teacher resource

Excerpted and edited from a 2004 YWP article
By Patricia McGonegal
Director, National Writing Project in Vermont

We began to write by writing about ourselves; we began with "I." As we think about writing instruction, what assignments will help build good writers and take them beyond themselves?

Twenty years ago, James Moffett, author of "Active Voice," proposed a sequence that makes sense to many Vermont teachers: "Let's bring into the classroom the forms that exist in the real world, and present them developmentally, related to the ways people learn."

Excerpted and edited from a 2006 YWP article
The National Writing Project, with chapters in Vermont and about 185 other locations across the country, provides training and support to help improve the teaching of writing. Here are several ideas the NWP staff gleaned from teachers around the country:

Excerpted and edited from a 2004 YWP article
By Ruth Farmer
Teacher, consultant

I developed a writing exercise -- "Meditation on Art" -- aimed at teaching students that writing a draft is a beginning, not an end, and that writing can be done in a relaxed atmosphere.

Excerpted and edited from a 2004 YWP article
By Heidi Ringer
Grade 5/6 teacher, The Warren School

When students look at the world through the eyes of a poet, things happen. Suddenly the ordinary becomes the extraordinary. Give a rose petal to each young poet in a classroom and suddenly the petal is no longer wilted and copper-colored but an erupting volcano or the canopy of a fairy queen's bower or the ruffled petticoat of a flamenco dancer. Through the eyes of the young poet, the petal's texture gives strength to the frightened and gives comfort to the sick. Eleven-year-old writers uncover poetry in the ordinary.

Excerpted and edited from a 2003 YWP article
By Ruth A. Hall
Grade 5 teacher,Marion Cross School, Norwich

Writing allows us to identify who we are and to make sense of what we see and feel. we can express our personal feelings, observations and ideas. We can recount moments in our lives and reflect on what they mean. We can try to predict the future. WE can analyze the importance - or insignificance - of ideas and events. We can discover new things about ourselves and our world. Writing helps us understand what is around us. Robert Brooke, in his book "Rural Voices," suggests that "place-based classroom writing programs serve as models for both public engagement and authentic learning."

Excerpted and edited from a 2004 YWP article
By Diane Bahrenburg
Colchester High School

If I had to boil down everything I've learned about teaching writing to four strategies, here's what they would be:

• Write about you know;

• Write about what you care about;
• Remember your purpose;
• Remember your audience.

Connecting reading and writing

"Reading and writing taught together engage students in a greater use and variety of cognitive strategies than do reading and writing taught separately." - Carol Booth Olson

By Kim Gannon
North Country Junior High School

• Combine writing and reading by having students keep reading response journals.

• Regularly respond to their entries with feedback, questions, and observations.
• Give students the opportunity to write entries/respond to their peers as well.

Excerpted and edited from a YWP article
By Julia Hewitt
Cabot High School, teacher
Co-Director, National Writing Project in Vermont

"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. It is not important that he should mature as soon as an apple tree or an oak."
- Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Excerpted and edited from a 2003 YWP article
Creating a community
By Catherine Lamb
Grade 6 teacher, Browns River Middle School, Jericho

Here are some other ways to create a community of writers in the classroom:

By Elaine Anderson
Teacher, Gailer School

Twelve years ago, I was preparing for my first year of teaching. I set out to design a culminating event to showcase the writing my students would generate throughout the year. That idea became Creative Writing Night for my seventh-graders, an event held at the end of each school year. I have shaped this event based on my own experiences, which have sharpened my belief that all young writers benefit from an audience.

By Jane Vossler, Language arts teacher
Meg Miller, Art teacher
Mary Viglotti,

Every quilt tells a story; told in the history of the fabric from which it was made and in the way its maker chose to piece together separate parts into an altogether new creation.

The idea of quilt-making seems a perfect metaphor for a project that enables students to connect skills and concepts from different disciplines, creating an integrated whole of lasting significance.