Priorities & Choices (Vocabulary development and monitoring reading may not get as much attention as they did in the past)

"Later, when a more serious, academic voice is called for, my students will be ready, becasue they'll have much greater understanding and control over their writing voice" (p. 31).

**Use your own quick writes as oppurtunities (minilessons) to discuss the variety of different ways a writer might use punctuation. 

Persuasion  "Words are potent" (p. 131).

Real world skills is the primary goal. 
Kittle emailed college professors in different fields and asked: "What do students need in writing?"
"[T]o pursue a line of thought, to provide credible evidence to support an idea, to be flexible with thinking as well as sentences, and to write with power, grace, and style" (p. 152).

What about literature analysis?
Important to find a balance: "We know we need students to write about literature because writing about it improves their reading.  We need deep readers.  They will likely learn and understand more about their reading when they write. The problem is, they will not necessarily understand more about writing with this work.  Rewriting is, after all, what writing is all about" (p. 152-53).

Thus, we must draw on our student's passion, which may or may not be literature! 

"We know that students revise with more energy if they topic is personally meaningful to them.  They will revise little, if any, if the topic is not" (p. 153).  "We want students haunted by writing. We want topics that grab them and won't let them go" (p. 154).

Final project is a blending genre product.

Never forget your purpose: "What is writing for? What do we teach and why?  It can't only be for next year--or college--or the April test.  Sometimes it is for now: a path through dark days.  We teach life writing, not school writing, life writing in all its complexities: the tools for tasks we can't anticipate. It is about this day--this lesson--what students can reach for that will matter--for the lives stretched out before them peppered with joy and loss" (p. 236).