What Works in Writing Instruction offers the best of what is currently known about effective writing instruction to help teachers help middle and high school students develop as writers.

"What works?"

As teachers it’s a question we often ask ourselves about teaching writing and it often summarizes other more specific questions we have:

• What contributes to an effective climate for writing?
• What practices and structures best support effective writing instruction?
• What classroom content helps writers develop?
• What tasks are most beneficial for writers learning to write?
• What choices should I make as a teacher to best help my students?

Using teacher-friendly language and classroom examples Deborah Dean helps answer these questions. She looks closely at instructional practices supported by a broad range of research and weaves them together into accessible recommendations that can inspire teachers to find what works for their own classrooms and students. 

Initially based on the Carnegie Institute’s influential Writing Next report this second edition of What Works in Writing Instruction looks at more types of research that have been conducted in the decade since the publication of that first research report. The new research rounds out its list of recommended practices and is designed to help teachers apply the findings to their unique classroom environments. We all must find the right mix of practices and tasks for our own students and this book offers the best of what is currently known about effective writing instruction to help teachers help students develop as writers.

Workshopping the Canon introduces practicing and preservice English language arts teachers to a process for planning and teaching the most frequently taught texts in middle and secondary classrooms using a workshop approach. 

Demonstrating how to partner classic texts with a variety of high-interest genres within a reading and writing workshop structure Mary E. Styslinger aligns the teaching of literature with what we have come to recognize as best practices in the teaching of literacy. Guided by a multitude of teacher voices student examples and useful ideas workshopping teachers explore a unit focus and its essential questions through a variety of reading workshop structures including read-alouds independent reading shared reading close reading response engagements Socratic circles book clubs and mini-lessons (e.g. how-to reading literary craft vocabulary and critical) as well as writing workshop structures comprising mentor texts writing plans mini-lessons independent writing conferences writing circles and publishing. This book is for every teacher who has struggled to make beloved classic texts relevant to today’s young readers.

How might writing instructors dedicated to community-writing or service-learning courses take into account and even mobilize the lived experiences of all their students? 

Veteran community-writing instructor Glenn Hutchinson charts the history of his understanding that the conventional goal of such courses to engage students in their communities and help them become more active citizens doesn’t acknowledge the reality of the many college students who are prohibited from becoming US citizens despite long years of residence in this country. 

Writing Accomplices with Student Immigrant Rights Organizers argues for a pedagogical shift toward centering the public-writing classroom on students’ work as organizers and rhetoricians. Instead of focusing only on community partnerships the writing classroom can foreground the work of student organizers and how they can better inform the field’s teaching practices. Each chapter focuses on students’ rhetorical skills through petitions op-eds and campaigns to stop deportations.

Hutchinson emphasizes teachers’ responsibility to act in solidarity with immigrant students pointing to a new role for the writing teacher in changing anti-immigrant and white supremacist laws and policies.

About the CCCC Studies in Writing & Rhetoric (SWR) Series

In this series the methods of studies vary from the critical to historical to linguistic to ethnographic and their authors draw on work in various fields that inform composition—including rhetoric communication education discourse analysis psychology cultural studies and literature. Their focuses are similarly diverse—ranging from individual writers and teachers to classrooms and communities and curricula to analyses of the social political and material contexts of writing and its teaching.

This book offers specific ideas for how to teach writing in a culturally relevant way. Drawing on research-based understandings from NCTE Beliefs about the Teaching of Writing Winn and Johnson demonstrate how these principles support an approach that can help all students succeed.<br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/><br/>How can we reach all of our students—especially those who have been ignored and underserved in America’s classrooms? Maisha T. Winn and Latrise Johnson suggest that culturally relevant pedagogy can make a difference. Although it certainly includes inviting in the voices of those who are generally overlooked in the texts and curricula of US schools culturally relevant teaching also means recognizing and celebrating those students who show up to our classrooms daily welcoming their voices demanding their reflection and encouraging them toward self-discovery. Writing Instruction in the Culturally Relevant Classroom offers specific ideas for how to teach writing well and in a culturally relevant way. Drawing on research-based understandings from NCTE Beliefs about the Teaching of Writing Winn and Johnson demonstrate how these principles support an approach to writing instruction that can help all students succeed. Through portraits of four thoughtful high school teachers the authors show how to create an environment for effective learning and teaching in diverse classrooms helping to answer questions such as: How can I honor students’ backgrounds and experiences to help them become better writers?; How can I teach in a culturally responsive way if I don’t share cultural identities with my students?; How can I move beyond a “heroes and holidays” approach to culturally relevant pedagogy?; How can I draw on what I already know about good writing instruction to make my classes more culturally relevant?; and How can I create culturally responsive assessment of writing?

D. Alexis Hart and Roger Thompson offer rich academic inquiry into the idea of “the veteran” as well as into ways that veteran culture has been fostered or challenged in writing classrooms in writing centers and in college communities more generally.

For good reasons the rise of veterans studies has occurred within the discipline of writing studies with its interdisciplinary approach to scholarship pedagogy and community outreach. Writing faculty are often a point of first contact with veteran students and writing classrooms are by their nature the site of disclosures providing opportunities to make connections and hear narratives that debunk the myth of the stereotypical combat veteran of popular culture. 

Presenting a more nuanced approach to understanding “the veteran” leads not only to more useful research but also to more wide-ranging and significant scholarship and community engagement. Such an approach recognizes veterans as assets to the college campus encourages institutions to customize their veterans programs and courses and leads to more thoughtful engagement with veterans in the writing classroom.

About the CCCC Studies in Writing & Rhetoric (SWR) Series

In this series the methods of studies vary from the critical to historical to linguistic to ethnographic and their authors draw on work in various fields that inform composition—including rhetoric communication education discourse analysis psychology cultural studies and literature. Their focuses are similarly diverse—ranging from individual writers and teachers to classrooms and communities and curricula to analyses of the social political and material contexts of writing and its teaching.

Imagine being asked to write an essay in a language you don’t know well or at all to have to express yourself—your knowledge and analysis—grammatically and clearly in say three to five pages. How is your Spanish your Urdu your Hmong? 

This is what teachers ask their ELL and multilingual students to do every day in middle and high school especially in English classes leading to expectations both too great and too small. Teachers often resort to worksheets and grammar drills that don’t produce good writing or allow these students to tap in to their first language assets and strengths. Writing well is a primary door-opener to success in secondary school college and the workplace; it’s also the most difficult language skill to master. Add writing in a second language to the mix and the task difficulty is magnified. 

In Writing across Culture and Language Christina Ortmeier-Hooper challenges deficit models of ELL and multilingual writers and offers techniques to help teachers identify their students’ strengths and develop inclusive research-based writing practices that are helpful to all students. Her approach aligned with specific writing instruction recommendations outlined in the NCTE Position Paper on the Role of English Teachers in Educating English Language Learners (ELLs) connects theory to classroom application with a focus on writing instruction response and assessment for ELL and multilingual students. Through rich examples of these writers and their writing practices along with “best practices” input from classroom teachers this book provides accessible explanations of second language writing theory and pedagogy in teacher-friendly language concrete suggestions for the classroom guiding questions to support discussion and an annotated list of resources.