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Email: jenny@erinkentconsulting.com

Linked In: Jenny Killion

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The Writing Revolution: A Guide to Advancing Thinking Through Writing in All Subjects and Grades by Judith C. Hochman and Natalie Wexler, published by Jossey-Bass/Wiley Buy this book from: You may need a writing revolution in your classroom. Here's how to lead it. Expectations about student writing have changed dramatically in recent years.

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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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Back to Results

Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities

John Warner

An important challenge to what currently masquerades as conventional wisdom regarding the teaching of writing.

There seems to be widespread agreement that-when it comes to the writing skills of college students-we are in the midst of a crisis. In Why They Can't Write, John Warner, who taught writing at the college level for two decades, argues that the problem isn't caused by a lack of rigor, or smartphones, or some generational character defect. Instead, he asserts, we're teaching writing wrong.

Warner blames this on decades of educational reform rooted in standardization, assessments, and...

An important challenge to what currently masquerades as conventional wisdom regarding the teaching of writing.

There seems to be widespread agreement that-when it comes to the writing skills of college students-we are in the midst of a crisis. In Why They Can't Write, John Warner, who taught writing at the college level for two decades, argues that the problem isn't caused by a lack of rigor, or smartphones, or some generational character defect. Instead, he asserts, we're teaching writing wrong.

Warner blames this on decades of educational reform rooted in standardization, assessments, and accountability. We have done no more, Warner argues, than conditioned students to perform "writing-related simulations," which pass temporary muster but do little to help students develop their writing abilities. This style of teaching has made students passive and disengaged. Worse yet, it hasn't prepared them for writing in the college classroom. Rather than making choices and thinking critically, as writers must, undergraduates simply follow the rules-such as the five-paragraph essay-designed to help them pass these high-stakes assessments.

In Why They Can't Write, Warner has crafted both a diagnosis for what ails us and a blueprint for fixing a broken system. Combining current knowledge of what works in teaching and learning with the most enduring philosophies of classical education, this book challenges readers to develop the skills, attitudes, knowledge, and habits of mind of strong writers.

Reviews

That title sounds as if it will be a grumpy polemic, but it's actually an inspiring exploration of what learning to write could be, framed by an analysis of why it so often is soul-destroying for both students and their teachers.

Articulates a set of humanist values that could generate rich new classroom practices and, one hopes, encourage teachers, parents, and policymakers to rethink the whole idea of School and why it matters to a society. Warner is pragmatic, not programmatic, and hopeful without being naïve... I hope teachers, parents, and administrators across the United States read his trenchant book. We are the reformers we have been waiting for.

Why They Can't Write dissects the underlying causes of why so much writing instruction fails in the American system and it provides tested, practical solutions for doing better. The book is more than a how-to-teach guide, however. It diagnoses several important structural problems in American education, including standardized testing, the allure of educational fads, the abuses of technology-driven solutions, and cruel working conditions for teachers.

I wanted direction on how to better teach writing, and I got it-sample assignments that I can tweak to fit my classroom and discipline in marvelous ways. But I got so much more. I closed the book feeling energized and motivated to go back to the classroom and make changes. In fact my first reaction, as I finished, was 'I have to go write about this!' Which so perfectly encapsulates so much of what John would like to see us do as learners that I couldn't help but laugh.

What is to blame for students' bad writing? According to Warner, the entire context in which it is taught. He rails against school systems that privilege shallow "achievement" over curiosity and learning, a culture of "surveillance and compliance" (including apps that track students' behaviour and report it to parents in real time), an obsession with standardized testing that is fundamentally inimical to thoughtful reading and writing, and a love of faddish psychological theories and worthless digital learning projects.

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Book Details

Part I: Introduction
Our Writing "Crisis"
Johnny Could Never Write
The Writer's Practice
The Five-Paragraph Essay
Part II: The Other Necessities
The Problem of Atmosphere
The Problem of Surveillance
The

Part I: Introduction
Our Writing "Crisis"
Johnny Could Never Write
The Writer's Practice
The Five-Paragraph Essay
Part II: The Other Necessities
The Problem of Atmosphere
The Problem of Surveillance
The Problem of Assessment and Standardization
The Problem of Educational Fads
The Problem of Technology Hype
The Problem of Folklore
The Problem of Precarity
Part III: A New Framework
Why School?
Increasing Rigor
The Writer's Practice
Making Writing Meaningful by Making Meaningful Writing
Writing Experiences
Increasing Challenges
Part IV: Unanswered Questions
What about Academics?
What about Grammar?
What about Grades?
What about the Children?
What about the Teachers?
In Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Appendix
Notes
Index
About the Author

John Warner is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune, a contributing blogger for Inside Higher Ed, and an editor at large for McSweeney's Internet Tendency. He is the author or coeditor of seven books, including The Writer's Practice: Building Confidence in Your Nonfiction Writing.

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Back to Results Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities John Warner An important challenge to what currently masquerades as conventional wisdom regarding the teaching of writing. There seems to be widespread agreement that-when it comes to the writing skills of college students-we are in the midst of a crisis.

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Possible Transitions for Argument Writing

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Considerations in our Demonstration Writing

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Considerations in our Demonstration Writing