22,99 €
Mehr erfahren.
- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Bildung
- Sprache: Englisch
Why you need a writing revolution in your classroom and how to lead it The Writing Revolution (TWR) provides a clear method of instruction that you can use no matter what subject or grade level you teach. The model, also known as The Hochman Method, has demonstrated, over and over, that it can turn weak writers into strong communicators by focusing on specific techniques that match their needs and by providing them with targeted feedback. Insurmountable as the challenges faced by many students may seem, The Writing Revolution can make a dramatic difference. And the method does more than improve writing skills. It also helps: * Boost reading comprehension * Improve organizational and study skills * Enhance speaking abilities * Develop analytical capabilities The Writing Revolution is as much a method of teaching content as it is a method of teaching writing. There's no separate writing block and no separate writing curriculum. Instead, teachers of all subjects adapt the TWR strategies and activities to their current curriculum and weave them into their content instruction. But perhaps what's most revolutionary about the TWR method is that it takes the mystery out of learning to write well. It breaks the writing process down into manageable chunks and then has students practice the chunks they need, repeatedly, while also learning content.
Sie lesen das E-Book in den Legimi-Apps auf:
Seitenzahl: 419
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017
Ähnliche
CONTENTS
Cover
Praise for the Writing Revolution
Title Page
Copyright
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
Dedication
Foreword
Introduction: How to Lead a Writing Revolution in Your Classroom—and Why You Need One
The Problem: Assigning Writing but Not Teaching It
Beyond Writing: How Writing Instruction Improves Students' Reading, Speaking, and Thinking
A Brief History: The Origins of The Writing Revolution
What Makes The Writing Revolution Revolutionary: Deliberate Practice
The Six TWR Principles
How to Use This Book
Notes
Chapter 1: Sentences
Make It Correct: Using Sentence Activities to Teach Grammar and Conventions
What Makes a Sentence a Sentence: Fragments, Scrambled Sentences, and Run-Ons
Put the Brakes On: Correcting Run-On Sentences
Introduce Some Variety: The Four Basic Sentence Types
What Do You Know? Developing Questions
Conjunctions, Complexity, and Clauses
How to Say It in Writing: Subordinating Conjunctions
Another Name for a Noun: Appositives
Put Them Together: Sentence Combining
A Daily Dose of the Revolution: Using Sentence Activities in the Classroom
To Sum Up
Notes
Chapter 2: Sentence Expansion and Note-Taking
Bigger and Better: Expanding Sentences to Expand Students' Knowledge and Responses
What Do You See? Using Sentence Expansion to Write Captions for Images
The Power of Note-Taking: Key Words and Phrases, Abbreviations, and Symbols
To Sum Up
Notes
Chapter 3: One Step at a Time
Planning Matters: The Cognitive Demands of Writing at Length
Defining Our Terms
Step by Step: How to Make Writing a Manageable Task
First Steps: Identifying Topic, Audience, and Purpose
A Guide to Purpose: Four Types of Writing
Building the Framework: Outlining
To Sum Up
Notes
Chapter 4: First Steps in Planning
Outlining That Works
Home in on the Main Idea: Topic and Concluding Sentences
A Writing Road Map: Building an SPO
To Sum Up
Chapter 5: Putting Flesh on the Bones
Two Different Processes: Revising Versus Editing
Polish a Draft: The Process of Revision
Go Deeper: Enriching Simple Sentences Through Sentence Expansion
Connect the Dots: Using Transitions to Create Flow
Bring in the Authorities: How to Incorporate Quotations
Last but Not Least: Editing
To Sum Up
Notes
Chapter 6: Summarizing
Not So Simple: The Power of Writing Summaries
Find the Right Moment: When to Teach Summarizing
Four Questions to Ask Before You Begin
The Structure of Summaries: Three Choices
To Sum Up
Notes
Chapter 7: Moving on to Compositions
Organize and Build Knowledge: The Benefits of Outlining
Prepping for the MPO
Take It Slow: Introducing the Level 1 Student to the MPO
The Next Step: An Overview of the MPO for Level 2 Students
Back to the Beginning: Planning Introductions
Make It a Composition: Drafting and Revising MPOs
To Sum Up
Notes
Chapter 8: Take a Stand
The Three Steps to Argumentative Writing: Opinion Pieces, Pro-Con Paragraphs, and Pro-Con Essays
Fact Versus Opinion: Introducing the Distinction
Conjunctions, Transitions, and Kernels: Laying the Foundation for Argumentative Skills
Short Takes: Using Pro-and-Con SPOs as Stepping-Stones
Consider the Alternatives: Planning and Writing Four-Paragraph Pro-Con Compositions
Make Your Case: Planning and Writing the Five-Paragraph Argumentative Essay
Argumentative Writing Scaffold for Middle and High School
To Sum Up
Note
Chapter 9: A Gauge and a Guide
Finding the Right Yardstick
Don't Guess—Assess!
Get the Big Picture: Independent Writing Assessments
Home in on the Details: Assessing Specific Strategies
Stragglers and Speed Demons: Using Assessments to Differentiate Your Instruction
Looking Backward: Maintaining Student Portfolios
To Sum Up
Notes
Chapter 10: Putting the Revolution Into Practice
First Things First: Background Knowledge and Mastery of Mechanics
Make the Most of It: Weaving Writing Instruction Into Content Instruction
Leave No Strategy Behind: Bringing Activities Along as Students Progress
Different Strokes for Different Students: How to Use TWR to Differentiate Your Instruction
Sequence of TWR Strategies
Pacing Guides
More Than a Writing Method: Using TWR to Advance Your Students' Thinking
To Sum Up
Note
Appendixes
A. Expository Writing Terms
B. Abbreviations and Symbols
C. Listening Evaluation Checklist
D. Proofreading Symbols
E. Revise and Edit Checklist
F. Research Plan Time Sequence Sheet
G. Sample Pacing Guide (Grade 3)
H. Sample Pacing Guide (Grades 7–12)
I. Single-Paragraph Outline
J. Summary Sentence
K. Combined Outline
L. Transition Outline (2 Paragraphs)
M. Transition Outline (3 Paragraphs)
N. Single-Paragraph Outline (Book Report)
O. Multiple-Paragraph Outline (3 Paragraphs)
P. Multiple-Paragraph Outline (4 Paragraphs)
Q. Multiple-Paragraph Outline (5 Paragraphs)
R. Multiple-Paragraph Outline (Book Report)
Glossary
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Tables
Table 5.1
Table 8.1
List of Illustrations
Exhibit 1.1
Exhibit 1.2
Exhibit 1.3
Exhibit 2.1
Exhibit 2.2
Exhibit 2.3
Exhibit 4.1
Exhibit 4.2
Exhibit 4.3
Exhibit 4.4
Exhibit 4.5
Exhibit 4.6
Exhibit 4.7
Exhibit 4.8
Exhibit 4.9
Exhibit 4.10
Exhibit 4.11
Exhibit 5.1
Exhibit 5.2
Exhibit 6.1
Exhibit 6.2
Exhibit 6.3
Exhibit 6.4
Exhibit 6.5
Exhibit 6.6
Exhibit 6.7
Exhibit 6.8
Exhibit 7.1
Exhibit 7.2
Exhibit 7.3
Exhibit 7.4
Exhibit 7.5
Exhibit 8.1
Exhibit 8.2
Exhibit 8.3
Exhibit 8.4
Exhibit 8.5
Exhibit 8.6
Exhibit 8.7
Exhibit 9.1
Exhibit 9.2
Exhibit 9.3
Exhibit 9.4
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
Chapter 1
Pages
i
ii
iii
iv
vii
viii
ix
x
xi
xii
xiii
xiv
xv
xvi
xvii
xviii
xix
xx
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
Praise for the Writing Revolution
“The writing strategies discussed in this book are life-changing for students who are exposed to them. A must-read for educational leaders, teachers, and parents . . . giving students the power of the pen to write their way to a successful future.”
—Deirdre A. DeAngelis-D'Alessio, principal, New Dorp High School
“This program has the power to illuminate and make big ideas and big content move into the minds of our young people. Hear my plea . . . do not dismiss the work of The Writing Revolution. It represents the highest art of teaching.”
—David Coleman, president and chief executive officer, The College Board
“The Writing Revolution, true to its name, is a truly revolutionary resource for educators. This revolution is an awakening of consciousness firmly based in research, strong and easy-to-implement practices, and most importantly, refreshingly rational thought about writing instruction in particular, and literacy in general.”
—David Abel, chief academic officer, ELA, of UnboundEd
“Every once in a while, you find an outstanding method that is clear, makes sense, and is embraced by teachers and students alike, and what's most important, works! This is how I would describe The Writing Revolution. I have observed it in action, and I have been encouraging teachers to learn about it and use it. Students who are engaged in this find that not only their writing skills but also their thinking and reading skills improve as well.”
—Sally E. Shaywitz, author of Overcoming Dyslexia (Knopf); Yale University School of Medicine, The Audrey G. Ratner Professor in Learning Development; co-director, Yale Center for Dyslexia & Creativity
“As someone who has dedicated his life to writing and reading, I enthusiastically endorse the method so lucidly presented in The Writing Revolution. This book will give our nation's students a solid writing foundation because it shows teachers how to teach, not just assign, writing.”
—Peter Travers, Rolling Stone, senior writer and film critic
“The Writing Revolution offers teachers across the content areas ground-breaking guidance on how to develop all students into clear, coherent young writers.”
—Jessica Matthews-Meth, former director of secondary literacy for DC Public Schools, instructional coach in the District of Columbia
“As an author, I am deeply concerned about the vast number of students who cannot express themselves with clarity in their writing. The Writing Revolution is grounded in research, has been proven effective by decades of classroom application, and is impeccable in its logistics.”
—Mary Higgins Clark, best-selling author
“The Writing Revolution offers a clear, practical, research-based methodology for instruction. From teacher to administrator, all educators will benefit from this book. The authors demystify the teaching of writing so that we may better fill the world with strong writers.”
—Esther Klein Friedman, executive director, Literacy and Academic Intervention Services, New York City Department of Education
“The practices and approach laid out within these covers work. We had the good fortune to discover Dr. Hochman's approach in 1988 through our son, who was her student at Windward. Since then, we've taught writing using the Hochman Method to elementary school reluctant writers in Harlem, adolescents studying the trades in Vermont, community college students struggling to put words to paper, and to hundreds of teachers baffled by how to improve their students' writing. We celebrate the arrival of this lucid guide to making every student an articulate, confident writer.”
—David and Meredith Liben, Student Achievement Partners and ReadingDoneRight.org
“The Writing Revolution provides concrete, evidence-based strategies for building writing fluency. It's a godsend for classroom teachers who are intent on giving their students the tools to communicate in a rich and engaging way.”
—Barbara Davidson, executive director, Knowledge Matters Campaign
“The Writing Revolution provides an excellent framework for teaching writing to all students. Elementary, middle, high school, and college educators can improve their instruction by applying strategies set forth in this book. This book clearly demonstrates how to use spoken language to support writing, in turn, supporting critical thinking by students across all content areas. It's a great tool for supporting college and career readiness standards outlined in the Common Core State Standards, a timely and important need for all educators.”
—Anthony D. Koutsoftas, associate professor, Department of Speech Language Pathology, School of Health and Medical Sciences, Seton Hall University
The Writing Revolution
A Guide to Advancing Thinking Through Writing in All Subjects and Grades
Judith C. Hochman and Natalie Wexler
Foreword by Doug Lemov
Copyright © 2017 by The Writing Revolution. All rights reserved.
Published by Jossey-BassA Wiley BrandOne Montgomery Street, Suite 1000, San Francisco, CA 94104-4594—www.josseybass.com
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, 978-750-8400, fax 978-646-8600, or on the Web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, 201-748-6011, fax 201-748-6008, or online at www.wiley.com/go/permissions.
Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages. Readers should be aware that Internet Web sites offered as citations and/or sources for further information may have changed or disappeared between the time this was written and when it is read.
Certain pages from this book are designed for use in a group setting and may be customized and reproduced for educational/training purposes. The reproducible pages are designated by the appearance of the following copyright notice at the foot of each page:
Copyright © 2017 by The Writing Revolution.
This notice may not be changed or deleted and it must appear on all reproductions as printed. This free permission is restricted to the paper reproduction of the materials for educational/training events. It does not allow for systematic or large-scale reproduction, distribution (more than 100 copies per page, per year), transmission, electronic reproduction or inclusion in any publications offered for sale or used for commercial purposes—none of which may be done without prior written permission of the Publisher.
Jossey-Bass books and products are available through most bookstores. To contact Jossey-Bass directly call our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 800-956-7739, outside the U.S. at 317-572-3986, or fax 317-572-4002.
Wiley publishes in a variety of print and electronic formats and by print-on-demand. Some material included with standard print versions of this book may not be included in e-books or in print-on-demand. For this title you may find those resources on the author site at http://twr-resources.thewritingrevolution.org/.
For more information about Wiley products, visit www.wiley.com.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Hochman, Judith, author. | Wexler, Natalie, author. | Lemov, Doug, 1967- writer of foreword.
Title: The writing revolution : a guide to advancing thinking through writing in all subjects and grades / Judith C. Hochman and Natalie Wexler ; foreword by Doug Lemov.
Description: San Francisco, CA : Jossey-Bass, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017026363 (print) | LCCN 2017010697 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119364948 (pdf) | ISBN 9781119364979 (epub) | ISBN 9781119364917 (pbk.)
Subjects: LCSH: Academic writing. | Critical thinking.
Classification: LCC LB1047.3 (print) | LCC LB1047.3 .H63 2017 (ebook) | DDC 808/.0427—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017026363
Cover design by WileyCover image: ©chrupka/Shutterstock
Acknowledgments
So many people have played a part in bringing this book to publication that it is nearly impossible to name them all—but we will do our best. First and foremost, we want to thank The Writing Revolution (TWR) team, led by Jacki Kelly, our executive director, and especially our senior faculty members Dina Zoleo and Toni-Ann Vroom. They each read the manuscript multiple times, displaying endless patience, making excellent suggestions, and providing much-needed editing.
The faculty and staff members at New Dorp High School on Staten Island, New York, under the outstanding leadership of Deirdre DeAngelis, provided us with an unforgettable experience. When Principal DeAngelis adopted the writing method in 2008, she began a partnership between TWR and the school's faculty that proved life-changing for all of us—and for many of New Dorp's students. The school, once failing, has now been honored as a New York City Department of Education Showcase School.
The teachers and administrators of the District of Columbia Public School system, which undertook a multiyear pilot project with us beginning in 2013, taught us much about implementing the method in a large school district. We were welcomed into many wonderful classrooms and saw some amazing teaching. Every school visit was a learning experience. We would like to thank, in particular, the following district- and school-level administrators and instructional coaches for their support and encouragement: Lauren Castillo, Corinne Colgan, Kimberly Douglas, Louise Fairley, Lauren Johnson, Jessica Matthews Meth, Gwendolyn Payton, Brian Pick, Mary Anne Stinson, and Lauren Weaver.
We are grateful to the Edwin Gould Foundation and its president and CEO, Cynthia Rivera Weissblum, for incubating our organization in its early days. We are also deeply indebted to Peg Tyre, an award-winning journalist who also serves as director of strategy at the Gould Foundation. Peg wrote a widely acclaimed article about the adoption of our writing method at New Dorp High School, which appeared in The Atlantic in 2012. The article sparked so much interest that we were obliged to start an organization to respond to it.
Our editor at Jossey-Bass, Kate Gagnon, was a supportive and steadying presence throughout the writing process and gave us excellent suggestions. Hannah Levy and Connor O'Brien also provided valuable guidance. Doug Lemov and Erica Woolway were generous enough to read the manuscript in its early stages and give us encouragement and perceptive feedback.
We are also grateful to the many administrators and teachers who have implemented our method in their schools and classrooms throughout the country and given thousands of students the opportunity to express themselves more effectively.
Last, but definitely not least, we appreciate the support of our families and friends and their recognition that our mission is an important one. In particular, we owe a deep debt of thanks to our husbands, Stephen Hochman and Jim Feldman, for their technical, legal, moral, and emotional support, without which this book might never have seen the light of day.
About the Authors
Judith C. Hochman is the founder and chief academic officer of The Writing Revolution, a not-for-profit organization. She was the superintendent of the Greenburgh Graham Union Free School District; head of The Windward School in White Plains, New York; and the founder of the Windward Teacher Training Institute. Dr. Hochman has taught in mainstream and special education settings and has master's degrees in special education and psychology as well as a doctorate of education in curriculum and instruction, all from Teachers College, Columbia University. Dr. Hochman lectures and presents workshops and courses for educational organizations, colleges and universities, and public and independent schools throughout the United States. She is the author of two books and several articles on writing instruction.
Natalie Wexler is an education journalist who serves on the board of trustees of The Writing Revolution. Her articles and essays have appeared in a number of publications, including the New York Times and the Washington Post, and for several years she was the education editor of Greater Greater Washington, a news website and communal blog in Washington, DC. She has also been a volunteer reading and writing tutor in high-poverty DC schools. Before turning to education journalism, Wexler worked as a lawyer, a legal historian, and a freelance writer and essayist on a number of topics. She is the author of three novels and holds a BA in English history and literature from Harvard University, an MA in English history from the University of Sussex, and a JD from the University of Pennsylvania Law School.
To Toni-Ann Vroom and Dina Zoleo,
for believing in the method
and for being invaluable partners in bringing it to others
Foreword
A few years ago our family spent a couple of months in London. My kids were 13, 11, and 6 at the time, and I had work there so we decided to take the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to live in one of the world's great capitals. We paid regular visits to the British Museum, combed through the food stalls at Borough Market, and traced on foot the remains of the city's medieval wall. There were day trips to Bath and Cambridge. We even had a local—pub, that is, which really should go without saying.
It was an incredible experience, thanks in no small part to what I learned at a lunch I had with one of the authors of this book before we left. I'd read an article about Judith Hochman's work at New Dorp High School in The Atlantic a year or two before, and it had stayed with me. Hochman espoused embedding writing instruction in content. She thought sentences were overlooked and rarely taught. She thought syntax—“syntactic control”—was the link to unlock the connection between better writing and better reading. She believed in the power of deliberate practice to build reading skills. Her work was technical and granular. And the results were hard to ignore. It was the kind of thing I was drawn to.
A friend had connected us and I drove down to meet her—with what soon revealed itself as typical graciousness she had invited me to her home near New York City—and the result was one of the most memorable days of my working life. I remember scratching notes furiously on page after page of my notebook, trying to capture everything she observed—about writing, its connection to reading and thinking, and about why so many kids struggled to learn it. Over and over Hochman would hit on an idea that had been swirling in my head in inchoate wisps and put it into a clear, logical formulation of practice. Here was the idea you were fumbling with, described perfectly; here was how you'd make it work.
I couldn't write fast enough, but I remember thinking that when I got home, I would read everything she'd written. This, however, turned out to be the only disappointment. There wasn't, until now, any place where the ideas Hochman had talked about were written down in one cohesive place for a reader like me. I was left with the observations in my notebook, the hope that Hochman would someday write the book you are now holding, and her sentence-expansion activities.
It was these activities that were the gift that transformed our trip to London. Hochman had spent about 20 minutes riffing on the idea the day we met. The sentence was the building block of writing and thinking, the “complete thought,” we agreed, but if you looked at the complete thoughts students produced in their writing, they were too often wooden, repetitive, inflexible. If the task of wrestling ideas into written words was to memorialize thinking, students—at least most of them—did not often have control of a sufficient number of syntactic forms and tools to capture and express complex thoughts. They could not express two ideas happening at once, with one predominating over the other. They could not express a thought interrupted by a sudden alternative thesis. Their ideas were poor on paper because their sentences could not capture, connect, and, ultimately, develop them. That last part was the most damning of all. One way to generate complex ideas is to write them into being—often slowly adding and reworking and refining, as I find myself doing now as I draft and revise this foreword for the 10th or 20th or 100th time. Because students could not say what they meant, and because, as a result, they did not practice capturing and connecting complex ideas with precision in writing, they had fewer complex ideas. Or they had ideas like the sentences they wrote: predictable, neither compound nor complex. What might have been a skein of thought was instead a litter of short broken threads, each with a subject-verb-object construction.
Hochman's solution was regular intentional exercises to expand students' syntactic range. You could ask them to practice expanding their sentences in specific and methodical ways and they'd get better at it. Crucially, she pointed out, this must be done in a content-rich environment because “the content drives the rigor.” Sentences needed ideas pressing outward from inside them to stretch and expand their limits. Only rich content gave them a reason to seek and achieve nuance.
One example of a Hochman sentence expansion exercise was called because, but, so. The idea was deceptively simple: You gave students a sentence stem and then asked them to expand it three different ways—with the common conjunctions because, but, and so. This would help them to see each sentence as constantly expandable. And it would, as Hochman writes in this book, “prod them to think critically and deeply about the content they were studying—far more so than if you simply asked them to write a sentence in answer to an open-ended question.” It would build their ability to conjoin ideas with fluidity. It would help them to understand, through constant theme and variation, the broader concepts of subordination and coordination.
I want to pause here to digress on the seemingly underwhelming concepts of coordination and subordination. I will ask you to stifle your yawn as I acknowledge that they are easy to dismiss—ancient, faintly risible, uttered once long ago by acolytes of sentence diagramming in the era of chalk dust. They smack of grammar-for-grammar's sake, and almost nobody cares about that. Teachers instead seek mostly to simply make sure the sentences work and dispense with the parsing of parts. It is so much simpler to tell kids to go with “sounds right” (an idea that inherently discriminates against those for whom the sounds of language are not happily ingrained by luck or privilege) or to make the odd episodic correction and not worry about the principle at work.
But coordination and subordination are in fact deeply powerful principles worth mastering. They describe the ways that ideas are connected, the nuances that yoke disparate thoughts together. It is the connections as much as the ideas that make meaning. To master conjunctions is to be able to express that two ideas are connected but that one is more important than the other, that one is dependent on the other, that one is contingent on the other, that the two ideas exist in contrast or conflict. Mastering that skill is immensely important not just to writing but to reading. Students who struggle with complex text can usually understand the words and clauses of a sentence; it is the piecing together of the interrelationships among them that most often poses the problem. They understand the first half of the sentence but miss the cue that questions its veracity in the second half. And so without mastery of the syntax of relationships—which is what coordination and subordination are—the sentence devolves—for weak readers—into meaninglessness.
For weeks I reflected on the power of these simple activities for teachers and students, but my reflections were not limited to my role as an educator. As a father I was intrigued as well, and I suppose this is the truest test of an educational idea.
Fast forward to London some months later, where I found myself for three months essentially homeschooling the Lemov children, those regular and long-suffering subjects of a thousand of their father's teaching ideas. To keep them writing and thinking I had them keep journals, and in those journals I found myself using and adapting Hochman's exercises. They were the perfect tidy-wrap summation to a long day out exploring.
Here are some early because, but, so exercises I rediscovered a few weeks ago in my then-11-year-old daughter's journal.
I gave her the sentence stem: “The Great Fire of London burned 4/5 of the city . . .”
She wrote:
The Great Fire of London burned 4/5 of the city, because at the time, citizens didn't have the knowledge or equipment to stop the fire before it spread.
The Great Fire of London burned 4/5 of the city, but London survived and thrived.
The Great Fire of London burned 4/5 of the city, so many people had to live in temporary homes until the city was rebuilt.
After a visit to the Museum of Natural History she wrote for the sentence stem, “The length of T-Rex's arms is surprising . . .”:
The length of T-Rex's arms is surprising, but this may have been a mid-evolutionary stage and had they lived for another million years their arms might have disappeared altogether.
A few weeks later I gave her this sentence stem: “Farleigh Hungerford Castle is now in ruins . . .”
She wrote:
Farleigh Hungerford Castle is now in ruins because of weathering and age.
Farleigh Hungerford Castle is now in ruins, but it is arguably even more interesting now (while in ruins) than ever before.
Farleigh Hungerford Castle is now in ruins, so you are able to use some imagination when envisioning the castle at its peak.
We made these exercises a part of our daily lives, and as we did so their confidence and the range of syntactical forms my kids used in expanding their sentences grew, as did the ideas they developed and encoded in memory.
Another sentence-expansion activity Hochman proposed to me in her living room—and describes at long last in this outstanding book—is deliberate practice using appositives, brief, sometimes parenthetical phrases that, like the phrase you are reading, rename or elaborate on a noun in a sentence, and which can be surprisingly complex. Mastering this idea enables students to expand ideas within a sentence, adding detail, specificity, or nuance in a manner that subordinates the additional information to the overall idea of the sentence. With appositives mastered, students can link more things into the dance of interrelationships within a sentence, reducing the redundancy and disconnectedness of multiple repetitive sentences, and the Lemov kids reflected on their travels through the music of appositives as well.
After a visit to Cambridge and its historic university I asked them to use Hochman's appositive exercise with the sentence: “In Cambridge the ‘backs’ are in fact the ‘fronts.’” You may not understand that sentence at all—it refers to the fact that when you punt down the River Cam, you face what are called the backs of the historic colleges, but this name is ironic because the buildings were mostly built to be seen from the river sides—the backs. My daughter's sentence expansion captures this with a smooth elegance that supersedes the laborious description you just read. She wrote:
In Cambridge, a small town with a world-renowned university, the backs, the sides of the colleges that face away from the street and therefore onto the river, are in fact the elaborate entrances, the fronts.
I put the appositives she added in italics. Note here a few things that are interesting about this sentence from a teaching and learning perspective:
It includes three different appositives, which my daughter used to expand her description of Cambridge, turning it from a sentence whose meaning was locked in code—what the “backs” and “fronts” meant is very specific to Cambridge—and unlocked it for readers less familiar with the subject. This form of explication is common to papers written in academic discourse and is a key academic skill. But even so the three appositives are surprisingly complex.
The second appositive, which explains what the phrase “the backs” means, is in fact a compound appositive. First she includes the idea that the backs are the sides of Cambridge's colleges that face away from the street. The phrase stands up as an appositive by itself, but then she adds—via subordination—a second appositive explaining that the backs are also the sides of the buildings that face the river. Necessity is the mother of invention. In her effort to explain what she knows and enrich the sentence sufficiently she's expanded her range, experimenting with a doubly complex form of appositive.
The third example is even more interesting. In it, my daughter has reversed the common order of appositive formation. Usually the noun in a sentence is followed by an appositive phrase that expands on it. But here she has instead put the appositive in front of the noun: the sides of the colleges that face away from the street and therefore onto the river, are in fact
the elaborate entrances, the fronts.
She has flipped the form and is again experimenting with her growing proficiency. No grammar lesson in the world could socialize her to understand and apply compound appositives and inverted appositives, but there she was within just a few weeks crafting carefully wrought sentences.
As our time in London went on I began experimenting with new sentence-expansion activities, and they became a bit of an adventure for my kids—could they express an idea that mattered and also meet the challenges of construction I set for them?
Could they, after visiting Kew Gardens, write a sentence about medicinal plants, starting with surprisingly and another sentence using the word medicinal and some form of the word extract (i.e., extracting, extraction)? Could they write a one-sentence description of the view from Primrose Hill starting standing atop but not using the name Primrose Hill?
In this sense our time in London was an exploration of the power of several themes that you will find constantly referred to in this book. Hochman and Wexler's study of these themes will be immensely useful to you as an educator, I believe.
The first theme is the idea that if we want students to be great writers we have to be willing to sometimes teach writing through intentional exercises. Writing responds to deliberate practice, and this concept is demonstrably different from mere repetition of an activity, which, as Hochman explains, is how many schools attempt to teach writing. Let me restate that in the plainest terms: Merely repeating an activity is insufficient to get you better at it. This is why you are still as poor a driver today as you were when you were 24. You drive to work every morning without intentional focus on a specific aspect of your craft. You don't get feedback. You don't even know what the skills of driving are really. And so you never get better. You get worse, in fact.
Research—particularly that of psychologist Anders Ericsson—tells us that for practice to improve skills, it has to have a specific and focused goal and must gradually link together a series of smaller goals to created linked skills. It must also be structured in awareness of cognitive load theory—it has to be difficult, to pose a real challenge but not be so difficult that learners engage in random, non-productive guessing to solve problems and not so difficult that the brain shuts down. As cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham points out, the brain learns best when it is challenged in a manageable amount. Finally deliberate practice requires all-in focus, and that is maximized in a short and intense burst. This book's proposal of sequences of adaptable high-quality exercises that can allow for deliberate practice should be adopted immediately by nearly every school.
Second is the idea that writing, thinking, and reading are indelibly linked. They are the three tasks of idea formation and so there is far-reaching power for all of these domains in focusing on the craft of formation. “I write,” Joan Didion famously observed, “to know what I think.” Related then is the idea that revision is not especially separable from writing. This much I know as a professional writer: As soon as this sentence emerges on your laptop screen you are planning its revision, and helping students to master this hidden phase of writing is necessary to ensuring that students develop refined ideas, not just hasty first-blush ones. This book's study of revision's wherefores and whys will be invaluable to schools.
Third is the idea that there is a scope and sequence to all this. The numinous task of writing can in fact be taught step-by-step with a bit of intentionality if you have Hochman's wisdom and knowledge to guide you. Now you don't have to invent it. The tasks and activities are outlined and organized for you here. You can move directly to execution.
Fourth is the idea of embedded in content. Writing is a learning activity as much or more than a discrete subject. It operates in synergy with ideas—the need to express them is after all the reason for being for what is otherwise an unnatural and artificial activity. This book will help you to make every classroom in your school “writing intensive” and therefore learning intensive. If I could wave a magic wand over America's schools and cause one change that would drive the most demonstrable improvement to learning and achievement I would almost certainly wave that wand and conjure up small bursts of intense, reflective, high-quality writing in every class period or every hour across America's schools.
Perhaps last is my own lesson from London. That writing, when taught well, is a joy. You build something real and enduring every time, and this is a source of pleasure. As is the unexpected form it takes. Successful writing gives its practitioner the mystery and satisfaction of constant invention and construction. When you look at the page and wonder, “Now where did that idea come from?” you know you are doing it right; you know your mastery of the craft itself is now guiding you. In that sense this is a magical book, one that can help you achieve a sea change in the minds of the students in your classrooms.
Doug Lemov
Doug Lemov trains educators at Uncommon Schools, the nonprofit school management organization he helped found. He has also authored Teach Like a Champion (now in its 2.0 version) and has coauthored the companion Field Guide, Reading Reconsidered, and Practice Perfect.
Throughout the book we've included student writing samples. Some of these samples are from actual students (under pseudonyms or first names only), and others were created by The Writing Revolution staff members. Some educator and student names have been changed, and in other cases, and where noted, we've used real names with the individual's blessing. Some anecdotes and classroom examples, although based on actual experience, incorporate invented characters and events.
IntroductionHow to Lead a Writing Revolution in Your Classroom—and Why You Need One
When Monica entered high school, her writing skills were minimal. After repeating first grade and getting more than 100 hours of tutoring in elementary school, she'd managed to learn to read well enough to get by, and she was comfortable with math. But writing seemed beyond her reach.
During her freshman year at New Dorp, a historically low-performing high school on Staten Island, Monica's history teacher asked her to write an essay on Alexander the Great. “I think Alexander the Great was one of the best military leaders,” Monica wrote. Her entire response consisted of six simple sentences, one of which didn't make sense.
An actual essay, Monica said later, “wasn't going to happen. It was like, well, I got a sentence down. What now?”
Monica's mother, who had spent many frustrating years trying to help her daughter improve her academic performance, was equally skeptical about Monica's ability to write an essay. “It just didn't seem like something Monica could ever do.”1
Unfortunately, Monica is far from alone. Across the country—and especially in schools serving students from low-income families and English language learners—countless students have similar problems expressing themselves clearly and coherently in writing. On nationwide tests, only about 25% of students are able to score at a proficient level in writing.2
And yet expository writing—the kind of writing that explains and informs—is essential for success in school and the workplace. Students who can't write at a competent level struggle in college. With the advent of e-mail and the Internet, an increasing number of jobs require solid writing skills. That's true even of many jobs—such as being a paramedic—that people may not think of as involving writing. No matter what path students choose in life, the ability to communicate their thoughts in writing in a way that others can easily understand is crucial.
The Problem: Assigning Writing but Not Teaching It
The problem is not that students like Monica are incapable of learning to write well. Rather, the problem is that American schools haven't been teaching students how to write. Teachers may have assigned writing, but they haven't explicitly taught it in a careful sequence of logical steps, beginning at the sentence level.
That's not the fault of the teachers: In the vast majority of cases, their training didn't include instruction in how to teach writing. The assumption has been that if students read enough, they'll simply pick up writing skills, through a kind of osmosis. But writing is the hardest thing we ask students to do, and the evidence is clear that very few students become good writers on their own. Many students—even at the college level—have difficulty constructing a coherent sentence, let alone a fluid, cohesive essay. If you're reading this book, chances are that at least some of your students, and perhaps most, fall into that category.
To be effective, writing instruction should start in elementary school. But when students do get a chance to write in elementary school, they're often encouraged to write at length too soon, sometimes at a furious pace. They don't learn how to construct interesting and grammatically correct sentences first, and they aren't encouraged to plan or outline before they write. The idea is that later on they'll refine their writing, under the teacher's guidance, bringing coherence and—perhaps—correct grammar and punctuation to what they've produced. But after getting feedback, students may be reluctant to rewrite a multipage essay that they've already worked on for hours. And teachers, confronted by page after page of incoherent, error-riddled writing, may not know where to begin.
When students get to middle school or high school, it's assumed that they've already learned the basics of writing. As many secondary teachers know, that assumption has little to do with reality. But rather than beginning with teaching the fundamental skills their students lack—by, say, guiding students through the process of writing well-crafted sentences—teachers feel pressured to have their students meet grade-level expectations and produce multi-paragraph essays.
High school teachers are also likely to ask students to write analytically about the content of the courses they're taking. But many students have written nothing except narratives in elementary and middle school, often about their personal experiences. That kind of writing doesn't prepare them for the demands of high school, college, or the workforce.
In recent years, with the advent of the Common Core and the revamping of many states' standards, teachers at almost all grade levels have been expected to have students write not just narratives but also informative and argumentative essays. But there's been little reliable guidance on how to teach students those skills.3 The writing standards tell teachers where their students should end up. But what teachers need is a road map that tells them how to get there.
The Writing Revolution (TWR) offers just such a road map. It provides a clear, coherent, evidence-based method of instruction that you can use no matter what subject or grade level you teach. The method has demonstrated, over and over, that it can turn weak writers like Monica into strong ones by focusing students' writing practice on specific techniques that match their needs and providing them with prompt and clear feedback. Insurmountable as the writing challenges faced by many students may seem, TWR can make a dramatic difference.
Beyond Writing: How Writing Instruction Improves Students' Reading, Speaking, and Thinking
As important as it is for students to learn to write well, it's not the only reason to teach writing. When teachers embed explicit writing instruction in the content of the curriculum—no matter the subject area—they see their students' academic abilities blossom. When students have the opportunity to learn TWR strategies and practice them through carefully scaffolded activities, they become better at understanding what they read, expressing themselves orally, and thinking critically.
Explicit writing instruction will help you and your students in the following ways:
Identifying comprehension gaps.
When you ask your students to write about what they're learning, you may uncover significant gaps in their knowledge and comprehension—before it's too late to do anything about them.
Boosting reading comprehension.
When students learn to use more sophisticated syntax in their own writing, they become better able to understand it when they encounter it in their reading.
4
Enhancing speaking abilities.
As students begin to use more complex terms and sentence constructions in their written language, they begin to incorporate those features into their spoken language as well.
Improving organizational and study skills.
TWR activities teach students to paraphrase, take notes, summarize, and make
outlines
. These techniques help them absorb and retain crucial information.
Developing analytical capabilities.
The process of writing requires even young students to organize their ideas and sequence information. As they move through the grades they have to sift through a mass of material, deciding for themselves what's important, which facts and ideas are connected to one another, and how to organize their thoughts into a logical progression. When done in a systematic and sequenced way, teaching students to write is equivalent to teaching them how to think.
A Brief History: The Origins of The Writing Revolution
TWR's model, also known as the Hochman Method, is now being implemented at a broad range of schools, spanning all grade levels. Teachers from around the country—in fact, from around the world—have been using the method for 25 years, learning it through teacher-training courses held in or near New York City. More recently, TWR has partnered with schools and school districts in New York, Washington, DC, Louisiana, Texas, and elsewhere to provide more intensive and hands-on training and coaching.
But how did this method originate? Years ago, like most classroom teachers, I would assign writing activities that focused on my students' perceptions and feelings: a visit to an imaginary country, a meaningful moment in their lives. My undergraduate and graduate training hadn't included any preparation for teaching writing, as far as I can recall, nor had I been assigned to read any research on effective writing instruction. (Although this book has two authors, the pronoun I refers to Judith Hochman.)
Later, as an administrator, I observed many lessons in a similar vein. In the higher grades, when teachers assigned compositions, they assumed that students would intuitively know how to sequence and organize information, relate it to a reader with clarity and coherence, and develop sound introductions and conclusions. The results consistently and dramatically disproved these assumptions.
I was struck by the difference in how we taught writing as opposed to reading. When I taught reading, I didn't just give my students a book and say, “Read this.” I used a well-researched method, providing explicit instruction in decoding and using carefully sequenced activities that scaffolded skills until students read fluently and accurately. But when it came to writing, arguably a far more difficult task, I had no way to give students the tools they needed. If their writing fell short, as it often did, we simply told them to “make it better” or “add more details.” Clearly, that wasn't enough.
I tried consulting the research, but at the time academic researchers were paying far more attention to reading than writing. So I began to experiment. I was fortunate to be at Windward, an independent school for students with learning and language disabilities in first grade through high school. The Windward staff members and I were able to try varying approaches to writing instruction.
