The National Day on Writing® celebrates writing—and the many places, reasons, and ways we write each day—as an essential component of literacy. Since 2009, #WhyIWrite has encouraged thousands of people to lift their voices to the things that matter most to them. Check out the titles from NCTE to support you in the teaching of writing.
Written and curated by some of the leading authors and voices in literacy education, quick-reference guides (QRGs) are engaging and easy-access tri-fold publications that offer brief, research-based definitions, strategies, tips, activities, and more to address many of the core topics in English and language arts classrooms.
Teaching Guided Writing: Scaffolding for Success QRG features the need for guided writing, benefits of guided writing, common questions, steps for creating successful guided writing lessons, example lessons across grade levels, five additional sample lessons, feedback to teams, “cool tools” for engaging students, and further reading to learn more.
The Teaching Secondary Writing QRG serves as a handy reminder of key features of effective writing instruction. The guide highlights evidence-based writing instruction practices—including strategies and mentor texts—and provides examples of how they might be implemented in a variety of classrooms. The guide supports the most important aspect of effective writing instruction: an engaged teacher who adapts evidence-based practices to the needs of students.
The Teaching Voice in Secondary Writing QRG is full of practical and easy-to-implement strategies that help students take ownership of their writing through the development of voice. These tips and techniques allow students to move beyond template-based writing to produce work that is original, authentic, and powerful. Whether the writing is creative or analytical, these activities and assignments give students the opportunity to speak for themselves and to make their voices heard.
Books in the Principles in Practice imprint offer teachers concrete illustrations of effective classroom practices based in NCTE research briefs and policy statements.
In Becoming Writers in the Elementary Classroom: Visions and Decisions, Katie Van Sluys demonstrates how to (re)claim our professional practice to ensure that young people have the opportunity to become competent, constantly growing writers who use writing to think, communicate, and pose as well as solve problems.
Writing across Culture and Language: Inclusive Strategies for Working with ELL Writers in the ELA Classroom 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 help all students.
In Writing Can Change Everything: Middle Level Kids Writing Themselves into the World a diverse group of middle school teacher-writers share their approaches to mentoring, modeling, and facilitating middle level writers as they explore their places within our world.
Writing in the Dialogical Classroom: Students and Teachers Responding to the Texts of Their Lives argues that teachers need to develop writing experiences that are reflective across time in order to foster even deeper explorations of subject matter. He creates an ongoing conversation between classroom practice, theory, and research to show how each informs the others.
Writing Instruction in the Culturally Relevant Classroom 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.
Stay tuned for additional books on writing from NCTE!