and benefits of research.

Through ideas and practices straight from the classrooms of outstanding teachers, this lively resource illustrates writing that makes an impact on a reader, a writer, or a cause—writing that everyone wants to read. The book is rich with student work that shows how writing can make things happen in the world. The authors provide ready-to-use lessons that include a full range of writing, including poetry, narrative, petitions, proposals, emails, self-reflections, long-term projects, and critical analyses. “Young people yearn to have an impact on the world but often lack the tools to make change. This book demonstrates how shifting the focus and purposes for writing can turn students' frustration with the status quo into action. There’s no time to waste. The need for change—both in school and in society—is urgent.” —Carol Jago, past president, National Council of Teachers of English and associate director, California Reading and Literature Project at UCLA “In true National Writing Project style, Sandy Murphy and Mary Ann Smith take us inside the classrooms of remarkable teachers to see how they create contexts for young writers to pursue writing they care about for purposes that matter. Readers will find lots to take back to their own settings to engage this remarkable generation of young people in our classrooms.” —Elyse Eidman-Aadahl, Executive Director, National Writing Project

Timely and accessible, this book offers tangible strategies that will help teachers plan and sustain writing workshop experiences that are responsive to the needs of their specific students. Angela Stockman helps teachers understand why some writers may fail to meet their expectations and how to help all writers reach their fullest potential. Organized in three parts, this book reframes common narratives about resistant writers, empowers teachers to design, lead and refine their workshop, and provides a toolkit to do so. The appendices and eResources included provide teachers with instructions for mini-lessons and learning targets that support multimodal composition, perfect for pre-service and in-service teachers.