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Add your reflections for 1.2 here.

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EKC Asynchronous MS Writing Workshop Jamboard - Google Jamboard

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EKC Asynchronous MS Writing Workshop Jamboard

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An Ensuing Conference: Providing Critical Feedback to Raise Standards (5-8)

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Scroll to the last video to see a MS example!

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From A Teacher's Guide to Writing Conferences of The Classroom Essentials Series
Invite students to have a real give-and-take with you.

Even though in conferences you're a teacher talking to students, you're also a (more experienced) writer talking to (less experienced) fellow writers about what writers do-come up with topics, make a plan for a piece of writing, write a lead, develop a section
with detail, use commas in a series, and so on. In this give and take, you learn about what students are trying to do as writers and how well they're doing it, and the students learn how they can do their work better.

Speak in a conversational tone.

Tone is the foundation of the good relationships you want to develop with students over the course of the school year. Speaking in a warm, friendly manner puts students at ease and makes it more likely they will talk with you about what they're trying to do as writers. What you learn from this talk helps you assess students and decide what you should teach to help them grow.

Sit alongside students, at their eye level.

How you sit with students helps you establish a positive tone in conferences. You might grab a nearby empty seat or sit on one that you carry with you around the classroom. As you sit, it's important to make frequent eye contact with students and make sure that your
facial expressions show an interest in what students are telling you.

Use "active listening" strategies.

For example, give some wait time after asking a question so that students have the time and space they need to come up with a response. Ask students to "say more" about what they tell you. And repeat what children say to check that you're hearing them correctly.
Using these strategies shows that you have a real interest in what students are saying and that you're really trying to understand them. Students will usually respond by talking to you more.

The goal of a writing conference is to teach students something about writing that they can use in the future. If you add to students' writing repertoires in every conference, they become better writers over time.

Learn more at Heinemann.com

Carl Anderson is one of the nation's leading experts on teaching writing to students in grades K-12. He dedicates his energies exclusively as an education consultant and writer.

Carl recently worked for Teachers College Reading and Writing Project at Columbia University as a Lead Staff Developer, providing staff development in the teaching of writing grades K-8. He spent school days in New York City elementary and middle schools demonstrating effective teaching in the writing workshop and coaching teachers. He gave day-long workshops for teachers at Teachers College on launching the writing workshop, conferring with student writers, mini-lessons, and developing curriculum for the writing workshop.

Carl is the author of numerous books including the bestselling How's It Going? A Practical Guide to Conferring with Student Writers, as well as Assessing Writers and the series Strategic Writing Conferences: Smart Conversations that Move Young Writers Forward Grades 3-6.

His latest book, A Teacher's Guide to Writing Conferences, is part of the Classroom Essentials series. Full of classroom video, the book helps teachers understand the underlying principles and reasons for conferring with students, and how to make writing conferences a part of teachers' daily routines.

Follow Carl on Twitter @ConferringCarl

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The goal of a writing conference is to teach students something about writing that they can use in the future. If you add to students' writing repertoires in every conference, they become better writers over time.

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from Writing Pathways

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Planning Process

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Chapter 7 from A Guide to the Writing Workshop

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Chapter 7 from A Guide to the Writing Workshop

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"Inside the Minilesson"

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Use this resource to keep track of potential conferences and conferences you've had.

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Tips to Remember for Teaching with a "Forever Stance"

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Tips to Remember for Teaching with a "Forever Stance"

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Article summarizing feedback study. (Original Study embedded)

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Every teacher or coach worth their salt knows that there's no moment more important than the moment feedback is delivered. Do it correctly, and the learner takes a step forward. Do it poorly, and the reverse happens.

The deeper question is, what's the secret of great feedback? We instinctively think that effective feedback is about the quality of the information - telling the learner to do this and not that. But is this true, or is there something else going on?

A team of psychologists from Stanford, Yale, Columbia, and elsewhere recently set out to explore that question. They had middle-school teachers assign an essay-writing assignment to their students, after which students were given different types of teacher feedback.

To their surprise, researchers discovered that there was one particular type of teacher feedback that improved student effort and performance so much that they deemed it "magical." Students who received this feedback chose to revise their paper far more often that students who did not (a 40 percent increase among white students; 320 percent boost among black students) and improved their performance significantly. (See the study here.)

What was the magical feedback?

Just one phrase:
I'm giving you these comments because I have very high expectations and I know that you can reach them.
That's it. Just 19 words. But they're powerful because they are not really feedback. They're a signal that creates something more powerful: a sense of belonging and connection.

Looking closer, the phrase contains several distinct signals:

1) You are part of this group.

2) This group is special; we have higher standards here.

3) I believe you can reach those standards.

The key is to understand that this feedback isn't just feedback - it's a vital cue about the relationship. The reason this works so well has to do with the way our brains are built. Evolution has built us to be cagey with our efforts; after all, engagement is expensive from a biological standpoint. But when we receive an authentic, crystal-clear signal of social trust, belonging, and high expectations, the floodgates click open.

I think the lessons for teachers and coaches are pretty simple:

First, connect: like John Wooden said, they can't care how much you know until they know how much you care.

Highlight the group: seek ways (traditions, mantras, fun little rituals) to show what it means to belong in your crew.

Don't soft-pedal high standards. Don't pretend that it's easy - do the opposite. Emphasize the toughness of the task, and your belief that they have what it takes.

If you have any ideas, stories, or examples to share about how coaches and teachers achieve this kind of connection, I'd love to hear them.

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The Simple Phrase that Increases Effort 40% - Daniel Coyle

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Every teacher or coach worth their salt knows that there's no moment more important than the moment feedback is delivered. Do it correctly, and the learner takes a step forward. Do it poorly, and the reverse happens. The deeper question is, what's the secret of great feedback?

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Check out this video to see Kate Roberts teach a writing small group using the inquiry method.

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Assessing Endings to Persuasive Essays in Order to Clarify Expectations and Inform Essay Revisions (5-8)

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Resources to Support Small Group Strategies

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Resources to Support Small Group Strategies

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Chapter 5: Provisioning a Writing Workshop

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Chapter 5: Provisioning a Writing Workshop

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jenny@erinkentconsulting.com

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Sentence Stems for Demonstration Minilessons

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Sentence Stems for Demonstration Minilessons

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Student writing samples to be used for evaluating writing through a specific lens (3.2)

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Add your reflections here!

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180 Days by Penny Kittle and Kelly Gallagher

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180 Days by Penny Kittle and Kelly Gallagher

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Section One: Planning Decisions

1. Start with Beliefs

2. Establish Daily Practices

3. Map a Year of Reading

4. Map a Year of Writing

5. Balance Feedback and Evaluation

Section Two: Teaching Essential Discourses

1. Narrative

2. Informational

3. Argument

4. Multigenre Research Projects

This book is divided into two sections. Section 1, "Planning Decisions," takes you through the process we used-and you might consider-to plan a year of teaching. The section includes five chapters:

1. Start with Beliefs

2. Establish Daily Practices

3. Map a Year of Reading

4. Map a Year of Writing

5. Balance Feedback and Evaluation

Section 2, "Teaching Essential Discourses," begins with an introduction that explains the general framework for planning a unit of study in a specific writing discourse. Then, in the four chapters that follow, we detail the decisions we made in four discourse studies: narrative, informational, argument, and multigenre. Our hope is that by reading about the decisions we made as we planned together, you will be inspired to reimagine the beautiful possibilities for your teaching.
- Introduction

This book is a brilliant work of architecture-the making of an English course. How do you shape the movement of the 180 days, balancing open space and structure, individuality and assessment, breadth and depth (not to mention managing the damn thing). Two of our country's most innovative teachers, Penny Kittle and Kelly Gallagher take on this challenge in a cross-country collaboration, exploring the art of the possible. This book-and its amazing video accompaniment-illustrates not so much the fixed course everyone should teach (even they don't totally agree on that), but how to think through the making, and the principles that should be its foundation.-Thomas Newkirk

Spending 180 days on the job and in the world with Penny Kittle and Kelly Gallagher is like apprenticing yourself to a year in the kitchen with two master chefs who speak honestly and passionately about the challenges we face and the choices we must make every day in our own classrooms. I learned something new on every page, verbally annotating just about every suggestion with a mental "Yes!" or "Try this!" At every turn, they acknowledge and address the constraints, especially of time, we all face in our classes-then show us how they manage to teach their students so much and so well despite those constraints.-Jim Burke, author of The English Teacher's Companion

"This book is everything. I mean this whole-heartedly and without exaggeration - this book is everything. It is everything I needed when I began teaching, and it is exactly what I need now to reflect on my practices, my curriculum, and my kids. The depth of knowledge and experience here, living alongside the breadth of thinking across the time and space of a school year, takes my breath away. Thank you, Penny and Kelly. May my children have teachers who have read and used this book."--Kate Roberts, author of A Novel Idea

Who among us hasn't wished to be a fly on the wall of Penny's and Kelly's classrooms? In 180 Days, we aren't just flies-we are invited into their brains, their plan books, and their friendship as they answer the question that plagues every teacher: how to do it all in one year? This book is not about how to find time where time doesn't exist. It's not about turning 180 days into 200 days so you can fit everything in. This book is about making decisions about what really matters enough and how to make the most of the time we are given with our students. It honors teachers as decision-makers and reminds us of the power of professional collaboration to change not only our students' learning but also our own professional lives.-Allison Marchetti and Rebekah O'Dell, coauthors of Writing With Mentors and Beyond Literary Analysis

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180 Days represents the collaboration of two master teachers-Kelly Gallagher and Penny Kittle-over an entire school year: planning, teaching, and reflecting

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This book is about teaching writing and the gritty particulars of teaching adolescents. But it is also the planning, the thinking, the writing, the journey: all I've been putting into my teaching for the last two decades. This is the book I wanted when I was first given ninth graders and a list of novels to teach. This is a book of vision and hope and joy, but it is also a book of genre units and minilessons and actual conferences with students.
-Penny Kittle

What makes the single biggest difference to student writers? When the invisible machinery of your writing processes is made visible to them. Write Beside Them shows you how to do it. It's the comprehensive book and companion video that English/language arts teachers need to ensure that teens improve their writing.

Across genres, Penny Kittle presents a flexible framework for instruction, the theory and experience to back it up, and detailed teaching information to help you implement it right away. Each section of Write Beside Them describes a specific element of Penny's workshop:

Daily writing practice: writer's notebooks and quick writes

Instructional frameworks: minilessons, organization, conferring, and sharing drafts

Genre work: narrative, persuasion, and writing in multiple genres

Skills work: grammar, punctuation, and style

Assessment: evaluation, feedback, portfolios, and grading

All along the way, Penny demonstrates minilessons that respond to students' immediate needs, and her Student Focus sections profile and spotlight how individual writers grew and changed over the course of her workshop. In addition, Write Beside Them provides a study guide, reproducibles, writing samples from Penny and her students, suggestions for nurturing your own writing life, and a helpful FAQ. Best of all, the online videos take you right inside Penny's classroom, explicitly modeling how to make the process of writing accessible to all kids.

Penny Kittle's active coaching and can-do attitude alone will energize your teaching and inspire you to write with your students. But her strategies, expert advice, and compelling in-class video footage will help you turn inspiration into great teaching. Read Write Beside Them and discover that the most important influence for all young writers is their teacher.

Penny was the recipient of the 2009 NCTE Britton Award for Write Beside Them.

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Penny’s active coaching and can-do attitude alone will energize your teaching and inspire you to write with your students. But her strategies, expert

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Beyond Literary Analysis by Allison Marchetti and Rebekah O'Dell

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Beyond Literary Analysis by Allison Marchetti and Rebekah O'Dell

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1. Analysis in the Wild

2. Toward a New Understanding of Analysis

3. The Essential Tools of Analysis

4. Exploring Passion

5. Exploring Ideas

6. Exploring Structure

7. Exploring Authority

8. Movie and Television Analysis

9. Music Analysis

10. Sports Analysis

11. Video Game Analysis

12. Literary Analysis

13. Gathering Your Own Resources

This book is written to help you plan instruction that supports the development of writers, specifically writers who are analyzing texts. The book is organized into three parts. Part 1 is an immersion into analytical writing that is current, authentic, and relevant to the students we teach today. We'll use the language of exploration to frame a new way of thinking about analysis. This process of analyzing a text is not unlike an explorer setting sail in search of a new land-a metaphor we'll draw on throughout this book to emphasize the discovery that is possible when students analyze texts of their own choosing. Sections 2 and 3 each begin with their own introduction. Section 2 is your lesson book - your guide to helping students find and explore and write about texts they love. Section 3 promises to be dog-eared and worn by the time you're finished with it. Each chapter is jam-packed with our absolute favorite mentors, mentor texts, and "cheat sheets" for supporting students who are analyzing texts you've never heard of.

With samples throughout the book, you will see what students of all levels and experiences can do when they're invited into the world of authentic analysis and supported with mentor texts, targeted writing instruction, and the opportunity to write about their passions.

This book is for teachers who want to revive the art of analytical writing in their classrooms-from teachers of middle-grade writers who are making their first foray into analytical writing to teachers of experienced twelfth-grade writers who are looking ahead to college where their professors will expect much, much more. In this book, we invite you to explore your teaching of analytical writing from a new perspective. To open your mind to the real world of analytical writing and challenge traditional notions about what students should be analyzing and how they should write. In short, we invite you to arrive where you started and know it for the first time-and to share this journey with your students and celebrate the writing that is born where passion and analysis meet.

- Introduction

"English teachers have been waiting for this book since...well...forever. Allison Marchetti and Rebekah O'Dell breathe new life into that semi-comatose assignment-the analytic essay. They ask us to totally reimagine it, to examine how analysis works "in the wild" -on blogs, web sites, Internet reviews, and to expand the range of "texts" students can analyze (music, video games, sports teams, movies). Then drawing on their own classroom work, they show how students can use the lessons from mentor texts in their own writing. A groundbreaking and absolutely essential book." -Thomas Newkirk, author of Embarrassment and Minds Made for Stories

"Are you ready for a mind-bending journey into analytical writing? This book holds a new vision for student engagement grounded in current, authentic, and relevant texts. I guarantee it will upend your understanding of analysis. Full of sentence and passage studies that ignite student voice, mini-lessons that clarify the intent of organizational structures, and a deep understanding of how best to learn from a mentor text, this book will make you a better writing teacher. It's simply brilliant."-Penny Kittle, author of Book Love and coauthor of 180 Days

"Allison Marchetti and Rebekah O'Dell take the dusty skeleton of literary analysis and transform it into a responsive, sophisticated, magical genre of writing that we can teach our students to develop and to adore. Using this book will produce the writing that you and your students will cherish most - these are the pieces they will keep, the ones they will publish. Marchetti and O'Dell's work brings relevance, voice, and life to a form that feels crusty and brittle with directions, templates and redundancy. This book will make your students better writers - but it will also help them to enter into the world they encounter with greater passion and insight than ever before."-Kate Roberts, author of A Novel Approach and coauthor of Falling in Love With Close Reading

"As tour guides to a brave new world, Rebekah O'Dell and Allison Marchetti reject the well-worn path of literary analysis and guide teachers to a vibrant new analytical landscape. By reframing the idea of text as anything that has a beginning, middle, and end, O'Dell and Marchetti entertain a "bigger vision for analysis," that helps students find their passion, explore their ideas, assert authority, and build solid structures for writing. Divided into three sections, the book offers an inquiry into traditional analysis, a compendium of practical lessons, and an exploration of sub-genres, such as writing about movies, music, sports, and video games. In addition, this book is chock full of dynamic mentor texts and classroom-ready techniques that will free your students to explore the vistas vital to their lives."-Liz Prather, author of Project-Based Writing

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This book is for teachers who want to revive the art of analytical writing in their classrooms-from teachers of middle-grade writers to teachers of experienced twelfth-grade writers who are looking ahead to college. We invite you to explore your teaching of analytical writing from a new perspective.

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A Lifetime of Learning About Writing, Reading, and Adolescents

Special Offer: Save 30% off our list price automatically when you buy 15 or more.

"The third edition of In the Middle is my invitation to English teachers, both veterans and novices, to understand writing and reading from the inside and recognize our potential to influence our students' literacy for a lifetime. Like the two that preceded it, this edition represents my current best set of blueprints for how I build and maintain a writing-reading workshop-the expectations, demonstrations, models, choices, resources, rules and rituals, pieces of advice, words of caution, and ways of thinking, planning, looking, and talking that make it possible for every student to read with understanding and pleasure and aspire to and produce effective writing."

-Nancie Atwell

With 80 percent new material, In the Middle, Third Edition brings Nancie Atwell's methods up to date. Nancie guides newcomers to a rich, satisfying practice while sharing her latest innovations and refinements with those who have made In the Middle their teaching touchstone.

Grounded in her classroom practice and in response to questions and requests from twenty years of professional development workshops, Nancie provides:

detailed procedures for organizing the classroom for workshop teaching and a first-week launch sequence

hundreds of minilessons and reproducibles that make workshop teaching inviting and doable

hundreds of new pieces of student writing to use as mentor texts-many are national prize winners

new, detailed genre studies of poetry, memoirs, reviews, essays, reportage, humor and homage, and short fiction

a new look at writing conferences, including red flags to notice and strategies for responding to them

techniques for conferring with individuals about the books they're reading

a revamping of her widely-adopted literary letters as letter-essays that more than satisfy today's standards for critical reading

This is the chronicle of Nancie Atwell's courageous, compelling journey. Just as the second edition documented her evolution from 1987, this book shows how she continues to shape and refine her teaching, based on her perceptions of what students need and her growing knowledge of literature and the craft of writing. As Nancie describes it, "The third edition of In the Middle is everything I've learned over the past three decades that makes writing-reading workshop the only logical way to teach English."

(click any section below to continue reading)

What Will I Find New to the Third Edition?

In the Middle: What is the 80% new material? Those who have relied on the second edition of In the Middle, have asked us whether they really need to get the third edition. So we asked one of our crackerjack editors to read the second and third editions and report on the new content so that we could share it with you. Her report: fans of the second edition will be missing out if they don't read the new edition.

Here is our editor's full report:

Nancie remains true to her ideals and the workshop approach. Readers of the second edition of In the Middle will recognize the basic workshop elements and find Nancie Atwell's respect for teaching middle schoolers undimmed. Additional years of experience have yielded her new insights into students' writing and reading and produced improvements in how best to develop middle school learners.

PART I, Workshop Essentials

More how-tos: e.g. dialogue to model check-ins that are brisk and brief, topics to teach in memoir, details on how to fit writing-reading workshop into 85-minute blocks or 50-minute periods, minilessons on teaching free-verse poetry

The Daily Poem and Icebreaking: In the "Getting Started" chapter these are now specifically named and described in depth. In the second edition, these workshop routines received limited description. Now Nancie's Daily Poem routine and early-year Icebreaking is given much more depth.

More about reading workshop: Nancie gives reading workshop more importance in the third edition.

She has shifted her emphasis from how she developed reading workshop to the specifics of running the workshop and its benefits for students

Expectations for reading workshop are detailed, including using critical vocabulary, keeping a "someday" list in writing-reading handbook, and writing a letter essay every three weeks

Red flags of writing: The chapter "Responding to Writers and Writing" has been almost completely revised and now features twelve new "red flags" of writing culled from Nancie's many years of reading student writing. Each red flag is named and suggestions are given for conferring with writers to head them in a better direction

Letter-essays: Nancie has replaced her well-known weekly letters in the "Responding to Readers and Reading" chapter with letter-essays that students write every three weeks. She shows how these letteressays, which are about books a reader has finished, reflect her evolving thinking about providing a bridge to expository writing while also easing the paper load.

Handover: This concept has been has been expanded beyond writing to encompass reading workshop and to prepare students to write their letter-essays.

Off-the-page writing: A new concept introduced in the third edition is a way of inserting time and reflection into writing.

Part II, Genre Studies

New emphasis and minilessons on poetry: Vastly revamped because of its increasing importance to her teaching, the "Poetry" chapter details why it is the first genre Nancie's students write in and why it is the basis for many of the craft writing lessons. Free-verse is the "workhorse form of poetry," and there are eight minilessons that teach free-verse poetry and its conventions

More specificity about memoirs: Expanded with more specific and intentional teaching recommendations, "Memoir" now integrates reading and listening to memoirs as models for writing them. In the second edition, there are only lists of memoir titles. The third edition also provides more specific elements of memoir to teach: leads, sensory details, dialogue, balancing elements, time transition, conclusions, and reading as a critic

Micro fiction: Another major innovation is micro fiction replacing the short story in Nancie's "Short Fiction" chapter. Much of students' short story writing was "unmemorable and formulaic" or "heavyhanded and predictable." Short-short fiction helps concentrate the lessons of fiction and "is the genre to hand over to middle school writers of fiction."

New details on expository writing: "Taking Care of Business" narrows the focus to four of the types of expository writing found in the second edition, but each one is now presented with more specifics, structure, and examples in its own section

"Humor and Homage": A brand new chapter to the book that supports not only writing but also close reading and the writer's craft: "Parody and homage stretch students not just as writers but as readers and critics, too. To lampoon someone else's writing requires close reading, attention to detail and tone, and understanding of theme. It may well be the ultimate form of literary analysis."

New student writing samples: All new samples reflect more recent books and topics

Nancie has essentially given us a new book because her teaching continues to change, and because she seeks innovation each day. If you've read the previous edition, don't miss out on her latest practices.

Video

Contents

Part I: Workshop Essentials
1. Learning How to Teach English
My Teaching Story
Finding a Balance
What About Reading?
2. Getting Ready
Making Time
The Room
Folders and Forms
3. Getting Started
The Daily Poem
Icebreaking
The Launch: Writing Workshop
The Launch: Reading Workshop
4. Essential Lessons for Writers
Procedures
Craft
Conventions
Spelling
5. Essential Lessons for Readers
Procedures
Practice
Literature
6. Responding to Writers
Writing Conference Guidelines
Red Flags and Responses
7. Responding to Readers and Reading
Reading Check-Ins
Letter-Essays About Literature
8. Valuing and Evaluating
Self-Assessment
Teacher Assessment
Part II: Genre Studies
A Word About Genres
9. Poetry
Free Verse: Build a Toolbox
Ideas That Matter
Some Forms
10. Memoirs
11. Short Fiction
12. Taking Care of Business
Reviews
Essays
Advocacy Journalism
Profiles
13. Humor and Homage

Appendices
A. Quotations to Inspire Writers, Readers, and Their Teachers
B. Student Writing Record
C. Student Reading Record
D. Individual Proofreading List
E. Editing Checksheet
F. Peer Writing Conference Record
G. Spelling Study Form
H. Thesauri for Writers Who Walk and Look Too Much
I. Editing Symbols
J. Ways Student Writers Can Go Public
K. Nancie's Workshop Cycle
L. Substitute Plans for Writing-Reading Workshop

Samples

Companion Resources

Reviews

"This classic has been reworked with over 80% new material, but one thing remains unchanged: Nancie Atwell has created a masterpiece that walks readers through the intricacies of successfully teaching middle schoolers about reading and writing."
-Jenni Miller, middleweb
"Nancie Atwell is a master teacher, reader, writer, and educational innovator. In this comprehensive volume, she draws on a lifetime of classroom experience implementing her signature writing-reading workshops. Fittingly, the volume conveys the broad overview, the fascinating details, and the indispensable middle."

-Howard Gardner, Harvard Graduate School of Education, author of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness Reframed

"Nancie has written a professional book that will grip your heart like poetry does, will cause you to turn pages with anticipation as if you're reading a novel, and will offer up endlessly practical advice from the sagest mentor you can dream up. Whether you teach kindergarteners or twelfth graders, open your classroom door to Nancy's ideas and you'll create something magical: a place where you really know your students, where you challenge the status quo, where instruction begins from student strengths and interests, and where students in the classroom do what real readers and writers do in the world. The rewards (for teacher and students alike) are well worth the work."

- Jennifer Serravallo, author of The Literacy Teacher's Playbook

"In the Middle is the greatest book on literacy teaching ever written in this country. It is our epic, our Odyssey. In this third edition Nancie Atwell offers us the culmination of her four decades of working with adolescents-the most richly detailed account of a teaching practice we are ever likely to get. This edition retains the bedrock principles of the earlier editions-the emphasis on student choice, the importance of being an "insider" as a reader and writer, and on the power of voluminous practice. But we can see her evolution as well: the new stress on "handover" where there is explicit teacher modeling. We can see how poetry has moved to the center of her practice, along with innovative ways of approaching fiction writing. As readers, we live on intimate terms with her; we hear the introduction to her lessons, her conversation with students. She takes us through her most minute decision making, showing us what intentional teaching looks like. It's a gift, a grand summing up, to which we can only say, Thank you, Nancie Atwell."

- Thomas Newkirk, author of Minds Made for Stories

"I was just returning to teaching when a colleague brought me In the Middle. It was the beginning of the school year, and I stayed up half the night reading, underlining, making notes. I went out that weekend and bought blank books for all my students, revised my beginning-of-school, first days plan, gathered books, and began. I haven't looked back, except to read more, share more of Nancie's work, read all of her books, and share Lessons That Change Writers often. I'm now a literacy coach, and her books are the first ones I share with new teachers. What gifts she has given to the world of education and to students through their teachers."

-Linda Baie, Denver, CO

"My first year teaching, I was not given much guidance or direction. I taught what was familiar, but I wasn't sure it was the right thing, until I was handed a copy of In the Middle. I read it over winter vacation, and was hooked. I immediately started the writing-reading workshop when school started again in January, and knew I would change the world."

-Julia Dubisz, Manchester, NH

"Congrats to @NancieAtwell on soon-to-be-born #InTheMiddle3! This book saved my teaching, my students(!), & forever shaped me"

- Christopher Lehman (@iChrisLehman)
-Lorraine Edwards-Knourek
"In the late 1980s I had a little teachers' store in Brandon, Manitoba. I opened it when my children were toddlers but always intended to go back to the classroom, which I loved. I had quite a few new professional books and one that I read cover to cover was In the Middle by Nancie Atwell. As I eagerly raced through the pages I realized that for the first time I felt that I really wanted to teach junior high students. Her love of literature and language just did it for me. The way Nancie inspired her students and included their voices and work with her own let me inside her classroom in such a relevant way. It took me another ten years of teaching K-7 but eventually our school district in B.C. opened middle schools and I confidently became a grade eight English language arts teacher. Aside from my first year of teaching grade one and two, the last 12 years of my career teaching under Nancie's tutelage (as well as a few experts I met in person) made those the most fulfilling and challenging of my teaching career. Even though I never met her in person I always heard her voice in those chapters and in her later work, guiding me."
-Sara Kajder (@skajder)
"It is the dog-eared, battle-scarred, pages-barely-still-in book that still teaches me to see my students. #inthemiddle3"
-Paige Raney (@PaigeRaney)
"In the Middle helped me understand the power of reading conferences. Every reader, every day."
-Mary Kate Patterson (@teachmkp)
"Thanks Nancie Atwell for giving teachers a tool for collaboration."
-Joan Cansdale (@joancansdale)
"Nancie Atwell completely changed my English class 17 years ago. So grateful."
-Sheila Barnes (@bookworm1959)
"Ditto on In the Middle being monumental in changing the way I teach!"

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Special Offer: Save 30% off our list price automatically when you buy 15 or more. "The third edition of In the Middle is my invitation to English teachers, both veterans and novices, to understand writing and reading from the inside and recognize our potential to influence our students' literacy for a lifetime.

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The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop by Felicia Rose Chavez

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The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop by Felicia Rose Chavez

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Home of The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop by Felicia Rose Chavez

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How Fiction Transforms Student Writers

Special Offer: Save 30% off our list price automatically when you buy 15 or more.

In Writing Unbound, Tom Newkirk argues that as a teaching profession, we shoot ourselves in the foot when it comes to writing. We fail to take advantage of a huge opportunity that is before us. That opportunity is fiction writing.

Consider this: Our deepest wish is for students to develop a love of books- particularly a love of fiction. To discover the power of stories to transport us into worlds we never knew existed. At the same time, we want them to build a love of writing. To really love it; not just endure it.

So if these are our two primary goals, how did they become so disparate? Why is the writing we're asking our students to do so completely opposite from the fiction they enjoy reading? "My worry," Tom Newkirk writes, "is that we have been asked to buy a lie-or rather a series of them. That analytic writing is somehow a higher form of thinking than story, that "creativity" is for the talented few, and that fiction writing is unteachable... If we accept these lies, we lose our birthright as English teachers."

Through 40 in-depth interviews with student writers as well as teachers of writing, Newkirk builds an argument for bringing fiction back into our writing curriculum as a way to strengthen all writing. He addresses the common obstacles and resistance to fiction and illustrates, through students and teachers' insights, why keeping fiction writing on the outside of school walls is a missed opportunity. "If reading fiction is humanizing and valuable," Tom writes, "the same, perhaps even stronger, case can be made for writing fiction."

(click any section below to continue reading)

Contents

1. Writing Unbound, The Missed Opportunity of Fiction Writing

2. Meet Ernest

3. Fiction Versus Nonfiction Or, Why I'd Rather Not Write About Parking Meters

4. The Writing Zone

5. Going Deep: Fiction and Psychological Insight

Interchapter: Language, Violence, and Distress-Beyond
Censorship

6. Going Short: Four Invitations

7. Going Long: Writing the Novel

8. Going Close: What Does It Take to Be a Good Reader of Student Work?

Credo: What's the Story?

Reviews

"Writing Unbound removes guardrails from writers (and their teachers) to unpack how skills migrate from type to type. That would be enough for any book, surely. Worth the cost of a few lattes. But Newkirk and a collection of wise young students convincingly answer an essential question for English teachers: can writing fiction improve all writing? The exercises and examples sent my thinking spinning faster with each chapter. As I folded down pages, I found myself answering out loud, "Yes!" This book invites us to be curious, entertained, and inspired by our students. Let the fun-yes, I said the f-word-begin. Delight awaits you here. I promise."-Penny Kittle, coauthor of 180 Days and author of Book Love and "Tom Newkirk is one of those very rare writers from whom I ALWAYS learn something new, and who always forces me to deepen, rethink, revise or defend deeply held positions. Reading anything by him is transformative to my understanding and ways of teaching and being in the world. This book is about so many things, but it's core is about how we can be generous and co-conspirators with learners as they undertake their journeys as writers - and as they use writing to undertake the journeys of their very lives."--Jeffrey Wilhelm, author of Reading Unbound

"What defines us as human beings, perhaps more than anything else? We are storytellers. Stories are the way we understand ourselves. Stories are the way we understand others. Stories are the way we understand the world (and even the worlds beyond our world). So the place of writing in our schools should match the place it has in our minds: as a primary tool of creation, exploration, critical thinking, empathy, imagination, and adventure. In Writing Unbound, Thomas Newkirk helps us understand the vital role that fiction should have in every student's writing education. By writing a new writing education, he gives teachers and students the freedom to dive into their passions, write the stories that matter to them, and pursue that fundamental question of fiction writing: 'What if?' That is the place where innovation and knowledge reside."-Grant Faulkner, Executive Director, National Novel Writing Month

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Special Offer: Save 30% off our list price automatically when you buy 15 or more. In Writing Unbound, Tom Newkirk argues that as a teaching profession, we shoot ourselves in the foot when it comes to writing. We fail to take advantage of a huge opportunity that is before us.