Writing Whizardry

Provide young writers with skills that expand their creativity and writer's craft vocabulary. Each self-contained lesson targets a specific technique or skill that teaches craft and author's devices, and encourages elaboration.Sixty mini-lessons give your students practice in applying the skills they need to write well-developed narrative and expository pieces. Best of all, each mini-lesson provides examples of polished writing and writing that need revision, as well as reference to other books to use as models -- all you need to teach show me writing effectively.

Tired of dull, formula-driven writing from students? Discover Voice Whizardry and reawaken their slumbering voices! Easily adaptable to any balanced language arts program, these 36 Discovery Activities teach students in grades 4-8 how to identify the subtle elements of voice and use them skillfully in any writing situation. With literary models and student writing samples for narrative and expository writing throughout, this resource will show teachers and students how to: Recognize voice in the writing of others; Choose writing topics carefully; Personalize and focus responses to write-on-demand prompts; Adapt writing voice to different audiences and genres; and Expand vocabulary --essential for writing growth Plus, each Discover Activity includes a new kind of mini-lesson that helps teachers explore their own voice before introducing the skill to the class --perfect for Professional Growth and/or Development Plans.

Writing is best taught through models. Showing K-8 students how other authors apply the writing-craft skills that you teach is a vital part of writing instruction. This innovative resource matches 24 fundamental writing-craft Target Skills to a wide selection of fiction and non-fiction books, providing a solid set of strong models for writing-craft instruction. Both trade books and texts available only from educational publishers are included. Most of these are picture books, which are particularly engaging for young readers. A Target Skill cross-index helps you reference models and multiple craft skills.

If you've ever said to your intermediate writers, "Write more about this topic!" you're not alone. Unelaborated writing is a top challenge for teachers and the number one reason students score poorly on writing assessments. But how do you teach students to show and not tell? What are the specific techniques all strong writers choose to produce clear, well-elaborated narrative and expository writing? Writing Whizardry gives you 70 self-contained elaboration mini-lessons--each focusing on a specific Target Skill® elaboration technique. Each lesson pairs a writing sample that needs revision with a micro-mentor text example of polished writing--saving you time and energy. Choose the lessons you need to reinforce particular skills, or use the book regularly as an important component of your writing workshop. Additional literature suggestions enable you to extend and reinforce the lessons, and the reproducibles and black-line masters give you flexible instructional options for different instructional settings. Writing Whizardry helps you: easily tailor writing workshops to meet writing deficiencies; save time with ready-to-go elaboration strategies; and cover virtually all the elaboration techniques writers use. Whether you use Writing Whizardry in literacy stations, small-group, or whole-class settings, you will watch your students grow into enthusiastic writers who know exactly how to create clear, detailed, "show-me" writing.

Baldwin's flexible approach and ready-to-go mini-lessons help teachers present the critical craft elements of short fiction, foster critical-thinking skills, and carry skills over into informational writing. This second edition includes 20 new lessons that infuse technology into the writing process through such tools as wikis, digital media, and podcasts. The CD provides 70-plus reproducibles and customizable transparency masters.

A stellar collection of short fantasy fiction from authors who have made an impact over the last decade, along with some bestselling favourites. These stories of life-and-death struggles and magical force, used for good and evil, by Elizabeth Bear, Jay Lake, Tanith Lee, K. J. Parker, Carrie Vaughn and many others provide thrills and entertainment aplenty.

The Ruby programming language is perfect for beginners: easy to learn, powerful, and fun to use! But wouldn't it be more fun if you were learning with the help of some wizards and dragons? Ruby Wizardry is a playful, illustrated tale that will teach you how to program in Ruby by taking you on a fantastical journey. As you follow the adventures of young heroes Ruben and Scarlet, you’ll learn real programming skills, like how to: –Use fundamental concepts like variables, symbols, arrays, and strings –Work with Ruby hashes to create a programmable breakfast menu –Control program flow with loops and conditionals to help the Royal Plumber –Test your wild and crazy ideas in IRB and save your programs as scripts –Create a class of mini-wizards, each with their own superpower! –Organize and reuse your code with methods and lists –Write your own amazing interactive stories using Ruby Along the way, you’ll meet colorful characters from around the kingdom, like the hacker Queen, the Off-White Knight, and Wherefore the minstrel. Ruby Wizardry will have you (or your little wizard) hooked on programming in no time. For ages 10+ (and their parents!)