Coming to Know: Writing to Learn in the Intermediate Grades

by Nancie Atwell

Overview

Coming to Know is a book for teachers who are ready to put writing to work across the curriculum. It is written by teachers of grades 3 through 6 who, dissatisfied with encyclopedia-based approaches to content-area writing, asked their students to write as scientists, historians, mathematicians, and literary critics do - to use writing-as-process to discover meaning.

One of the subjects of this volume is report writing and ways to help children produce content-area writing that is as personal and meaningful as their stories of their own experiences. Students learn how to take notes in their own words, conduct interviews, record observations, design their first simple research project, select appropriate genres for their research, and apply the techniques of writing workshop in science, social studies, and reading classes.

In addition, Coming to Know explores the uses of academic journals, or learning logs. Children speculate, brainstorm, role play, correspond, predict, and ask questions about math, reading, science, and social studies - and demonstrate the power of informal writing to generate thinking. Coming to Know is also about the connections between reading and writing, the effects of using writing to learn on curriculum and planning, and the role of children's literature in teaching science, social studies and math.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780435085001
Publisher:	Heinemann
Publication date:	11/15/1989
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	233
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 10.00(h) x 0.53(d)
Age Range:	9 - 15 Years

About the Author

Nancie Atwell is one of the most respected educators in the U.S. and across the world. Winner of the Varkey Foundation's inaugural Global teacher Prize, she donated the $1 million award to the Center for Teaching and Learning, the K-8 demonstration school she founded in Edgecomb, Maine, in 1990. Nancie's classic In the Middle, now in its third edition, has inspired generations of teachers; in it she describes her teaching journey and the practices she developed that led to her nomination. Thomas Newkirk calls In the Middle "the greatest book on literacy teaching ever written in this country." Visit Heinemann.com/InTheMiddle for more about the book and Nancie. A middle school English teacher for almost forty years, Nancie is also the first classroom teacher to be awarded the NCTE David H. Russell Award and the MLA Mina P. Shaughnessy Prize, both for distinguished research in the teaching of English. She was also honored as NCTE's Outstanding Middle School English Teacher and as the River of Words Poetry Teacher of the Year. She has received honorary doctoral degrees from Middlebury College and the University of New Hampshire. Nancie's books for Heinemann include Systems to Transform Your Classroom and School, which takes teachers inside her award-winning school to learn about the innovations that make the biggest impact on achievement and community; Lessons That Change Writers, a year's worth of instruction straight from Nancie's file cabinets; and Naming the World: A Year of Poems and Lessons, which helps teachers to jumpstart their teaching of writing and literature each day by unpacking a poem with their students. Her DVDs Writing in the Middle and Reading in the Middle give teachers a seat in her workshop as she presents lessons and conducts conferences that transform her students' literacy - and their lives.

Table of Contents

Researching and Reporting

Beginning Researchers, Donna Maxim

Bridging the Gap, Patricia J. Collins

The Power of Learning Logs

Thinking and Writing in Learning Logs, Anne Thompson

Learning Logs in the Upper Elementary Grades, Marcia Blake

How Learning Logs Change Teaching, Nancy Chard

Knitting Writing: The Double-Entry Journal, Charlene Loughlin Vaughan

In the Schema of Things, Laura Farnsworth

Letters to a Math Teacher, Anne Thompson

Reading and Writing

Writing Informally About Reading, Janine Pierpont

Whether You Eat the Vegetables or Not, Jo Anne Lee

A Love of Books, Donna Maxim

Teaching and Learning

Showing the Way: Using Journal Writing to Develop Learning and Teaching Strategies, Nancy S. Wheeler

A Puffin Is a Bird, I Think, Jo Haney

Taking Charge of Curriculum, Cindy Greenleaf

Appendices

A. Genres for Report Writing

B. Prompts for Learning Log Entries

C. Bury Yourself in Books: Children's Literature for Content-Area Study, Donna Maxim

D. Resources for Writing and Reading to Learn