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…