Writing Essentials: Raising Expectations and Results While Simplifying Teaching / Edition 1

by Regie Routman

Overview

What does great writing instruction look like and sound like?
How do successful teachers of writing get great writers who enjoy writing?
Where do they find the time for instruction, assessment, and test prep?

In Writing Essentials Regie Routman demystifies the process of teaching writing well and gives you the knowledge, research, precise instructional language, and confidence you need to succeed. With Regie's help, you'll transform your classroom into an organized, joyful writing environment where students connect reading with writing every day across the curriculum, learn essential skills like grammar and spelling, and achieve higher scores on high-stakes tests through sensible, writing-based test preparation and daily classroom-based assessment.

Writing Essentials specifically and explicitly demonstrates practical, easy-to-do strategies that turn your writing instruction practices into best practices. Follow Routman's path for successfully leading all students-including English language learners, writers who struggle, and students coping with learning disabilities-from first draft to publication. You'll find expert advice and specific demonstrations on a wide variety of techniques, including:

• demonstrating your own writing process for students
• organizing and managing the writing classroom
• conducting effective, efficient writing conferences
• creating meaningful rubrics for better assessment
• teaching various forms of narrative and informational writing-and poetry
• applying shared writing across the grades and across the curriculum
• teaching editing and revision
• mapping out your writing instruction with Regie's own flexible, five-day lesson-planning model.

In addition, Writing Essentials includes a DVD with eight three-to-four-minute video clips from primary and intermediate classrooms that show Regie conferring with writers and celebrating their work as she teaches and assesses. These invaluable clips, and the detailed notes that accompany them, take you inside the writing conference to see its structures and procedures while the sample classroom publications also on the DVD reveal the exciting possibilities of working with student writers.

Writing Essentials is conversational, upbeat, practical, eminently readable, illustrated with a wealth of children's writing, and filled with proven techniques for teaching writing well and managing your instructional time more effectively. With Routman in hand, you'll not only have the inspiration to say "I can do that too," but you'll have first-rate resources and strategies to answer your questions and help make great writing instruction happen in your classroom immediately.

For more information on using the DVD, please click here.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780325006017
Publisher:	Heinemann
Publication date:	10/26/2004
Edition description:	BK & DVD
Pages:	448
Product dimensions:	7.40(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.98(d)
Age Range:	5 - 11 Years

About the Author

Regie Routman has more than forty-five years of experience working in diverse, underperforming schools across the U.S. and Canada as an educational leader, mentor teacher, literacy coach, classroom teacher, and teacher of students with learning differences. Her current work involves on-site demonstrations of highly effective literacy and leadership practices and side-by-side mentoring and coaching of principals and lead teachers in order to improve reading and writing engagement, achievement, and enjoyment for all learners. Her many research-based books and resources have supported hundreds of thousands of teachers, principals, and educators at all levels to create and sustain trusting, intellectual school cultures where hearing all the voices and ongoing, professional learning are priorities.

Regie's books include her Essentials series—Reading Essentials, Writing Essentials, and Teaching Essentials, published by Heinemann, and Literacy Essentials.

Regie expertly developed and delivers online professional learning through her Transforming Our Teaching video-based literacy series. Regie also presents two popular Heinemann on-demand courses: Transforming Our Teaching Through Reading to Understand, Grades K–6; and, Transforming Our Teaching Through Reading-Writing Connections, Grades K-1.

Browse all of Regie's Heinemann Online PD offerings alongside her correlating Professional Development Notebooks on Heinemann's Regie Routman Series page.

For full information on Regie’s publications including her Transforming Our Teaching video-based, literacy series and on-demand courses, PD offerings, and blogs, see www.regieroutman.org.

You can also follow her on Twitter and Facebook @regieroutman.

Table of Contents

One: The Essential Writing Life

1. Simplify the Teaching of Writing
   Why Writing Essentials?
   Teach What's Essential
   12 Writing Essentials for All Grades

1. Start with Celebration
   Change the Status of Kids in the Classroom
   Start with a Story
   See What Writers Do Well
   Make Enjoyment Central to Teaching Writing-Let the Fun Begin

1. Share Your Writing Life
   Bond as a Staff by Writing Together
   Examine Your Life as a Writer
   Find Your Own Voice

Two: Teaching Essentials

1. Raise Your Expectations
   Change the School Culture of Low Expectations
   Nurture and Nudge
   Rely on an Optimal Learning Model
   Focus on the Writer First

1. Do More Shared Writing
   Apply Principles of Instruction and Learning
   Implement Shared Writing
   A Framework for a Shared Writing Lesson
   Teaching Tips to Go Along with Shared Writing
   Use Shared Writing to Do Important Word Work
   Observe Shared Writing in Action
   Tried and True Ideas for Shared Writing

1. Capitalize on the Reading-Writing Connection
   Link Writing with Reading
   Ensure Students Read Quality Materials
   Examine Written Responses to Reading
   Use Writing to Improve Comprehension
   Lesson Snapshot: Summary Writing

Three: The Essential Writing Day

1. Be Efficient and Integrate Basic Skills
   Start with Meaning and Keep It Whole
   Include Audience in All Writing
   Teach Explicitly and Tell Students Why
   Take Advantage of the "Efficiency of Context"
   TEACHING BEYOND THE STANDARDS
   Teach Useful Minilessons
   A Sampling of Common Minilessons
   Teach Students to Care About Revision
   Focus on Editing After Students Can Produce Quality Writing
   Teach Spelling Well
   Use Word Walls and Other Resources Effectively
   Provide High-Quality Instruction to Writers Who Struggle
   Proven Strategies for Writers Who Struggle-and All Writers

1. Organize for Daily Writing
   Broaden Your Definition ofWriting Workshop
   Find Time for Daily Writing
   Set Up the Environment for Success
   Provide More Choice Within Meaningful Structure
   Teach Sensible Planning Strategies
   Make Excellent Management a Priority
   Put Genre Study in Perspective
   A Framework for Teaching Writing Genres
   Write and Publish More Short Pieces
   Do More Publishing

1. Conference with Students
   Know What a Writing Conference Is
   Depend on Whole-Class Share
   Tips for Successful Whole-Class Shares and Conferences
   Use a Variety of Other Conferences
   Simplify Writing Conferences
   Put the Writer First
   Begin with Content Conferences
   What to Focus on in a Content Conference
   End with Editing Conferences
   What to Focus on in an Editing Conference
   Hand Over More Responsibility to Students
   Use Language that Signals Students to Take More Responsibility

1. Make Assessment Count
   Become More Knowledgeable About Assessment
   Put Rubrics in Perspective
   Put High-Stakes Testing in Perspective
   Put a Schoolwide Assessment Policy into Practice
   Work Toward Student Self-Assessment

Four: Advocacy is Also Essential

1. Build on Best Practice and Research
   Advocate for Excellence
   Be Knowledgeable About Relevant Research
   Some Key Research Findings
   Take Responsibility for Becoming an Effective Writing Teacher
   Adopt Practices of Highly Effective Teachers
   Develop a Schoolwide Vision
   Teach Kids to Be Courageous as Writers
   Use High Achievement to Promote Best Practice Teaching

1. Make Every Minute Count
   Connect Your Home and School Lives
   Secrets of Good Writers
   Conserve Your Energy
   Important Timesavers
   My Best Advice
   Live Your Life
   Conclusion: Write Your Own Ending

Five: Teaching in Action: Lesson Essentials

Five-Day Lesson Plans
Secrets of Second Graders-Narrative Writing Lesson
Heart Poems-Poetry Writing Lesson
Procedural Writing-Informational Writing Lesson
Hero Writing-Lesson
Persuasive Writing-Lesson
Teaching Points: Conference Video Clips

Appendices

1. Examining Beliefs AboutWriting

   Communications to Parents

2. Letter to Parents About Raising Expectations (Grade 1)
3. Suggestions for Parents

   Writing Forms

4. Understanding Nonfiction
5. Writing History
6. Poetry Writing Rubric
7. Word Work Sentence Worksheet
8. Writing Strengths/Next Steps
9. Writing Rubric

   Editing Expectations

10. Grade 2, Editing Expectations
11. Grade 4, Editing Expectations
12. Genre Characteristics
13. Favorite Poetry Books
14. Weekly Professional Conversation Guidelines

Brief Definitions of Terms
Notes
References
Index