16382975 collaboratively-developing-an-effective-program-for-teaching-writing

DEVELOPING
THE WRITING I.Q.* PROGRAM:
*(I = Impact of content, Q = Quality of language)

A Strengths-Based, Best Practices Process Journal
and Resource Guide for Teachers K - 12

By
Jim Evers

Dominican College Writing Project

DEVELOPING



By
Jim Evers


DEVELOPING THE WRITING I.Q. PROGRAM:
__________________________________________
by Jim Evers
Copyright ! 2004 James L. Evers
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form
without permission of the author.

Printed by Dominican College
Writing Institute
470 Western Highway
Orangeburg, NY 10962
845-359-7800 Ext. 210

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION...................................................................................................1 -
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Bane of Superintendent's Day
Three Principles for Teachers of Writing
What You Can Expect from Using This Process Journal
Why a Common Curriculum is Needed
Some Classroom Issues
Putting Marks on Papers
Rubrics and Guides
Writer's Guide and Assessment tool
Back Ground of the Writing I.Q. Program
Being a Writing Coach
Where the Content of this Publication Came From
Professional Writing
Final Thoughts
Suggested Structure for Seminar
Charge to Teachers

PART ONE
SEMINAR PROCESS AND CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT JOURNAL........11

Section One:
EXPLORING LOCAL
REALITIES.....................................................................................11
Step 1. Clarifying Your Thoughts About
writing....................................................11
Step 2. Collecting Local Best
Practices...................................................................14
Step 3. Identifying Other Widely-Used Best
Practices...........................................16
Step 4. Reviewing Key
Resources..........................................................................16

Section Two:
BUILDING THE WRITING IQ GUIDE AND ASSESSMENT TOOL
Step 1. Critiquing Collected Writing
Samples........................................................22
Step 2. Putting it All Together in a Writing I.Q. Writers Guide and
Assessment Tool....................................................................................................26

Step 3. Using the Tool and Coaching
Writers........................................................31
Self-coaching/Assessing
Peer coaching/Assessing
Teacher Coaching (conferencing) and Assessing
Parent Coaching and Assessing

Workbook Section Three:
EXPLORING KEY REALITIES OF WRITING..................................................................35

PART TWO
A REVIEW OF BEST CLASSROOM PRACTICES AND KEY RESOURCES.....45

Review Section One:
BRIEF EXPLANATIONS OF WIDELY-USED BEST
PRACTICES...................................46
A. Writing-As-Process..........................................................................................46
B. Writer’s Workshop..........................................................................................52
C. Mini-
Lessons....................................................................................................55
D. Portfolios..........................................................................................................57
E. Self/Peer/Teacher Coaching and
Conferencing.................................................59
F. Talk-Write........................................................................................................61
G. Free Writing.....................................................................................................63
H. Speed
Planning.................................................................................................65
I. Demand
writing................................................................................................65
J. Writer’s
Journal/Journaling..............................................................................67
K. Genre................................................................................................................69
L. Multi-
Genre......................................................................................................71
M. Writing Across The
Curriculum.......................................................................73
N. Handbooks.......................................................................................................75

O. History of English
Language...........................................................................77
P. Suggested Supportive
Practices........................................................................79
Building a Data-Base of Best Practices
Creating a Colleague Mentoring Program
Training the Parents

Review Section Two:
SUMMRAY OF KEY RESOURCE
Books.................................................................................................................................81
Web Sites...........................................................................................................................85

PART THREE
WHAT NEXT: EXPLORING THE STEPS NEEDED TO SUSTAIN AN
EFFECTIVE WRITING
PROGRAM............................................................................87

APPENDIX

Case Report Using the Writing I.Q. Program........................................................90
Author's Background and
Acknowledgements.......................................................92
Demand writing.................................................................................................*
Helping Your Child to Be A More Effective Writer in School............................*
Common Errors and Mistakes to Avoid in Using English..................................*
Brief History of The English Language..............................................................*

*For copies of these contact the author at: www.jamesevers.com

INTRODUCTION

Superintendent's Workshop Days: Often the Bane of Good Practices
In the 35 plus years that I’ve been in education, I remember how often I disliked many of
the training programs offered on Superintendent’s Day. Ed Joyner, Executive Director of
Yale’s School Development Program (Commer Schools) once named these days as
“drive-by training.” Rightly so. They usually focus on the educational fad of the day or
on a topic that one of the administrators is working on for his or her doctorate.

But, what I disliked most about those workshop days was that the speakers/trainers,
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though considered experts, never seemed to have an interest in what we were already
doing. Rather than building on what was already working well or already in place, these
presenters often implied that we were off track, and they had something better. By not
focusing first on what was already working, these programs implied to teachers that the
administration did not value what the teachers had been doing.

That the presenters may indeed have had something better, to me, is beside the point. The
lack of respect for what teachers were already doing was rude, and that rudeness
undermines staff morale and the value of the any existing good practices. Even some of
the weaker practices in a school may have some qualities that are of value, but no
practice can be improved effectively through insult. Instead, let's move existing practices
forward by finding the hidden good qualities in them and then build on those qualities.
That's what will happen in this publication.

I begin with the premise that what you already are doing vis- a- vis the teaching of
writing has significant value for helping you build an even more effective program.

Three Principles for Teachers of Writing:
Because I worry about the way young writers are being taught and judged in their writing
in many schools, I am working from three strongly-felt personal principles for teachers of
writing:
1. Anyone who teaches writing at any level should also be doing some writing, preferably
for publication, or at least for personal practice and/or for personal guidance such as
journaling.
2. Anyone who teaches and assesses writing has an obligation to let students know and
understand the writing standards they are expected to meet and for which they will be
assessed.
3. Anyone who teaches writing could be more effective if she/he stopped thinking of her/
himself as a teacher of writing and began thinking of her/himself as a writing coach.

What you can expect to gain from using this journal:
1. You can expect to gain a renewed confidence in your own best practices for teaching
writing.
2. You can expect to gain a broader understanding of the teaching of writing in your
classroom, in your school, in your district, and in schools in general.
3. You can expect to gain a set of common terms, practices, and assessments selected
cooperatively by you and your colleagues.
4. You can expect to gain a writer’s guide/assessment tool that will be cooperatively
created for use by students, teachers, and parents.
5. You can expect to gain a personal journal of resources, ideas, and best practices.

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Why a common curriculum is needed:
As students encounter new teachers each grade year, they discover that not all teachers
teach writing in the same way, nor emphasize the same elements of writing, or use the
same terms. Developmentally , this is not as helpful to the students as would be an
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approach that at least included a few consistent common practices, terms, and
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assessments.

For example, in non-fiction essays, teachers usually ask for a key sentence that states the
topic of the essay. Some call this the “topic sentence,” others call it the “theme sentence,”
still others call it the “controlling idea sentence,” and some call it the “main idea
sentence.” Each of these terms is fine, but it would be more helpful to the students if all
teachers in a given school and in a given school district used the same term for this key
sentence. And it would be more helpful to students if there were a similar consistency of
a few other terms used. In the journal section of this publication, teachers will decide and
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agree on which terms should be common to all teachers in the school and/or in the
district.

Students also benefit from experiencing some common classroom practices in the
teaching of writing. For example, such practices might include writer’s workshop,
writing-as-process, journaling, peer coaching, peer editing, and teacher conferences.

Further, students benefit when they experience common assessment approaches from
year to year and from teacher to teacher. And, students further benefit from having all of
their teachers, not just their language arts teachers, use the agreed-on common terms,
practices, and assessments.

SOME CLASSROOM ISSUES:

Putting Remarks on Papers:
I recently came across an article in the on-line edition of the C.S. Monitor by a college
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freshman English professor about putting written remarks on student's papers. It seems
that this professor was troubled over how often he labored to make his remarks justify the
grade that he gave to each paper. He eventually gave up justifying and simply told each
writer how and why the paper affected him.

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My reactions to the professor's practice are both supportive and yet critical. While I agree
that our remarks to writers ought to be honest explanations of why and how the writing
affected us, I also feel that if we don't know before hand some of what we are going to
look for in a given assignment, then it seems the writer's work stands the chance being
evaluated by an evaluator's indecisiveness, whims, or situational standards. Yes, I'm sure
that there is a need to read each writer's piece with a fresh and open mind, letting the
piece guide our reactions. However, I'm also sure that there are some characteristics that
we teachers, including this professor, consistently look for in every assignment.

If we and the professor would collect a series of papers we've marked throughout a
semester, I know that we would find some remarks that occur constantly and that speak
to characteristics that we feel should be in any paper. Shouldn't the writers at least know
before they write what these consistent characteristics are that we expect? It isn't fair to
our students to hide our internal expectations from them.

Also, I have found that once students' papers are handed back graded, despite
any critical or constructive remarks I may have put on the papers, most students assume
that the assignment is completed and is to be forgotten. Little is learned by these students
from post-writing remarks.

Rubrics and Guides:
The professor further said that he didn't use a grading-rubric (a rubric used for scoring a
paper) because he felt that he couldn't decide beforehand what he was going to like in a
given assignment. I too dislike the grading-rubrics because they are error directed, and
most of them are far too detailed in far too many aspects of writing to be of value as a
guide to writers or even to evaluators.

Writer's Guide and Assessment Tool:
Instead of a grading-rubric, what you will create in this journal is a writer's guide and
assessment tool. It will be similar in structure to a rubric, but it addresses your
expectations rather than writer's errors. And , the expectations will center on only two
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aspects of the writing: the impact of the content and the quality of the language (The
Writing I.Q.).

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The guide and assessment tool that you will create will be for students to use as they
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write and a tool for assessing (by self, peer, and teacher) what has been written. Students
should be taught how to use the guide for any writing assignment. And, if there are any
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additional specifics that you might hope for in a given assignment but that are not in the
tool, you should tell your students what these are before they write.

BACKGROUND OF THE WRITING I.Q.:

In the mid 1960's, I was trained in using the Diedrich Scale, a precursor to today's
ubiquitous grading-rubrics. In truth, I never used it in my classrooms because I found it
confused writers more than coached them. Then in the 1980s, when I returned to the
public school classroom after spending time in private education and in business, I found
a key resource that actually became the background for the Writing IQ Program. It was
INSIDE OUT: Developmental Strategies for Teaching Writing, by Dan Kirby and Tom
Liner (Boynton/Cook). In a chapter entitled "What is Good Writing," Kirby and Liner
come to the conclusion that good writing can be judged by two key attributes: it is
interesting and it is technically skillful.

They then established a guide that included five criteria for each of the two attributes. I
gave a copy of their criteria guide to my students and required them to use the guide as
they planned and wrote their essays. Then, after the essay was written, the students had to
do a Kirby/Liner Conference, first with themselves and then with a peer, before handing
in any essays to me. My students preferred calling it a "Kirby Conference." (The
alliteration worked for them.) And used to say, somewhat teasingly, to each other, "Hey,
did you do a 'Kirby Conference' on this?"

What I saw happening was that my students were paying closer attention to both the
content and the language in their assignments. From that I developed my first teacher
training programs around "interestingness" and "technical skillfulness," calling the
program The HIT Writing Program, (Honing Interestingness and Technical skillfulness).
However, one summer after having given the HIT program to many teachers, it occurred
to me that a piece of writing can have an impact on a reader without it necessarily being
interesting, and that a writer's technical skillfulness really depended on the grade level,
age, and maturity of the writer. That's when I changed the program to The Writing IQ

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Program: Impact of the content and Quality of the language. However, I remain deeply
indebted to Dan Kirby and Tom Liner and their influential book, INSIDE OUT.

Where the content of this seminar process journal and resource guide came from:
This publication should prove to be very practical for you and your colleagues because
the content of both the journal and the guide has come from my experiences as a
classroom teacher and from feedback from hundreds of teachers in development
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programs that I have given over the years in many schools and graduate programs. To
add support to that, in the Appendix is a case report and some statements about this
program from teachers in one of those schools where, for two years, I facilitated them in
putting together their writing curriculum for grades 2-5.

Being a Writing Coach:
The key point I'm getting to is that if you were to function more as a writing coach than a
writing judge, you would be able to guide the process of developing writers at each step
of the way. Just as a violin teacher or a gymnastics instructor guides learners, you would
begin exactly where each writer is rather than where some abstract standards say each
should be. The key question to ask of yourself is: Why wait until the assignment is done,
even in a college freshman course, to give instruction?

By being a writing coach rather than being a writing judge, you can avoid putting
children in the trap of being given instruction after the fact. Instead you can be giving
them developmental instruction before and during the writing process (See Writing-as-
Process in Review Section). A coach looks to see what can be built on, what needs to be
honed, what needs to be modified. An effective coach, particularly of young or beginning
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level writers of any age, begins not with what's wrong but with what are the writer's
strengths . He or she finds something to be built on even in the writing of very limited
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writers, especially if the assignments encourage writers to write about themselves and
what they know about. (For example, one way to do this is by first assigning the genre of
personal narratives. It is the best genre to build all other genres from because it builds
confidence in writers by allowing them to write about what they know.)

Professional Writing:
Let me put this call for coaching into perspective. I work for a publishing company as a
critical reader. All manuscripts to be published by this publisher have been selected first
by an in-house committee of manuscript readers. They make suggestions that are passed

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on to the authors for consideration. After the authors make what they feel are the needed
modifications, the manuscripts are then sent to several external critical readers, such as I,
who individually, make suggestions for the manuscript. Again, these suggestions are
passed on to the authors, and after the authors make any additional modifications they
feel are needed, the manuscript goes to the publisher's content editor who edits the
content and then finally to a proofreading editor for final changes. In most cases it is a
year to a two-year process from original proposal to final publication. Lots of coaching
and editing takes place during this time.

Additionally, I write and have published several business training guides and dozens of
professional articles. Before I submit any writing to a publisher, including the manuscript
of this journal, I send it to my personal editor for critiquing. My editor makes suggestions
and critical remarks (coaching me) that I weigh carefully before modifying my work.
This is true for all professional writers, even those who make good money as writers.
Why then is it that so many teachers fail to take a writer through this fine-tuning process
but instead give an assignment and then judge it after something is written? Are we
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teachers expecting our young, developing writers to be more proficient in their writing
skills than professional writers ?
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Sure, I know the argument: Teachers have 20-30 students per class and there just isn't
time to individualize writing instruction, especially since many teachers are now pressed,
they think, to get their students ready for state tests. Respectfully, I say, nonsense.
Teachers - at any grade level - who have learned to become writing coaches, and who, for
example, use the practice of writing workshop (See Best Classroom Practices Guide.),
and who have developed writing guides such as you will from this journal, and who have
taught their students to be peer coaches and self-assessors (See Best Classroom Practices
Guide.), find that they can individualize their teaching of writing, as you too, will learn.
Further, you will see from a case study included in this introduction, and to which I can
personally testify from my own classroom teaching experiences, that students in such
classes tend to do excellently on state tests.

Final Thoughts:
1. As stated above, in this publication the encouragement is for you and your colleagues
to develop the commonalities rather than having them imposed on you. The curriculum,
then, becomes yours.

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2. Though you are looking to build commonality into the teaching of writing, the
curriculum you build should not be considered as the only way one can or should teach
writing. Rather, the curriculum you create should be limited to a select few, but key,
common terms, practices, and assessments. That leaves room for each teacher to still
practice her/his unique style of teaching and still meet each class’ unique needs.
3. Once the curriculum is created and implemented, it regularly should be revised and
refined, when experience and changing needs call for such revision and refinement.

SUGGESTED STRUCTURE(S) FOR A SEMINAR/TRAINING PROGRAM:

Ideally, in a given building, it would be helpful if all teachers who teach writing attended
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the seminar and worked in grade level groups. Some schools have held separate seminars
for each grade level; others have brought together representative teachers from the
various grade levels who, after the seminar, train their grade level colleagues in the
seminar outcomes.

In any of these arrangements, a facilitator would be helpful; however, because the
outcomes of this program are to be arrived at primarily by the classroom teachers, it
would be best if the facilitator is someone who is highly objective and does not have a
predetermined curriculum in mind.

Ideally, the lower grades should tell the next level grade what terms, practices, and
assessments they, in the lower grades, are using, and so on up the grade levels.
Throughout the school year, the lower grades also should inform the next level grade of
any changes made in their program. Developmentally, it works better that way than if it is
the upper grades telling the lower ones what to do. And it is most important that there is a
continuing dialog between all grades and all schools in the district.

Materials Needed for the Activities in the Journal
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1. Each teacher should bring to the first session copies of three unmarked sample pieces
of writing from his/her grade. Have enough copies of these three samples for each of the
teachers of the same grade level. One sample should be of a weak piece, one of an

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average piece, and one of a strong piece. These samples should also be free of the writers'
names.
2. Someone should make certain that a flip chart or, even better, two or more flip charts,
and markers are available in the seminar room. Groups will be writing ideas on the flip
chart and then those pages will be posted in the seminar room. (Flip chart paper and/or
large sheets of newsprint paper will also work.) Masking tape will also be necessary for
posting the pages.

CHARGE TO TEACHERS OF WRITING:

I would encourage all of you who teach writing to do lots of writing yourselves. It
humbles you as a teacher of writing, particularly if you try to get something published,
and it moves you away from being a guardian of correct spelling, grammar and usage as
it moves you instead toward being a coach of effective writing.

Best wishes to all who teach and especially to those who teach writing; it can be a most
rewarding experience. Jim Evers, Nanuet, NY, 2004

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PART ONE:
SEMINAR PROCESS AND CURRICULUM
DEVELOPMENT JOURNAL

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JOURNAL SECTION ONE:

EXPLORING PERSONAL AND COLLECTIVE STANDARDS

STEP 1: CLARIFYING YOUR THOUGHTS ABOUT THE TEACHING OF
WRITING
Note: Some of the activities you will be doing are elementary in nature because they are designed
to give you a reminder of some “elemental” aspects of writing and of teaching writing. Also,
since many of these activities are to be used with your students, it is best if you try them first,
yourself.

ACTIVITY A.

Purpose: To give yourself a record of some of your thoughts, concerns, dreams, and
aspirations about the teaching of writing.

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Task: Use as much time as you need to freely write any thoughts you may have about
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the teaching of writing in general as well as the teaching of writing in your classroom, in
your school, and in your district.

12

ACTIVITY B.
Purpose: To get everyone talking about the teaching of writing so as to gain some
clarity, especially as it pertains to your local realities.
Caution: Make a collective effort to keep this session from becoming a gripe session or one that
focuses on what’s wrong with the teaching of writing, or with the administration. Instead, let this
session be a way of posting thoughts, concerns, dreams, and aspirations. Working on related
problems will happen later throughout the process.

Task: After completing Activity A, start a sharing session with your colleagues, and as
you and your colleagues share, record for yourself any of the ideas you wish to record in
this journal. Also have someone list on a flip chart the key topics shared. Post this flip
chart page on the meeting room wall.

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STEP 2. COLLECTING LOCAL BEST CLASSROOM PRACTICES

ACTIVITY C.

Purpose: To give yourself a record of what you feel are your best practices in the
teaching of writing.

Task: Take as much time as you need to record below what you know are your best
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practices for the teaching of writing.

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ACTIVITY D.

Purpose: 1) to honor the best practices of yourself and of each other
2) to cross enrich each other in doing so
Suggestion: Regularly, share best practices with each other, occasionally model best practices
for each other, and even do some co-teaching with others. Further, it also would be beneficial for
the teachers in a given school and in the school district to have a computer data-base of best
practices which includes the names of who can give help to others wanting to learn more about
how to use a given best practice.
Task: Have a sharing session with your colleagues, and record for yourself those ideas
that you would like to possibly incorporate into your teaching of writing. Also, again on a
flip chart page, have someone record a list of the best practices that come out in the
sharing. Post this flip chart page on the meeting room wall. As you listen to others,

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record for yourself, in space below, the best practices you would like to know more
about.

STEP 3. IDENTIFYING OTHER WIDELY-USED BEST CLASSROOM PRACTICES

ACTIVITY A:

Purpose: To continue the commitment to build on your experiences, and to review and
then discuss widely used best practices:
Task:
On the list below of widely-used classroom practices in teaching writing do the
following:
1. Put a check next to the practices you already use.
2. Put an asterisk next to any that you would like to know more about.
___ writing-as-process

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___ writer’s workshop
___ mini-lessons
___ portfolios
___ teacher conferencing
___ peer conferencing
___ writer’s chair
___ talk-write
___ free writing
___ speed planning
___ writer’s journal or journaling
___ demand writing
___ genre and multi-genre writing
___ writing across the curriculum
___ using handbooks
___ studying the history of language and specifically the English language

STEP 4. REVIEWING KEY RESOURCES
ACTIVITY A.
Purpose: In the handouts at most training programs, presenters often include a list of
resources. These are usually found at the back of the handout pack but are seldom
reviewed in the program. However, because The Writing I.Q. Program is built from a
synthesis of several key resources, and in further keeping with the commitment that the
program begins with you, the list of resources is given here, early on.
Task: Use this list just as you did the list of Best Practices. To do that:
A. Read the list of resources below and put a check mark next to the ones with which you
are familiar.
B. Add an exclamation mark next to those you feel are important or good
resources for your colleagues to know about.
C. Put a question mark next to any resource that you would like to know more about.
D. Finally, add any resources that you, or others, feel are missing but belong on this list.

ON TEACHING WRITING
___K-8, after THE END: Teaching Creative Revision. Barry Lane, Heinemann

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___K-8, A Fresh Look at Writing. Donald H. Graves, Heineman

___K-8, Reviser’s Toolbox. Barry Lane, Discover Writing Press

___K-8, The Art of Teaching Writing. New Edition, Lucy Calkins, Heinemann

___K-8, How's It Going?: A Practical Guide to Conferencing. Carl Anderson,
Heinemann

___8-12, Inside Out: Developmental Strategies for Teaching Writing. Dan Kirby & Tom
Liner, Boynton/Cook (Heinemann)

___8-12, Beat Not The Poor Desks. Marie Ponsot & Rosemary Deen, Heinemann

___8-12, Writing With Passion. Tom Romano, Heinemann

___ 8-12, Author's Insights: Turning Teenagers Into Readers and Writer. Donald Gallo,
Boynton/Cook (Heinemann)

___K-12, Writing and the Writer. Frank Smith, Holt, Rinehart, & Winston

___K-12, Drawing Your Own Conclusions. Fran Claggett, Heinemann

___K-12, Live Writing: Breathing Life Into Your Words. Ralph Fletcher, Avon Books

___K-12, Writing Workshop. Ralph Fletcher & JoAnn Portalupi, Heinemann

___ K-12, Portfolio Source Book. Vermont Portfolio Institue, discoverwriting.com

ON TEACHING WRITING ACROSS THE CURRICULUM
___Roots in the Sawdust,.Anne Ruggles Gere, National Council of Teachers of English

___Learning to Write, Writing to Learn. John Mayher, et. al., Heinemann

___Writing & Learning Across the Curriculum. Nancy Martin, et. al., Heinemann

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___Writing to Learn. Willim Zinsser, Harper and Row

___ The Journal Book. Toby Fulwiler, ed., Boynton/Cook-Heinemann

___ The Interdisciplinary Teacher’s Handbook. Stephen Tchudi & Stephen Lafer,
Boynton/Cook (Heinemann)

ON HANDBOOKS
___ K-12, The Write Source Series of Handbooks, Houghton Mifflin

___ K-12, The Right Handbook. Pat Belanoff, et al, Boynton/Cook (Heinemann)

ON TEACHING

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DEVELOPING


By
Jim Evers


DEVELOPING
20

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION...................................................................................................1 -
10
Bane of Superintendent's Day
Three Principles for Teachers of Writing
What You Can Expect from Using This Process Journal
Why a Common Curriculum is Needed
Some Classroom Issues
Putting Marks on Papers
Rubrics and Guides
Writer's Guide and Assessment tool
Back Ground of the Writing I.Q. Program
Being a Writing Coach
Where the Content of this Publication Came From
Professional Writing
Final Thoughts
Suggested Structure for Seminar
Charge to Teachers

PART ONE
SEMINAR PROCESS AND CURRICULUM DEVLEOPMENT JOURNAL........11

Section One:
EXPLORING LOCAL
REALITIES.....................................................................................11
Step 1. Clarifying Your Thoughts About
writing....................................................11
Step 2. Collecting Local Best
Practices...................................................................14
Step 3. Identifying Other Widely-Used Best
Practices...........................................16
Step 4. Reviewing Key
Resources..........................................................................16

Section Two:
BUILDING THE WRITING IQ GUIDE AND ASSESSMENT TOOL
Step 1. Critiquing Collected Writing
Samples........................................................22
Step 2. Putting it All Together in a Writing I.Q. Writers Guide and
Assessment Tool....................................................................................................26
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___ The Courage to Teach. Parker J. Palmer, Jossey-Bass Publishers

ON WRITING FOR ONE’S SELF AND FOR PUBLICATION
___ A Writer’s Notebook: Unlocking the Writer Within You. Ralph Fletcher, Avon

___ Accidental Genius: Revolutionize Your Thinking Through Private Writing, Mark
Levy, Berrett-Koeheler

___Discovering the Writer Within. Bruce Ballenger and Barry Lane, Writer's Digest

___Writing Down the Bones. Natalie Goldberg, Shambala Press

___Writing Toward Home. Georgia Heard, Heinemann

___ Writing for Self Discovery. Barry Lane, Writer's Digest

___ How to Write the Story of Your Life. Frank P. Thomas, Writer's Digest

WEB SITES:
___www.thewritesource.com ( lots of ideas for teaching writing. I’ve worked for them.)
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___www.merlynspen.com (a magazine that publishes children’s writing)
___www.kids-space.org (place for kid’s writing)
___ www.discoverwriting.com
___www.schoolnotes.com (place for teachers and schools to post notes, free)
___www.discoverwriting.com (Barry Lane’s site)
___www3.sk.sympatico.ca/fiss/newpage1.htm (Saskatchewan’s excellent resource; note:
The site address begins with www3. If you put a dot after the www, you will not reach
the site.) Be sure to bookmark any of these sites.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

ACTIVITY B.
Purpose: To become more familiar with resources and to cross enrich each other about
them.
Task: Have a brief sharing session with your colleagues about the resources and their
importance to your program. Keep a record of additional resources. Also, record who

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seems to be a good source person of a given resource, and who has any given resource
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and would be willing to share it. Consider collecting your resources into a professional
collection on the teaching of writing.

JOURNAL SECTION TWO:

BUILDING THE WRITING IQ WRITER'S GUIDE AND ASSESSMENT TOOL

STANDARDS:
Most states now have established standards for student writing, and it is important that
you know and understand these. However, it also is important that you know and
understand two other sets of standards. These two may be similar to those of your state
but they have a stronger effect and influence than your state's on the teaching and the
assessing of writing in your classroom and in your school. They are:
1. your own personal set of standards for writing
2 the unwritten collective set of standards of all teachers in your school and in your
district for the teaching of writing

After so many years of coaching teachers in how to be effective as teachers of writing,
and having observed many who have been trained in the state’s standards or in holistic
scoring, I’ve found that when they are assessing a piece of writing, most will resort to a
personal set of standards. They make personal judgements that essentially encompass
deep-seated concepts of what an effective piece of writing is and what it isn’t. It is true
even of those who have participated with others in creating a rubric. This is because
judgement, almost always, is a personal call.

23

Let me illustrate how this is so. Most of us would agree that editors of publishing
companies who make decisions about selecting a manuscript for publication would all
have similar standards for what constitutes a publishable manuscript and what does not.
However, every editor will tell you that on more than one occasion, they have turned
down a manuscript which they judged not worthy of being published, and then
discovered later that an editor in another publishing company found the same manuscript
to be worthy of publication. Worse, some of these turned-down pieces have become
highly successful publications. One contemporary example is that of the popular (and
quite ubiquitous) Chicken Soup series of books. It is said that over 100 editors turned
U U

down the first manuscript before the current publisher chose to publish the first book.
.
A Principle of this Publication:
Assessing writing is a judgement call, and it is so because writing is an art that requires
U

but goes far beyond the strictures of standards and rubrics .
U

Standards and rubrics can be used to guide instruction and assessment without locking
either into a rigid system, and in keeping with the commitment of this journal and guide,
you will begin the process that leads to effective teaching of writing by first focusing on
you and your strengths.

The writer's guide/assessment tool that you build will come from your personal set of
standards and from your colleagues' collective personal sets of standards.
Once you create a guide for your grade level, you should give it to your students, along
with an understanding of, and training in, applying it. Having done this, you will
eventually discover that your guides will equip your students with writing skills that will
do them well regardless of who reads or assesses their writing, including the state's
readers.

A WRITING REALITY:
Anytime you (or anyone else) read something that has been written, you are making
mental judgements about the content and about the language. You judge the content by
the impact it makes on you, and you judge the language by the quality of it as used by the
author. Even though the two work together to create the whole, most likely there are
certain characteristics and standards that you look for in each.

24

TWO KEY POINTS:
1. The characteristics and standards you look for in any writing represent your personal
internal rubric.
2. You have both an obligation and a responsibility to let any writers whom you teach
and whose work you assess know and understand your rubric before they begin doing
U U

any writing for you.

Suggestion:
1. It would be best if the lowest of all grades did its guide/assessment tool first so that the
next grade level can build on that and so on up the grade levels. Developmental learning
works best when it builds that way.
2. Do not assume that once the guide/assessment tool is filled in it is finished. It should
be revised and adjusted regularly based on actual classroom experiences using it. And
students, once they become experienced in using the guide/assessment tool, can/should
be involved in the revisions of it, at least for their classroom and possibly for their grade
level. The tool is never finished, for just as life moves and changes, and as people move
and change so, too, must the Writing I.Q. Writer's Guide and Assessment Tool move and
change.

STEP 1. CRITIQUING COLLECTED WRITING SAMPLES
It's time now to turn to the writing samples you have brought to the workshop. You
should have with you enough unmarked copies of your three writing samples (a weak, an
average, and a strong paper) to eventually give each of your grade level colleagues an
unmarked set of your three.

NOTE: IF THIS SESSION SHOULD END BEFORE GOING ON TO THE REST OF
THE ACTIVITES IN THE JOURNAL, BE SURE TO SAVE ALL POSTED FLIP
CHART PAGES FOR LATER ACTIVITIES.

ACTIVITY A.

Purpose: To have, for yourself, three samples of how you critique a weak, average, and
strong piece of writing at your grade level.

25

Task: Working alone, read or re-read each sample that you’ve brought and write on them
any comments that you normally would make if you were going to return this paper to
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the writer.

ACTIVITY B.

Purpose: For everyone, at a given grade level or at your table, to have several samples of
how they critique the three levels of writing at this grade level.
Task: Have everyone read and mark all three unmarked copies of everyone else's three
samples.

ACTIVITY C. Working with Weak Papers

Purpose: To collect generalized criteria used for weak papers at your grade level
Task:
A. Have a recording person at the flip chart record generalizations each of you have
about the characteristics of weak papers at your grade level.
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B. Post this page.
C. Record any notes to yourself below.

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ACTIVITY D. Working with Average Papers

Purpose: To collect generalized criteria used for average papers at your grade level
Task:
A. Do the same for average papers as you did for the weak papers.
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B. Post this page.
C. Record any notes to yourself below:

27

ACTIVITY E. Working with Strong Papers

Purpose: To collect generalized criteria used for strong papers at your grade level.
Task:
A. Do it one more time for the strong papers.
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B. Post this page.
C. Record any notes to yourself below:

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STEP 2. PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER INTO A GUIDE/ASSESSMENT TOOL
When you look at most writing rubrics and writing guides, you find that the criteria on
these can be divided into two categories: content and language. And because we know
that assessing any writing is a judgement call, the Writing I.Q. Program takes the position
that one’s judgement centers on the IMPACT of the content and the QUALITY of the
U U U

language . Therein lies the title: The Writing I.Q. Program and you are going to create a
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guide built around these two categories: Impact of the Content and Quality of the
language.

In this section, you are going to create a writer's guide, similar in some ways to others
that already exist, but different in that it is created by you and your colleagues. But first:
Why use a writer's guide? Here's the key reason: it's the fairest thing to do for your
U

students because even if you don't have a guide, you still have one hidden in your mind
and it surfaces whenever you read a student's piece of writing . The journaling you've
U

been doing so far has been to help you bring your mental writer's guide or assessment
rubric to the surface. Once you've done that, you can share it with your students and more
consciously use it when you do assess their writing. Further, if you give a copy of it to

29

each student, and you teach them how to use it, you have moved away from the old
approach of having the students play "guess what the teacher wants."

Most, if not all, writing guides and rubrics usually rate writing at four levels, from weak
to strong. Some even have six. Simply by looking visually at most guides, one can sense
that they are far too complex to be of meaningful value to writers as well as to most
teachers who assess the writing. Therefore, it is the position of the Writing I.Q. Program
that, if you are going to use a rubric or a guide, it should have no more than three levels.
That's why you were asked to work on weak, average, and strong level papers, and now
you have a collection of criteria posted on flip chart pages for these three levels of
papers.

Because the terms weak, average, and strong, are too judgmental, especially for young
writers, the Writing I.Q. Program is calling these Beginning, Developing, and
Advanced.
Also, we are calling this a writing tool and an assessment tool because it is to be used for
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both: first as a guide for writers as they are working on an assignment and second as an
assessment tool for anyone who works with the writer in assessing the assignment.

Your students will need to know the following:
1. what constitutes a weak, a developing, and advanced level paper at your grade level,
2. how to use the guide/assessment tool for self-help and peer help
3. that any assessment of the piece will be about the piece not about the writer (e.g. a
teacher might say to a writer, "I feel that your piece certainly is underway and is at a
beginning level [giving specific ways you see that it is underway]. Now, what might
you do to move it into a developing level or an advanced level?)
4. that the writer's guide can be changed and modified by student suggestions as well as
by
teacher suggestions, throughout the school year, as the reality of using it exposes
what
is needed
Resource: An excellent resource for conferencing is How's It Going?, by Carl Anderson

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The writing-tool and an assessment-tool that you will now develop will look like this:

STAGES OF
WRITING BEGINNING DEVELOPING ADVANCED
DEVELOPMENT
GRADE____

I MPACT OF
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CONTENT
31

Sentence
structure

QUALITY
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OF
LANGUAGE

Word
Choice

Mechanics

STAGES OF
WRITING BEGINNING DEVELOPING ADVANCED
DEVELOPMENT
GRADE____

I MPACT OF
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CONTENT

32

Sentence
structure

QUALITY
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OF
LANGUAGE

Word
Choice

Mechanics

ACTIVITY A.
Your next activity will be to fill-in the guide by collectively agreeing on the minimal
criteria that will be accepted for each of the two categories (Impact of Content and
Quality of Language) in each of the three levels (Beginning, Developing, Advanced) at
your grade level.

Purpose: To build a Writing I.Q. Guide/Assessment Tool for your grade level that
incorporates the minimal common criteria for a Beginning, Developing and Advanced
level piece of writing.
Task:

33

Look at criteria comments you have posted on the flip chart page for the weak papers
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and, through discussion, decide for each if it is about the Impact of Content (IC) or if it is
about the Quality of the language (QL). It doesn’t matter if the comments are positive or
negative. Have them fit into either category.
1. On another flip chart page, draw a blank version of the Writing IQ Guide/Assessment
Tool and then through discussion fill in the minimal criteria that you collectively agree
belong in the Impact of Language category for a beginning (weak) paper and the minimal
criteria that you collectively agree belong in the Quality of Language category.
2. Using the posted criteria/comments about average papers, fill in the guide/assessment
tool sections for developing (average) papers.
3. Do the same for the advanced (strong) papers.
4. Have someone copy the now filled in guide/assessment tool and make copies of it for
all teachers at your level and for the teachers at the level immediately after your level.

ACTIVITY B.

Purpose: To categorize all critiques as either Content or Language.
Task:
As a group, look at each critique on the three common critiques flip chart pages and
mark each critique with an “C” or with an “L” depending on whether it is a critique of
the Content or of Language (grammar, spelling, punctuation, etc.).

You now have a collection of common critiques that you and your colleagues agree are
helpful for writers at your grade level, and you’ve indicated whether each critique is a
Content critique or a Language critique. What’s important to remember here is that these
common critiques are what you collectively have agreed on . They reflect your local
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realities, not imposed ones.

AN ADDITIONAL KEY POINT: You have both an obligation and a responsibility to
let any writers whom you teach and whose work you assess know and understand your
U U

locally created writing guide/assessment tool (or rubric, if you prefer) before they begin
doing any writing for you.

34

Resource Note: There are plenty of guides and rubrics available these days. States have
published them, testing services such as Educational Records Bureau (ERB) have them,
and many schools have created them. As I said, my problem with most of these is that
they are too fractional, breaking writing into too many segments that are judged apart
from the total piece. I'm even worried that the Writing IQ Writer's Guide and Assessment
Tool will fall into that trap. However, by keeping everyone aware of the two categories
of Impact and Quality, I feel there will be less focus on segments and more on the total
piece.

Years ago I was trained in using the Diedrich Scale, a precursor to today's ubiquitous
rubrics. In truth, I never used the Diedrich Scale in my classrooms because I found that it
confused writers more than coached them. Instead, I was found that students and I
preferred Dan Kirby and Tom Liner's two categories: interestingness and technical
skillfulness, which became the model for the IQ Guide.

STEP 3. USING THE WRITER'S GUIDE/ASSESSEMENT TOOL AND COACHING
WRITERS
I feel that teachers of writing have an obligation to give a writer's guide/assessment tool
to their students and to teach them how to use it themselves while they write or when
they do any peer coaching. Teachers should also use it when they are coaching students
in a writing conference. Further, I feel that it is quite helpful to teach the parents how to
use it when they are coaching their child's writing at home. Here's how other teachers and
I have used it:

Self Coaching/Assessing:
Once each student has a copy of the grade's writer's guide/assessment tool, he/she should
be taught how to use it for self-coaching. For this to make sense, you might want to make
copies of a beginning, developing, and advanced paper that were written by students at
this grade level (possibly saved from previous year, or from another teacher's class). The
papers should not have the writers' names on them nor have content that might make it
easy for some students to identify the writers. What is true of self-coaching is also true of

35

self assessing: using the writer's guide to make a final assessment of a paper before
handing it in.

Using the sample papers, show very specifically (not abstractly) why each is at the level
it is at and explain the criteria in the content and language sections of each level paper.
When students feel they understand, then ask them to regularly use the guide before they
submit a paper to you and/or before they work with a peer in peer coaching. Everyone
should begin to use the language of the tool whenever discussing a paper.

Peer Coaching/Assessing:
Peer coaching is exactly what its name implies: students coaching each other. And it
works quite effectively if all use the class' writer's guide/assessment tool. There are
several ways peer coaching can be structured: one-on-one, a group coaching one, a group
coaching all in the group, or the entire class coaching a student. For any type of peer
coaching, some training is necessary. First, all who are willing to coach must be very
familiar with the class' writer's guide/assessment tool. Second, the person being coached
must be willing, not forced, to receive coaching, Third, and this takes a lot of practice, all
coaches must be taught to make concrete rather than abstract comments about another's
writing. Instead of saying,
"I like all of your details.", get them to say which specific details they like and why.
Further, it is best to have coaches begin with the strengths of the paper (content and
language) before making any suggestions (not corrections), again being as specific and
concrete as possible.

I've trained students in peer coaching by having five at a time come together with their
pieces during writing workshop, and each person reads his/her paper and the others coach
while I facilitate, making certain that they are speaking to the writer's guide and are being
concrete. A favorite metaphor that I've taught students over the years is that of the
"empty wrapper." It's one that really sticks with them, as testified by many former
students who come back and tell me that they regularly use it. Most school children have
had the experience of another student coming to them with a stick of gum and saying,
"Here, you want a stick of gum?" The recipient gladly takes the stick only to discover
that the giver has removed the gum and neatly replaced the aluminum foil, making it look
like a stick of gum. THAT'S AN EMPTY WRAPPER, and anytime a child makes a
statement in class that is abstract but without anything concrete to back it up, THAT'S
AN EMPTY WRAPPER.

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Kids love this metaphor.

Teacher Coaching (conferencing)/Assessing:
This is the teacher in a one-on-one conference with a student, and again, as with self- and
peer coaching and assessing, the comments must be centered around the writer's
guide/assessment tool, they must be strengths-based before suggestions-based, and they
must be specific rather than abstract empty wrappers.

Resource: Again, an excellent resource for conferencing is How's It Going?, by Carl
Anderson, Heinemann

Parent Coaching/Assessing:
I feel it is important to teach the parents how to effectively coach their children as writers
rather than being correctors of the papers. One way for doing that is to have a Write
Night for parents at which you take them through writing-as-process and explain to them
how to be a coach by using the class' writer's guide/assessment tool. And don't forget to
have all the teachers at your grade level use the guide, let the teachers in the next grade
know your guide, and train the administration to use the guide, too.

ACTIVITY C.

Purpose: To review your own and your peer's views on using the Writer's
Guide/Assessment tool and on coaching.

Task:
In the space below record your thoughts about the tool and about coaching. Then share
these with your peers and record any additional thoughts or ideas you may collectively
have.

37

JOURNAL SECTION THREE:

38

EXPLORING KEY REALITES OF WRITING
In this section, you will explore some key elemental realities of writing, first by doing
some actual writing yourself and then by reviewing some related resource material. The
writing activities are simple experiences that are used with students, but they will prove
helpful to you if you do them yourself before having your students do them.

ACTIVITY A.

Purpose: to experience the building of fluency through free writing.
Task:
Free Writing: In the space below, write non-stop for three minutes about anything that
comes to mind. Let your words go where your mind leads. Pay no attention to structure,
spelling, grammar, or punctuation. Just write.

39

A WRITING REALITY:

40

Writing is a skill, and as such it must be practiced if it is to be learned.

Supportive Resource Material:
Those of you who have been teaching writing for some time may remember the works of
Ken Macrorie and the works of Peter Elbow, the early promoters of free writing/speed
writing. We all owe a huge debt to Macrorie and Elbow. They got us out of the role of
being grammar and spelling police and into the role of being writers and coaches of
writers.
A contemporary resource you may want to turn to in your own personal use of free
writing comes from outside of education. It is ACCIDENTAL GENIUS: Revolutionize
Your Thinking Through Private Writing, by Mark Levy (Berrett-Koeheler). What
Macrorie and Elbow called free writing, Levy calls "private writing," and his book shows
it as a way for stimulating thinking skills and finding ideas, as well as for improving
one's writing skills. To get the most out of Levy's book, you must do the exercises.
Powerful stuff.

In their book, Learning to Write/Writing to Learn (Boynton/Cook Heinemann), Meyer,
Lester, and Pradl, say that “Research indicates that the only way one learns to write is by
writing...there is no substitute for extensive experience with writing itself” (page 1).
Further, authors Ponsot and Deen (two authors who greatly influenced me; you will meet
them shortly), call "prolificness" an elemental skill of writing that needs to be regularly
practiced. Free writing is one of the quickest ways to begin building "prolificness" and
fluency. As children do free writing, they begin to become familiar with and comfortable
with putting words on page. Meyer, Lester, and Pradl refer to writing as “...a personally
engaging transaction through which the learner makes her own connections and builds
her own meaning.” Free writing is a good process for getting the transactions and
meanings flowing.

41

ACTIVITY B.

Purpose: To experience the minimal elements of an essay
Task:
A. Think of several opinions you have about any thing you know you could support with
key facts. Select one of your opinions and write this opinion as a simple sentence at the
dot below. Then go to “B."

.

B. Above, underneath the opinion sentence you’ve written, write one sentence of one
U U U U

factual proof to support your opinion.

You now have two elements: an opinion and a supportive fact.

A WRITING-REALITY: There are two minimal content elements in any essay: an
U

abstract (opinion) element and a concrete (supportive fact) element . If these two
U

elements, and only these two elements appear in a student’s writing, you have what could
be called a “weak” paper. Anything less should be considered an incomplete paper.

Supportive Resource Material:
The work on minimal elements of writing comes from two excellent resources written by
Rosemary Deen and Marie Ponsot: Beat Not The Poor Desk, Boynton Cook (now
Heinemann), 1998 and The Common Sense: What to Write, How to Write It, and Why,
Boynton/Cook (now Heinemann), 1985. Their work is based on experiences they’ve had
teaching writing seminars at Queens College, New York and in various public high
schools in the New York City area.

It is their point of view that once students of any age begin, through practice, to learn that
all writing is built around the two elements, an abstract statement and a concrete element,
their writing begins to take on shape. Yes, at first the shape may be repetitious and even

42

stilted (as in the “sandwich" structure that elementary schools like to use or in the
standard five paragraph essay that high schools often encourage), but through progressive
developmental writing experiences, students begin to realize that the effective writing is
really a dance between these two elements.

To help students build writing that is shaped around the abstract and the concrete, Ponsott
and Deen begin by encouraging students to practice two key genres: fables and family
parables. A fable, as most children know, is built around a concrete story and its abstract
aphorism (moral). Family parables are the personal narratives or family stories often told
in families and that carry a deeper message. Parables are also built around a concrete
story and its abstract moral (often implied rather than stated).

More about elemental writing can be found in Ponsot and Deen’s books, centering on
what they believe writing is: “an ordering of what the writer has in mind” (Common
Sense, 6). The key word here is “ordering,” and since most of the writing required in
schools is either a narrative or an expository essay, Ponsot and Deen give a lot of
direction in teaching the "orderings" of these two forms. And to all of this, they conclude
that the key to doing well in writing ("ordering") is to do it often and to work from the
elemental forms that already lie deep within us, particularly in our oral language
experiences: fables, parables, sermons, anecdotes, and even riddles, epitaphs, and
prayers...all covering an abstract and a concrete whole (See Beat Not The Poor Desk).

ACTIVTY C.

Purpose: to experience the "elementalness" of a fable
Task: Try writing a fable of your own about some animals whose words and actions
point to a moral. For example, a cat has been stalking a mouse's nest, and when the
mouse comes out, the cat traps him. Have a converstaion between the mouse and cat that
leads to an aphorism, moral, adage, or maxim.

43

A WRITING REALITY: A fable nicely shows the interactions of the concrete and the
abstract.

ACTIVITY D.

Purpose: to experience the elementalness of a family parable.
Task: Think of three or four family stories that are/were often told in your family.
Select one that you’d like to write as a parable that carries a deeper meaning and write
the story here:

44

A WRITING REALITY: A family parable nicely shows the interactions of the
concrete and the abstract.

45

ACTIVITY E.

Purpose: To experience the "elementalness" of an opinion essay
Task: Using the opinion/fact statement that you wrote earlier, or using any other opinion
that you’d like to write about, write a short, fact-packed essay about your opinion.

46

A WRITING REALITY: A fact-packed opinion-based essay nicely shows the
interactions of the concrete and the abstract.
Now that you have some samples of your own writing, look at each and decide
(privately) how well you did in the impact of the content and the quality of the language.

A WRITING REALITY: Anytime you (or anyone else) read something that has been
written, you are making mental judgements about the content and about the language.
You judge the content by the impact it makes on you, and you judge the language by the
quality of it as used by the author. Even though the two work together to create the
whole, most likely there are certain characteristics and standards that you look for in
each.

TWO KEY POINTS:
1. The characteristics and standards you look for in any writing represent your personal
internal rubric.
2. You have both an obligation and a responsibility to let any writers whom you teach
and whose work you assess know and understand your rubric before they begin doing
U U

any writing for you.

48

PART TWO:

A REVIEW OF BEST CLASSROOM
PRACTICES AND KEY RESOURCES

49

Review Section One:
WIDELY-USED BEST CLASSROOM PRACTICES

A. Writing-As-Process (Process Writing)
Simply put, coaching writing-as-process, also called process writing, means that you
guide the students through phases of the composing process. The phases have come to be
called prewriting, drafting (or first draft), revising, editing, and publishing. Though
writing-as-process is practiced in many elementary schools, it is an important practice for
writers in any grade.

Writing-as-process (process writing) is a practice that honors both the process and the
product, not one at the expense of the other. However, the phases of writing-as-process
are not meant to be rigidly linear but rather a guide to, and an understanding of, the flow
that leads from idea to product. Some writers often move back and forth in the phases,
and some occasionally even skip or quickly pass through one of the phases when they
feel the piece is ready for going on.

BACKGROUND of WRITING-AS-PROCESS
Teaching writing as a process is not a new practice. Good teachers of writing have long
taught that there is more to writing an assignment than just sitting down and beginning to
write. Some of us were taught that before writing, we had to do some planning (In my
day, the planning had to be a formal outline.), then we were to write the piece, and finally
we were to give it some careful editing before we handed in a clean copy. (And this was
before computers and word processors existed.)

The practice of teaching writing-as-process began to grow slowly in the 1960s, as articles
on it appeared in the various publications, especially those of the National Council of
Teachers of English (NCTE). Then in the late 1970s, writing-as-process got a great push
from the San Francisco area by the Bay Area Writing Project at the University of
California, Berkeley. As the practice spread, it gained significant momentum from the
work of Don Graves, and his associates, at the University of New Hampshire and the
National Institute of Education (NIE).

50

Graves' seminal and widely influential book, WRITING: Teachers & Children at Work
(Heinemann, 1983), helped to revolutionize the way writing is taught in schools
throughout the English speaking world. Another of Graves' books, A Fresh Look at
Writing (Heinemann, 1994), is a comprehensive resource of classroom practices for
teaching of writing.

Lucy Mc Cormick Calkins, one of Graves' associates at the University of New
Hampshire, has also become a major voice in revitalizing (awakening would be a better
word) the teaching of writing in the elementary grades. In her best selling book The Art
of Teaching Writing and her Writing Project at Teacher's College, Columbia University,
NY, Calkins shows writing workshop to be one of the key best practices in the teaching
of writing. (See Writer's Workshop that follows.)

There are good resources for activities and practices related to coaching writing-as-
process, but in keeping with the premise that there are some good practices already in
place in your classroom and in your school, you should review these local practices first.
For this, you might want to return to page xx to review your notes on Best Practices.

A caveat: Not all students like to make written plans before they write. Some will
strongly resist doing so. They prefer to jump right in and write. Peter Elbow in his book,
Writing Without Teachers, likes this approach. He calls this early draft a form of planning
from which several drafts may yet come leading to a strong piece of writing. Rather than
insist that all students do written plans for every piece of writing, it may be more
beneficial for the resistant writer to come to realize that an unplanned draft is but a
rehearsal. It needs to be carefully reviewed for revisions before writing a final draft.
Actually, many writers, myself included, find they do a lot more mental planning and
rehearsing that goes beyond any written plans. And, yes, on occasion, there will be
writers who write an exceptional or relatively exceptional piece on the first draft without
planning.

Some reluctant planners may find that they enjoy doing their plans visually as an art
piece. For help in encouraging this, see Drawing Your Own Conclusions by Fran
Claggett. (See also Beat Not The Poor Desks, by Ponsot and Deen.)

51

Activity 1. Best Practices for Coaching Writing-As-Process

Discuss with your colleagues key activities for helping students do prewriting, drafting,
revising, and editing. Have someone record these activities on a flip chart and then post
the chart. Next to each activity, write the names of teachers willing to mentor others in
using the activity. Record, below, activities that you already use and ones you intend to
use from your colleagues. Be sure to include the mentors' names.

52

SAMPLE PRACTICE FOR COACHING WRITING AS PROCESS

To make this practice clear to her middle school children,
Rosemary Faucette, a teacher in Arkansas, used a very creative
idea. She gave each student a container of multi-colored
Play-Doh and told them that they were going to sculpt a
pencil holder for their pens and pencils by following a process
similar to the writing process: planning the pencil holder, making
a first form, revising the first form, and then polishing
it into its final state.

As she led them through the sculpting process, Faucette
constantly compared the sculpting process to the writing process.
After the students had completed their pencil holders, Ms. Faucette
guided the students in noting in their journals how the two processes
were similar and what they had learned about the writing process
from the sculpting experience.

The next day, she asked the students to write a letter to her
explaining the writing process, without using their notes. She
got wonderful pieces of writing, showing that the students
learned well from this hands-on activity. One student told her
that he was now going to be a sculptor with words.
(From the article,"Using Play-Doh to Teach the Writing Process,"

53

Rosemary Faucette, in NCTE's Ideas Plus, Book 15, 1997.
See www.ncte.org/notesplus/ideas_classroom/play-doh.shtml)

SAMPLE PRACTICE FOR SHOWING THE NEED FOR DETAILS THAT FIT
AND FLOW

Here 's a successful activity I learned from Barry Lane, author of after THE END
(Heinemann 1995), and to whom I am indebted for many of my successful classroom
practices in coaching writing.

I am frequently invited into schools to model the coaching process. In one of my
modeling sessions, I do the following Barry Lane activity: I begin by asking the students
if they want to hear a story from my life when I was their age. "Yes," they collectively
shout.

"Okay, do you want to hear about when I was scared or when I was naughty?"

"Tell us the naughty story," they most often say. (I have both ready.)

"Well, once, when I was your age, I disobeyed one of my parents' rules and got in
trouble."
I wait a few seconds, looking at the expectant students (This is exactly how Barry does
it!) and then say, "Wasn't that a good story?"

Immediately, the students say, "That's not a story."

So I say, "Why not?"

One of them will say, "You didn't give any details." (Barry calls this the magic "D"
word.)

54

"Oh," I say, "you want details? Well here are some." I then proceed to give details about
Chicago where I grew up...lots of details, but they are all extraneous, ones that do not
speak to my naughty experience.

Eventually, someone's going to say, "What about being naughty?"

To which, I say, "You just said you wanted details, and so I gave you lots of details. You
didn't say details about my naughtiness." And then I add (and this is very important to get
across) "I can see that you understand that a story has to have details and that the details
have to fit the story. That's good, so here goes..."

I begin to tell the story, with details that fit, but this time I give the details in a disjointed
way (obviously out of sequence) and eventually some one's going to say, 'Your story is
out of order." And after probing about what that means, I eventually say, "Oh you want
details to be in sequence."

And then add (again very important), "I'm impressed that you know and understand that a
story needs details that both FIT and FLOW." (A content catch phrase that students
quickly take to!)

Finally, I apologize for being playful with them and say, "Now I will tell the story, as you
have explained to me, with details that FIT and FLOW. I then proceed to tell the story,
and when I get to the key moment of the story, I use another Barry Lane goodie: I
"explode the moment," with lots of sensory details. (See page 65 in Barry's after THE
END.)

After the story, I have the students recall details and the flow of the story. I further
explain (to 3 rd graders and up, including middle school, high school, and adults) the
P P

concept of "exploded moments." (In expository essays, the term becomes "exploded
idea.")

There's much more that a creative teacher can do with this activity, depending on the age
and attention level of the students. My favorite follow-up activity is to have the students
pair off and tell each other stories from their lives. While one tells the other listens for
FIT and FLOW. The listener shares what he/she heard and then the students switch
roles. Eventually, the activity leads to a cluster (web) of their story and a writing of a first
draft. I try to keep my modeling lesson and the follow-up activity within the allotted time
for Writing Workshop.

Activity 2. Key Resources of Coaching Writing-as-Process

Have a discussion with your colleagues about key resources each is familiar
U U

with for helping in the coaching of writing-as-process. Record your notes
here.

55

Other Key Resources for Coaching Writing-as-Process
In addition to the resources already mentioned of Don Graves, Lucy Calkins, the
Saskatchewan web site, the NCTE web site, and Barry Lane, teachers will find good stuff
in Lane's Reviser's Toolbox (Discover Writing Press, 1999) and his web site. Teachers
will also find good stuff in Ralph Fletcher's Live Writing (Avon Books, 1999), and in his

56

A Writer's Notebook (Avon Books, 1996). Most of these resources are used by
elementary teachers, but I've found them quite helpful in working with upper grade
students as well.

Specifically for the upper grades (but good for any writing coach), I often turn to Ponsot
and Dean's Beat Not the Poor Desks (Boynton-Heinemann 1982), Kirby and Liner's
Inside Out (Boynton-Heinemann 1981), Peter Elbow's Writing With Power (Oxford
University Press, 1981), John Mayher, Nancy Lester, and Gordon Pradl's Learning to
Write; Writing to Learn (Boynton-Heinemann 1983), and Tom Romano's Writing with
Passion (Boynton-Heinemann 1993.)

B. The Writing Workshop

Simply put, the writing workshop is a dedicated classroom time-period set aside for
students to work on writing and includes a variety of practices.

In the opening chapter of their book, Writing Workshop (Heinemann 2001),
Ralph Fletcher and JoAnn Portalupi, say it well:
Teaching kids how to write is hard. That's because writing is not so
much one skill as a bundle of skills that includes sequencing, spelling,
rereading, and supporting big ideas with examples. But these skills
are teachable. And we believe that a writing workshop creates an
environment where students can acquire these skills, along with
fluency, confidence, and desire to see themselves as writers (1).

Fletcher and Portalupi compare the writing workshop to a classroom of industrial arts
students in which each student or possibly group of students is busy working on a
personal project. The instructor may take a little time to show the whole class a specific
tool or a specific skill before the students go to their work area to work on the project.
The instructor usually moves about the room, checking how each project is going or
conducts a longer conference with a given student or project group.

In an hour's writing workshop, the little lesson is called the mini-lesson; it lasts usually
no more than ten minutes. The bulk of the time, say 40 minutes, is used for individuals or
groups working on a personal writing project or doing peer coaching or peer editing.
There is usually time saved for sharing some individual writing with the group. Many

57

teachers, as part of the sharing process, have a chair designated as the writer's chair. The
student who is sharing his/her paper sits in the writer's chair and reads to the group.

The important point of the writing workshop is that it is a dedicated time for everyone to
be working on writing. (Key Resource: Lucy Calkin's The Art of Teaching Writing)

ADDITIONAL NOTES FOR WRITING WORKSHOP

58

C. The Mini-Lesson
Usually given at the beginning of a writing workshop, a mini-lesson is a short -- ten

minutes, maximum -- lesson by the teacher on a very specific point or issue such as a

punctuation need, a grammar issue, a procedural issue, a writing technique (e.g. using
strong verbs, creating catchy leads, building transitions), or whatever specific item the

teacher feels would benefit the whole class. When the mini-lesson ends, the students go

to their own on-going writing project. The power of the mini-lesson comes from its well-

focused succinctness and the encouragement of the teacher for the students to apply what

they have learned into their writing. Children, parents, and other guests may be

encourged to give a mini-lesson, too. (Key resources for mini-lessons: Lucy Caulkin's

The Art of Teaching Writing, and Don Graves' A Fresh Look at Writing.)

ADDITIONAL NOTES ON MINI-LESSONS

60

D. Portfolios
In the same way that artists collect their work into a portfolio, so also writers in a writing

workshop classroom keep their writing in a portfolio. Some teachers and some schools

use the portfolio for assessing individual progress; others use it as a collection of work

that encourages the young writer to become aware of his/her personal efforts. Much has

been written about what should and should not go into a writer's portfolio, what should or

what should not be used for evaluating a given writer, and whether or not the portfolio is

the main source of a student's grade. The key here, as in all best practices, is that it is up

to you and your colleagues to determine how portfolios are to be used. (Key resources on

using portfolios: Don Graves' A Fresh Look at Teaching Writing, Graves' Portfolio

Portraits (with Bonnie Sunstein) and Barry Lane's Portfolio Source Book)

ADDITIONAL NOTES ON PORTFOLIOS

62

E. Self/Peer/Teacher/Parent Coaching/Conferencing
For all forms of coaching/conferencing, it is best to do some training in how to make a

session work well. They will work well if the participants use a writer's guide/assessment

tool and if the session is focused on specific strengths before focusing on specific

suggestions (Call them suggestions rather than weaknesses.). In making suggestions, the

responsibility of the coach is to let the piece remain the work of the writer, not the coach.

In other words, the coach should not rewrite the piece but instead coach the writer into

making revisions that the writer feels would improve the piece. (Key Resources on

Conferencing: Lucy Calkin's The Art of Teaching Writing, Don Grave's A Fresh Look at

Writing, and Carl Anderson's How's It Going?)

ADDITIONAL NOTES ON CONFERENCING

64

F. Talk-Write
There are several versions of this practice; here are two:

Put students into groups of two or three and have each group go to a section of the

blackboard or to a posted sheet of newsprint or oak tag, to do some writing as a team.

Either with a free choice of topic or with an assigned topic, have each team plan their

writing by talking it out while one member of the team writes what the group wants

written -- crossing out and changing as they progress towards a draft that will be shared

with the rest of the class.

Another version of this is to pair students and have each member of the pair tell the other
a story from his/her personal life (personal narrative), taking about three or four minutes

to do so. The listener listens, especially for details: are there enough, are there too many,

do they fit, and do they flow? The listener shares reactions with the speaker, and then the

roles switch so that the other member tells and the first one listens for details. After the

talk part comes the write part: each member then writes her/his story based on the oral

telling and on the suggestions of the listener.

ADDITIONAL NOTES ON TALK-WRITE

66

G. Free Writing/Speed Writing
In their journals, have students write for about five minutes, non-stop, either about an

open topic or a given topic. Let them know that the purpose of this is to give them

experience in being fluent, in putting thoughts on paper, and that correctness of grammar,

punctuation, and such will not be checked. Some teachers have students share what

they've written; others do not. If comments are made by listeners, stress that they must be

specific (concrete) rather than empty wrappers (abstract).

Speed writing is a variation of free writing. The writer's objective in speed writing is to
produce a high number of words about a given topic in a three minute time period.

After the time expires, the students each count the number of words they've written and

record that on the journal page. The next day, their objective is to write more words than

the day before, and so on until a comfortable flow is established for each individual.

Some students, just to gain a high word count will keep repeating a single word such as

the, the, the, or and, and, and. Instruct them that the words have to be written as thoughts

that flow and that "word stutters" don't count.

ADDITIONAL NOTES ON FREE WRITING/SPEED WRITING

68

H. Demand Writing
When students have to write an essay or any other genre within a set time limit for an in-

class test or for a standardized test, this writing is called demand writing. It is very

helpful to give students frequent practice experiences in doing demand writing. They

need to practice understanding the prompts of a demand assignment, and the doing of the

planning, the writing, and the revising all within the allotted time. Suggest to students

that in the allotted time, they use about 1/4 of the time for planning, 1/2 for writing, and

one 1/4 for revision. (Resources: Bookstores carry books for students preparing to take
national standardized tests. Most of these include demand-writing help. Also, in the

Appendix see "How to Write Effective Timed Essays [Demand-Writing].")

I. Speed Planning
As practice for demand writing, frequently give students a demand assignment for which

they must just do the planning within five minutes (or 1/4 of the allotted time for the full

demand writing). Share the critiquing of these so that students become competent and

comfortable in planning a demand piece of writing.

70

ADDITIONAL NOTES ON DEMAND WRITING AND SPEED PLANNING

71

J. Journal, Writer's Notebook, Journaling
"Journal" and "writer's notebook" are terms that both refer to an item in which a student

records thoughts, reactions, ideas, or anything else. "Journaling" refers to the specific use

of the journal. Journaling should be encouraged both in class and elsewhere. Some

teachers have students write responses to a piece of literature in their journals or

responses to the work of the day, and the teacher reads and responds to these entries.

Other teachers use it as a way for students to record their thinking without having to
share this with the teacher. A writer's notebook is used for recording ideas for and about

writing, in much the same way professional writers use a writer's notebook.

It is best to distinguish the journal and writer's notebook from a diary, which is very

personal and is not necessarily a storehouse of a writer's ideas and such like. (Most of the

key resources include something on journaling. The Key resource for writer's notebook is

Ralph Fletcher's A Writer's Notebook.)

ADDITIONAL NOTES ON JOURNALS, NOTEBOOKS AND JOURNALING

72

K. Genres
As more states are now requiring students to write demand essays of various genres, it is

important to give students experience and training in writing various genres. It is best to

find which genres your state usually uses. The various genres can include: personal

narrative, a report, autobiography, biography, creative story, journalistic piece; and

various types of essays such as expository/opinion, persuasion essay, problem solving,
cause and effect, compare and contrast, description, definition, discussion, reflection, and

review. Each has specific prompts that let the writer know which genre is expected.

ADDITIONAL NOTES ON GENRES

74

L. Multi-Genre Writing
In the upper grades, particularly, but also in all grades, some teachers are encouraging

students to mix various genres. Let a poem come into an essay, or a creative piece of

description or even a dramatic scene or dialog come into a report. In journalism, this is

called creative-non-fiction, a genre that has been in use for many years by writers. Some
students take well to it. (Key resource for multi-genre writing is Tom Romano's Writing

with Passion: Life Stories, Multiple Genres)

ADDITIONAL NOTES ON MULTI-GENRE WRITING

76

M. Writing Across The Curriculum
Writing across the curriculum has become a significant development in recent years as

more and more teachers are discovering the value of using writing in every subject. In

math, science, social studies, music, art, even physical education, teachers use journaling,
topical free writing, summary notes, reports, logs, demand-writing, and multi-genre

writing. And some standardized tests are now asking for writing in subject areas. (Key

Resources: John Mayher's Learning to Write; Writing to Learn, and Ann Gere's Roots in

the Sawdust)

ADDITIONAL NOTES ON WRITING ACROSS THE CURRICULUM

78

N. Handbooks
As language quality issues such as grammar, usage, and punctuation arise, teachers may
need to turn to sources such as handbooks for guidance. Handbooks are most helpful for

presenting mini-lessons on a given concept or convention of Standard English. (Key

Resources: any of the Write Source Series of handbooks for various grades through

college, and The Right Handbook by Pat Belanoff, et. al. Also, try creating a booklet of

the key conventions for your grade level. See the Appendix for "Common Errors and

Mistakes to Avoid in Using English.")

ADDITIONAL NOTES ON HANDBOOKS

80

O. History of English Language

English is a complex language that is often complicated for both native and non-native
speakers. Its rules and its exceptions to the rules of grammar, punctuation, and spelling
confuse many people. English became a complex language over the centuries because it
is an amalgamation of several other languages that have impacted its root as a Germanic
language. It has especially been influenced by French and Latin. When students learn the
fascinating history of English, they usually gain a deeper appreciation of English and its
complexities and a deeper appreciation of all languages.
(Resources: See the Appendix for "Brief History of English." Also, most libraries have
books on the history of languages, including English.)

ADDITIONAL NOTES ON HISTORY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE

82

P. Suggested Supportive Practices
1. Build a database of best practices to which all teachers contribute.
2. Create a colleague mentoring program for working with new teachers.
3. Train the parents in how to be writing coaches rather than judges or editors.

ADDITIONAL NOTES ON SUPPORTIVE PRACTICES

84

SUMMARY OF KEY RESOURCES

BOOKS

ON TEACHING WRITING
(K-12) after THE END: Teaching and Learning Creative Revision. Barry Lane.
Heinemann, 1993.
When children in the lower grades finish writing, they like to write in very large letters at
the bottom the words THE END. Building on that, Barry delightfully shows how to help
students of any grade level go back and revise what they've written. He gives lots of
practical activities and some excellent metaphors that help students understand how to

86

add more impact in their writing. One is his "exploded moment" metaphor in which he
helps the writer find the key moment of an experience and then explode it with sensory
details. Another is his suggestion to use mental binoculars to focus more tightly and more
clearly on a scene or on an idea one is writing about. After reading and learning from this
book, teachers will be much better equipped to get students to know that revision is an
ongoing, creative process, not just a clean-up process.

(K-8) A Fresh Look at Writing. Donald H. Graves. Heineman, 1994.
This book expands on Graves' 1983 seminal work, Writing: Teachers and Children at
Work, the book that gave so many teachers guidance in teaching writing and in the craft
of writing. In Fresh Look, Graves revisits in new ways many of the practices that have
now become widely incorporated in effective teaching of writing: conferencing,
portfolios, mini-lessons, record keeping, writing as process, and so much more. It's a
treasure-trove resource that inspires teachers to bring the joys of writing into their own
lives as well as into the lives of students.

(K-8) Reviser’s Toolbox. Barry Lane. Discover Writing Press, discoverwriting.com.,
1999.
As an in-demand speaker and workshop leader, Lane travels a lot and in so doing he has
collected hundreds of activities from teachers for making revision both fun and effective.
He literally has given us a toolbox loaded with tools.

(K-8) The Art of Teaching Writing. New Edition, Lucy McCormick Calkins. Heinemann,
1994.
Along with Don Graves, Lucy Calkins has had a profound influence on the teaching of
writing. More than anyone else, Calkins has championed the writing workshop as the
foundation of a school's language arts program. The first edition, published in 1986 and
widely used, put Calkins in the forefront of teaching writing in most of the English
speaking parts of the world. In this new eddition, she keeps all of the richness, wisdom,
and practicality of the original as she tells how she herself has grown as a teacher of
writing, as a parent, and as a writer since the first edition. It's a very honest and important
book; one that should be used by all teachers of writing.

(K-8) How's It Going?: A Practical Guide to Conferencing. Carl Anderson. Heinemann,
2000.

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