Writing Against The Curriculum

Writing against the Curriculum responds to the growing popularity of Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) and Writing in the Disciplines (WID) programs in universities and colleges across the United States. Many of these schools employ both an Introduction to Writing course and a subsequent selection of writing-intensive courses housed within academic departments, thus simultaneously offering opportunities to subvert disciplinary knowledge production in the earlier course, even as they reaffirm those divisions in their later requirements.

This reference guide traces the "Writing Across the Curriculum" movement from its origins in British secondary education through its flourishing in American higher education and extension to American primary and secondary education.

Now in an updated second edition How to Teach Writing Across the Curriculum: Ages 8-14 provides a range of practical suggestions for teaching non-fiction writing skills and linking them to children’s learning across the curriculum. Emphasising creative approaches to teaching children’s writing in diverse and innovative ways, it provides: information on the organisation and language features of the six main non-fiction text types (recount, report, instruction, explanation, persuasion and discussion) suggestions for the use of cross-curricular learning as a basis for writing planning frameworks for children to promote thinking skills advice on developing children’s writing to help with organisational issues – paragraphing and layout, and the key language features examples of non-fiction writing suggestions for talk for learning and talk for writing (including links to 'Speaking Frames'; also published by Routledge) information on the transition from primary to secondary school. With new hints and tips for teachers and suggestions for reflective practice as well as a wealth of photocopiable materials, How to Teach Writing Across the Curriculum: Ages 8-14 will equip teachers with all the skills needed to create enthusiastic non-fiction writers in their classroom.

In this book, Linda Laidlaw explores the questions: What happens when children begin to write? Why is it that the teaching and practice of writing seems at times to be difficult in schools? How might teachers work differently to create more inviting spaces for developing literacy? The premise is that written texts and literacy processes are developed within a complex "weave" of particular contexts, or ecologies, and the unique particularity of the learner's experiences, histories, memories and interpretations. Laidlaw offers new information about writing and literacy pedagogy linked to current research in the complexity sciences and cognition, and considers the possibilities that might emerge for pedagogy when alternative metaphors, images, and structures are considered for writing and curriculum. The volume includes qualitative and narrative description of writing and literacy situations, events, and pedagogy, and elaborates the historical, theoretical, and curricular background in which such instruction exists within contemporary schooling. Reinventing Curriculum: A Complex-Perspective on Literacy and Writing: *addresses literacy through a focus on writing rather than on reading; *develops an approach to literacy and writing pedagogy that incorporates recent theories and research on learning and the complexity sciences; *examines perspectives on writing from both a teaching perspective and that of the work of writers; *makes connections between the acquisition of literacy to research in other domains; *examines both the benefits and the "costs" of literacy; and *challenges "commonsense" understandings within instruction, for example, that literacy teaching and learning can occur apart from other aspects of children's learning, context, and subjectivity, or that learning occurs individually rather than collectively. This book is important reading for researchers, professionals, teacher educators, and students involved in literacy education and writing instruction, and an excellent text for courses in these areas.

Learn to design interest-provoking writing and critical thinking activities and incorporate them into your courses in a way that encourages inquiry, exploration, discussion, and debate, with Engaging Ideas, a practical nuts-and-bolts guide for teachers from any discipline. Integrating critical thinking with writing-across-the-curriculum approaches, the book shows how teachers from any discipline can incorporate these activities into their courses. This edition features new material dealing with genre and discourse community theory, quantitative/scientific literacy, blended and online learning, and other current issues.

Talk for Writing, developed by Pie Corbett and supported by Julia Strong, is a proven approach to teaching writing that is engaging and motivating for students and teachers alike. Building on best practice, this practical guide takes you step by step through how to establish quality written communication across the secondary curriculum. It can be used as a handbook by a literacy coordinator to lead the approach as well as being a source of practical ideas for each subject area. Every teacher can help students internalize the pattern of language of their subject through focused talk activities related to exemplar text. This enables students to independently generate the sentence patterns and structures that are key to effective communication in any subject. Julia Strong puts the experience of the learner at the centre. By establishing some consistent approaches across the curriculum, the learner can see how what they learn in one area can be transferred to support learning in another. The approach progressively builds up students' linguistic competence involving them in co-constructing the next steps they need to take to make progress. This practical resource offers: • Wide range of examples from all subject areas with a particular focus on science • Online Learning Centre with training session with teachers showing Talk for Writing in action suitable to use on training days to help introduce and embed the approach • Over 80 customisable handouts downloadable from the Online Learning Centre • Customisable PowerPoint slides to train all staff in the approach Thoroughly grounded in the principles of formative assessment, Talk for Writing if systematically applied across the curriculum really can turn secondary students into powerful communicators. Try it, it works! 'Silent classrooms do not lend themselves to progress, the Foreword to this important new book reminds us. What follows is an exceptionally well-informed and practical guide to how high quality talk can lead to high quality writing. I strongly recommend it for all teachers across all subjects'. Geoff Barton, Headteacher of King Edward VI School, Suffolk, UK, author and speaker

This brief version of the best-selling, cross-curricular classic retains its hallmark coverage of source-based writing skills, combined with five popular readings chapters. The rhetoric section provides students with step-by-step guidance in summary, critique, analysis (new to this edition), and synthesis, and asks students to put these skills into practice as they read thematically linked essays on provocative topics. Book jacket.