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Language and Literacy
Uncommonly Good Ideas―Teaching Writing in the Common Core Era
This innovative resource provides teachers with a road map for designing a comprehensive writing curriculum that meets Common Core standards. The authors zero in on several “big ideas” that lead to and support effective practices in writing instruction, such as integrating reading, writing, speaking, and listening; teaching writing as a process; extending the range of students’ writing; spiraling and scaffolding a writing curriculum; and collaborating. These “big ideas” are the cornerstones of best researched-based practices as well as the CCSS for writing. The first chapter offers a complete lesson designed around teaching narrative writing and illustrating tried and true practices for teaching writing as a process. The remaining chapters explore a broad range of teaching approaches that help students tackle different kinds of narrative, informational, and argumentative writing and understand complexities like audience and purpose. Each chapter focuses on at least one of the uncommonly good ideas and illustrates how to create curricula around it. Uncommonly Good Ideas includes model lessons and assignments, mentor texts, teaching strategies, student writing, and practical guidance for moving the ideas from the page into the classroom. Book
- GenresProfessional Development
168 pages, Paperback
First published April 3, 2015
1 person is currently reading
26 people want to read
About the author
Sandra Murphy
115 books7 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 15, 2017
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-“The reward of disciplined writing is the most valuable job attribute of all: a mind equipped to think. Writing today is not a frill for the few, but an essential skill for the many...More than 90 percent of midcareer professionals recently cited the “need to write effectively” as a skill “of great importance” in their day-to-day work.” (National Commission on Writing 2003, p. 11).
-The Standards define what all students are expected to know and be able to do, not how teachers should teach. (Council of Chief State School Officers [CCSSO] & the National Governors Association [NGA], 2010, p. 9) But we know what happens with standards when the vision and the reality collide. They go though some mysterious multiplication and division process and end up on someone’s whiteboard with check marks.
-Even with older students, the idea is not to have students reading challenging texts exclusively. Students should have an array of reading experiences in the same way that a long-distance runner has a varied training schedule that intersperses different distances and speeds. These varied schedules enable the runner to build muscle, speed, and endurance. (p. 14)
-Collaboration is part of writing as a process; integration involves scaffolding; extending the range of student writing requires spiraling; and so on.
-It seems almost indisputable that reading and writing fuel and fortify each other, in part because they depend on the same cognitive processes (Fitzgerald & Shanahan, 2000; Shanahan, 2006; Tierney & Shanahan, 1996). Summarizing more than 30 years of various studies, Duke, Pearson, Strachan, and Billman (2011) say that “Research confirms that exemplary teachers who produce high-achieving readers and writers tend to integrate the two domains regularly and thoroughly in the classroom” (p. 76).
-the CCSS integrate the language arts. While the anchor standards are divided into reading, writing, speaking, and listening strands for clarity (and to keep the reader from throwing in the towel) the document clearly states “the processes of communication are closely connected …” (CCSSO & NGA, 2010, p. 4).
-Donald M. Murray, a writer and a teacher of writing, challenged a group of Bay Area Writing Project teachers at UC Berkeley to rethink the first day of school. “Forget reviewing the tardy policy,” he said. “Save all the class rules for later. Start things right off. Ask your students to write, and you write with them.” Murray suggested that after an adequate time for some real writing, teachers invite students to read their writing to the class. He admonished teachers to wait out the silence. “There’s always some extroverted kid who will come forward.” At some point the teacher will have to read his or her writing too, Murray insisted. As if reading the big question “WHY?” in the minds of his audience, Murray laid out the reasons for taking a risk like this one. Writing on the very first day sets the tone for the rest of the year. It introduces the idea of a community of writers. And in one fell swoop, students and their teacher are reading, writing, speaking, and listening to each other.
-Narrative is central to examining our own experiences and to analyzing the lessons they offer. “Real learning emerges from sorting, analyzing, and evaluating the stuff of everyday life. Through examining a personal experience critically and carefully, writers develop a fuller sense of their own identity and their own power as thinking, feeling human beings” (California Department of Education, 1993, p. 11).
-Anton Chekov illustrates the idea of “show, don’t tell.” “Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.” (quoted in Donovan, 2015)
-Rebekah Caplan (1984) developed a daily writing program for middle and high school students that emphasized “show, don’t tell” exercises, followed by public performance—reading aloud some of the student papers, identifying effective techniques, and making suggestions of other possible techniques. Caplan notes that students “assimilate new ideas for specificity by regularly hearing other students’ writing” (p. 14).
-Lamott uses three techniques that students can identify and add to their list of key ways that authors connect with readers through showing, not telling. The first technique is to define something by naming what it is and what it is not...Lamott’s second technique is to characterize a group of people, in this case fathers, for humorous effect. Not to be forgotten is Lamott’s use of comparison, technique number three in this excerpt.
-Focusing on survival words offers significant advantages. Students learn that they don’t have to know every word in order to understand what they are reading. They learn when to turn to other readers or dictionaries when they do need to clarify a word. And they become more comfortable with partial knowledge: Like comprehension itself, word knowledge is not an all or nothing proposition. As all readers know from their own experience, readers are often somewhat familiar with a word, even if they cannot define it specifically. Similarly, even when they do not have prior knowledge of a word, they may be able to derive its meaning from context. (Shoenbach et al., 1999, p. 106)
-Vocabulary instruction should make sense in the context of the reading [or writing] lesson. Words that are related to the selection, the content, or to a thematic unit have instructional potential and should be considered high on the list of candidates for explicit instruction. (Hiebert & Kamil, 2009, p. 12)
-teachers often conduct an actual student response group while other students look on, and then ask everyone to note what they have seen.
-
-“The reward of disciplined writing is the most valuable job attribute of all: a mind equipped to think. Writing today is not a frill for the few, but an essential skill for the many...More than 90 percent of midcareer professionals recently cited the “need to write effectively” as a skill “of great importance” in their day-to-day work.” (National Commission on Writing 2003, p. 11).
-The Standards define what all students are expected to know and be able to do, not how teachers should teach. (Council of Chief State School Officers [CCSSO] & the National Governors Association [NGA], 2010, p. 9) But we know what happens with standards when the vision and the reality collide. They go though some mysterious multiplication and division process and end up on someone’s whiteboard with check marks.
-Even with older students, the idea is not to have students reading challenging texts exclusively. Students should have an array of reading experiences in the same way that a long-distance runner has a varied training schedule that intersperses different distances and speeds. These varied schedules enable the runner to build muscle, speed, and endurance. (p. 14)
-Collaboration is part of writing as a process; integration involves scaffolding; extending the range of student writing requires spiraling; and so on.
-It seems almost indisputable that reading and writing fuel and fortify each other, in part because they depend on the same cognitive processes (Fitzgerald & Shanahan, 2000; Shanahan, 2006; Tierney & Shanahan, 1996). Summarizing more than 30 years of various studies, Duke, Pearson, Strachan, and Billman (2011) say that “Research confirms that exemplary teachers who produce high-achieving readers and writers tend to integrate the two domains regularly and thoroughly in the classroom” (p. 76).
-the CCSS integrate the language arts. While the anchor standards are divided into reading, writing, speaking, and listening strands for clarity (and to keep the reader from throwing in the towel) the document clearly states “the processes of communication are closely connected …” (CCSSO & NGA, 2010, p. 4).
-Donald M. Murray, a writer and a teacher of writing, challenged a group of Bay Area Writing Project teachers at UC Berkeley to rethink the first day of school. “Forget reviewing the tardy policy,” he said. “Save all the class rules for later. Start things right off. Ask your students to write, and you write with them.” Murray suggested that after an adequate time for some real writing, teachers invite students to read their writing to the class. He admonished teachers to wait out the silence. “There’s always some extroverted kid who will come forward.” At some point the teacher will have to read his or her writing too, Murray insisted. As if reading the big question “WHY?” in the minds of his audience, Murray laid out the reasons for taking a risk like this one. Writing on the very first day sets the tone for the rest of the year. It introduces the idea of a community of writers. And in one fell swoop, students and their teacher are reading, writing, speaking, and listening to each other.
-Narrative is central to examining our own experiences and to analyzing the lessons they offer. “Real learning emerges from sorting, analyzing, and evaluating the stuff of everyday life. Through examining a personal experience critically and carefully, writers develop a fuller sense of their own identity and their own power as thinking, feeling human beings” (California Department of Education, 1993, p. 11).
-Anton Chekov illustrates the idea of “show, don’t tell.” “Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.” (quoted in Donovan, 2015)
-Rebekah Caplan (1984) developed a daily writing program for middle and high school students that emphasized “show, don’t tell” exercises, followed by public performance—reading aloud some of the student papers, identifying effective techniques, and making suggestions of other possible techniques. Caplan notes that students “assimilate new ideas for specificity by regularly hearing other students’ writing” (p. 14).
-Lamott uses three techniques that students can identify and add to their list of key ways that authors connect with readers through showing, not telling. The first technique is to define something by naming what it is and what it is not...Lamott’s second technique is to characterize a group of people, in this case fathers, for humorous effect. Not to be forgotten is Lamott’s use of comparison, technique number three in this excerpt.
-Focusing on survival words offers significant advantages. Students learn that they don’t have to know every word in order to understand what they are reading. They learn when to turn to other readers or dictionaries when they do need to clarify a word. And they become more comfortable with partial knowledge: Like comprehension itself, word knowledge is not an all or nothing proposition. As all readers know from their own experience, readers are often somewhat familiar with a word, even if they cannot define it specifically. Similarly, even when they do not have prior knowledge of a word, they may be able to derive its meaning from context. (Shoenbach et al., 1999, p. 106)
-Vocabulary instruction should make sense in the context of the reading [or writing] lesson. Words that are related to the selection, the content, or to a thematic unit have instructional potential and should be considered high on the list of candidates for explicit instruction. (Hiebert & Kamil, 2009, p. 12)
-teachers often conduct an actual student response group while other students look on, and then ask everyone to note what they have seen.
-
July 17, 2023
This book has some really useful guidelines and helpful ideas for implementing the teaching of writing at the secondary level. It is also written in a fun, humorous tone, unlike so many other education books.
June 23, 2015
This book provided fantastic insight and applicable strategies about teaching in the age of the Common Core without falling victim to it and the common misconceptions of how it should be used. I found many ideas I intend to implement in my classroom that will give students engaging and interesting writing assignments while still working toward the CCSS.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews