Your students are sitting at their desks, using a checklist to revise their writing. You see that some are consistently checking off the same areas they always do as "needing improvement" and that others are simply marking off a skill as "mastered," scarcely glancing at the piece of writing in front of them. The authors suggest…

Expectations for high-level academic writing, especially in the Common Core era, have never been higher. Middle school and high school students are being asked to do close readings of complex texts and then respond in writing using academic discourse. This is a challenging task for many students, but perhaps none as great as for English language…

"Writing is a core skill for living, not just for school," writes high school English teacher Penny Kittle. Although it's important to teach students the conventions of grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure, teachers don't need to approach this task "like scolds, red pens in hand, stamping out sin, and punishing…

Casey Cuny was frustrated with the lack of depth in his high school English students' writing. He'd heard about Socratic seminars but was reluctant to try them until he saw them in action. He decided to conduct Socratic seminars with his students centered on the question, What is the value of life? In past years, student papers on this…

It makes sense that an emphasis on new ways of reading and writing fits easily within the Common Core umbrella. After all, a primary thrust of the new standards is college and career readiness. How can young people be prepared to thrive in today's society--in which people are connected 24 hours a day by media and coworkers may well live in…

The writing teacher's foremost job is leading students to see the valuable ideas they have to express. Writing is a way to share those ideas with the world rather than a way to be wrong, Anderson asserts. Teachers and parents too often focus on errors in student writing. This focus gives students the impression that writing well is about avoiding…

To raise the literacy achievement of secondary school students, some schools train their whole faculties in general reading and writing strategies to implement across the curriculum. Content-area teachers often resist this approach, however, fearing that setting aside time for literacy instruction will dilute the academic rigor of mathematics,…