Description:
Middle schoolers can be the masters of disengagement. Recognizing that all students, adept and struggling writers alike, lose steam at times and need a revitalizing jump start, Christopher Lehman offers effective, developmentally-appropriate fixes for addressing situations that frequently sidetrack or distract adolescent writers.
Organized as a practical on-the-go teaching reference, the first four chapters offer strategies for counteracting commonplace situations that can regularly spring up and disengage middle school writers such as:
- writers who seem to have an almost "allergic" reaction to the writing process
- writers who "cannot possibly find anything to write about"
- writers who "talk, talk, talk the writing time away"
- writers who need constant approval before moving on.
The final chapter offers an inquiry-based study guide that supports teachers in collaborating on and customizing strategies for reviving the disengaged writers in their learning communities.
A Quick Guide to Reviving Disengaged Writers is part of the Workshop Help Desk series.
About the Workshop Help Desk series
The Workshop Help Desk series is designed for teachers who believe in workshop teaching and who have already rolled up their sleeves enough to have encountered the predictable challenges. If you've struggled to get around quickly enough to help all your students, if you've wondered how to tweak your teaching to make it more effective and lasting, if you've needed to adapt your teaching for English learners, if you've struggled to teach grammar or nonfiction writing or test prep...if you've faced these and other specific, pressing challenges, then this series is for you. Provided in a compact 5" x 7" format, the Workshop Help Desk series offers pocket-sized professional development.
For a comprehensive overview of the Units of Study in Opinion/Argument, Information, and Narrative series, including sample minilessons, sample videos, videos, frequently asked questions and more, visit UnitsofStudy.com.
Brief description: Lucy Calkins is the author of the best-selling new grade-by-grade Units of Study for Teaching Reading, Grades K-5 and Units of Study in Opinion/Argument, Information, and Narrative Writing, Grades K-8 series, which are quickly becoming an essential part of classroom life in tens of thousands of schools around the world, and companions such as the Workshop Help Desk series; as well as the author or coauthor of numerous foundational professional texts with Heinemann, including The Art of Teaching Writing, Writing Pathways: Performance Assessments and Learning Progressions, Grades K-8, Pathways to the Common Core: Accelerating Achievement, and One to One: The Art of Conferring with Young Writers. She is also the author of The Art of Teaching Reading. In her role as the Founding Director of the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project, a New York City - based organization that has influenced literacy instruction around the globe for more than thirty years, Lucy has developed a learning community of brilliant and dedicated teacher educators who have supported hundreds of thousands of teachers, principals, superintendents, and policy-makers in schools that bear their distinctive mark: a combination of joy and rigor in the classrooms, and entire school communities - teachers, principals, parents, kids - who wear a love of reading and writing on their sleeves. Lucy is the Robinson Professor of Children's Literature at Teachers College, Columbia University where she co-directs the Literacy Specialist Program - a masters and doctoral program that brings brilliant teachers and coaches to TCRWP schools everywhere and to the Project itself. She and her husband John are the parents of two sons, Miles and Evan.