Inside Out: Strategies for Teaching Writing

by Dan Kirby, Darren Crovitz

"If you're ultimately helping students become creative individuals with a voice; fluent, context-aware experts with language; and engaged and thinking adults, we think you're doing your job as a writing teacher (above and beyond what the standards-of-the-week have to say on the matter)." -Dawn Latta Kirby and Darren Crovitz

"To teach writing well, we don't look someplace 'out there' for rules, formulas, and mimicry," write Dawn Latta Kirby and Darren Crovitz. "We begin, instead, by teaching students to attend to their inner language, to their individual sensations, perceptions, emotions, incipient understandings, observations, and perspectives. Writing, like all other acts of creation, develops from the inside out."

In this highly practical guide filled with a wealth of activities for the classroom, Dawn and Darren continue the long-standing tradition of earlier editions of Inside Out with guidance for building a community of writers, providing innovative and effective strategies for meeting kids where they are and coaching them to write with passion and purpose across all genres. Readers will relish the somewhat irreverent tone that fans of earlier editions have come to expect. Dawn and Darren's updates and revisions in this edition speak directly to today's teacher, offering: new strategies and suggestions that incorporate technology in meaningful ways and speak to today's tech natives in terms they understand guidance for working with English language learners and their writing inventive, reality-based approaches to research options for using nonfiction and nontraditional texts in your teaching a fresh take on the importance of authentic literacy education, especially in the age of the high-stakes testing and the Common Core real-world wisdom and strategies for teaching writing from a team of middle and high school teachers.

From theory to practice, this comprehensive text has everything you'll need to engage your students and get them writing from the inside out.

Genres: Teaching, Education, Writing, Nonfiction

368 pages, Paperback

First published October 30, 2003

Reviews

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am teaching The Teaching of Writing in Middle and High Schools again this semester and this is the basic text for the course. Well, in keeping with the intentions of the book, student texts are the center of the course, but this is our guide to progressive teaching of writing, focused on engagement, passion, creativity, community-classroom connections, as opposed to the rigid approach that now almost completely dominates K-College writing instruction, focused on argumentation, five paragraph templates for essay construction, non-fiction, in keeping with the conservative Common Core.

This is the best text for disrupting that narrow focus, and getting people to fall in love with writing again. Many of my students had not written a story in school for many years. They could not name a project they were passionate about. Exit surveys consistently confirm that one of the least loved classes in American high school is English. If you are reading this in was likely not true for you, and you have trouble believing it, but if you sat in the worksheet-heavy classrooms as I do on a weekly basis, you will not be surprised that students do not typically become lifelong readers and writers.

[Tim Pollock · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another must-read for English teachers or aspiring English teachers. A tad long but very good stuff.

The resource section alone is worth it.

[Erin McDonnell-Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall, it can be a daunting task for undergraduates but I think if I break this up and pair it with some chapters from Kelly Gallagher's "Write Like This," they be provide valuable insights, ideas, and activities for our future English teachers.

[Eliana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book! Had a lot of writing activities

[Jonathan Brammer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Teaching kids to write is an intensely complex process - Liner et al suggest that it is the motivation piece that is key, and writing should be encouraged first as a form of self-expression rather than as an academic exercise. There are some useful strategies here, but fitting them into curricula that emphasize formal (and formulaic) writing is a challenge.

[Elaine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written and informative advice about how to realistically teach high schoolers not only how to write, but how to develop confidence in their writing skills. Takes an extremely progressive and constructive stance. I'd recommend this to any English teacher.

[Anne-Marie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful insight on how to teach writing. Excellent chapter on responding to literature through writing.

[Davelowusa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some really nice strategies for teaching writing. The authors are all about allowing students to develop unique voices for authentic audiences. Very progressive and constructivist.

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another must-read for English teachers or aspiring English teachers. A tad long but very good stuff.

The resource section alone is worth it.

[Wendy E. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must-read for all teachers, as all teachers should be teaching writing in their courses.

[Linda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Practical and praticable!

[Kristen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dawn Latta Kirby's Inside Out: Strategies for Teaching Writing was read for ENG 230 Writing/Teaching of Writing.