The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) Practice Guide, "Teaching Secondary Students to Write Effectively," offers educators three specific, evidence-based recommendations that address the challenges of teaching students in grades 6-12 to write effectively. This summary focuses on the first of the three recommendations: Explicitly teach…

Examines the process of writing and concludes that a teacher's affirmation and encouragement is needed for a student to feel his or her work has validity. (DF)

Focuses on the widened perspective of network writing and offers ways to understand its value to the writing classroom. (MG)

Presents and discusses a speller's bill of rights, consisting of nine items to guide a spelling curriculum and ensure that children leave elementary school able to express themselves strongly and effectively in writing, including the ability to ensure that words in their writing are spelled appropriately without spending hours on proofreading. (SR)

Describes a method of helping students to invent characters in the context of a creative writing workshop for undergraduates. Considers how students draw composition characters for which they can write a profile using the surrealist technique of "exquisite corpses." Uses student work to illustrate how such characters feed into the story…

Shares two examples of writing, both involving magic and incantation, used as models to help students add energy to their own writing. (MG)

Describes a simple writing process to help students become more effective writers in which students, by writing one sentence at a time on a single strip of paper, learn how to write a paragraph. (SR)

Draws on the complementary processes of writing and photography. Suggests a theory and method of instruction employing visual and metacognitive strategies to aid students in discovering unseen details and meaning when writing descriptive prose. (RS)

Claims that writing logs constitute an effective teaching tool in basic college writing courses. Discusses one teacher's success using writing logs to assist the development of students' freewriting skills. Includes sample entries revealing students' comments and progress throughout the term and documenting the teacher's response to these…

Reports how the use of microcomputers in a writing class helped change students' writing behaviors, created a writing community, caused the teacher to learn along with the students, and helped marginal writers improve. (SRT)

Suggests using poetry's short short forms for a methodical and rapid series of writing assignments that emphasize both careful writing at the sentence level and overall planning and respect for form. (HTH)

Shows how photography and photographic processes can be used as a metaphor for describing writing and writing processes and, thus, can be a useful teaching tool. Discusses subject, focus, arrangement, and style. Describes how a writing teacher can use all this as a means of illustrating various aspects of the writing process. (SR)

Points out that a carefully developed checklist is a valuable writing aide that can help students and instructor focus on successful writing throughout the writing process. Shares five how-to steps as a guide for developing a writing checklist. (SR)

A student was able to overcome flatness in his writing when he focused on the process of writing rather than the product. The student's draft of an essay about a symbol the student found meaningful contained spelling and grammatical errors and was also "flat." The essay had no apparent thesis, demonstrated lack of success in issues of…

Rather than giving basic writing students handbook and workbook exercises to direct their proofreading, teachers can use a monitoring system that teaches the students to recognize problems and to systematically monitor and eliminate the difficulties. After completing two or three assignments that include several drafts, students copy out all the…