I went to a Kelly Gallagher training session about reading instruction over a year ago, and it was, far and away, the best professional development that I’ve ever been to. It was one creative, practical, and student-friendly idea after another. I immediately read two books by Gallagher about reading instruction (Deeper Reading and Readicide--both highly recommended) and have been incorporating his ideas into my classes ever since. It was my summer goal to take a look at what he had to offer with regard to writing instruction.
As it happens, Write Like This was every bit as useful as the reading books were. He offers his general philosophy of writing instruction: (1) that students need to read real-world models and write for real-world purposes and (2) that the teacher--as the best writer in the classroom--should demonstrate the decisions that good writers make before the students.
He then divides the book by the six general purposes of writing and offers multiple suggestions for approaches to teaching that kind of writing. It’s easy to see how students would find these assignments compelling, and it’s also easy to see how these strategies would help the students to be better writers.
My only problem reading the book is not flaw of Gallagher’s. When I read it, I keep thinking, “This is what teaching should be like. Think how much my students would grow and improve if we could just do this stuff all year.” Of course, the sadness is that the district and state standards and the ridiculous testing my students will need to pass at the end of the year will mean that I’m forced to teach something of lesser quality and distorted purposes for at least a portion of the year. So it goes. I do think that every idea I pull from this book will make my class a better experience for my students.
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