Teaching Writing: Craft, Art, Genre

by Fran Claggett, Joan Brown (Contributor)

This new resource for writing teachers helps students set purpose and find form for their writing.

In today’s educational climate, it is more important than ever that we prepare our students to be effective and competent writers who can write for a variety of purposes. How can we teach our students the skills they need to be successful while also fostering an appreciation for the process, craft, and art of writing? Drawing from sound theory and research as well as on many years of experience in the English classroom, Fran Claggett and colleagues Joan Brown, Nancy Patterson, and Louann Reid have created a writing teacher’s resource to help both new and experienced teachers sort through the often complex issues in the teaching of writing. With innovative, teacher-tested strategies for creating a classroom in which students thrive as writers, Teaching Craft, Art, Genre is a must-have addition to every writing teacher’s library. In this volume, you’ll discover research-based discussions on key issues, classroom-ready lessons for teaching genre, methods for incorporating poetry into the writing program, rationale and lessons for using modeling to teach writing, ideas for integrating technology in the English classroom, strategies for teaching grammar in contexts for writing, examples of student work that illustrate teaching concepts, sample rubrics for assessment and student self-assessment, and an extensive bibliography of resources.

Paperback

First published June 30, 2005

About the author

Fran Claggett taught high school English and humanities for many years. Former department chair and mentor teacher at Alameda High School, Fran was twice named Teacher of the Year in her district and county, where she initiated an achievement and portfolio writing assessment program. Her teaching experience includes college appointments in English, biology, and physical education; she has also been the James Lynch Lecturer in English at the University of California, Berkeley. She has given workshops for teachers across the country, evaluated schools in Guam, and taught in the Bay Area Writing Project Panama and the Virgin Islands summer workshops.

Reviews

[Christine Engelbrecht · Rating 2 out of 5]

Eh, I like the section about teaching grammar in context, but there aren't too many lessons and graphic organizers in the book are not on their own pages so they cannot be cleanly photocopied and created into handouts for the classroom.