Teaching Middle School Writers: What Every English Teacher Needs to Know

by Laura Robb

Overview

“My whole goal with this book was to come at teaching writing from the angle that matters most: students’ perspective. They taught me what I needed to know to make this book live up to their passion for writing.” Laura Robb

Adolescents have robust and rewarding writing lives outside of school that involve journals, emails, text messages, blogs, and an astounding array of genres. Unlike their personal reading lives that teachers frequently tap into, their personal writings typically exist under the curricular radar—that is until now.

While grounded in the common schedule constraints and curriculum demands of middle school, Laura Robb’s Teaching Middle School Writers offers teachers lessons and routines that are uncommonly attuned to adolescents’ developmental and social needs. As she taps into the energy and enthusiasm of adolescents’ personal writing lives, Laura presents:

• writing plans that support first drafts
• strategies for crafting leads that grab and endings that satisfy
• grammar lessons that address writing conventions
• editing lessons that have students revise their writing before the teacher reads it
• guidelines for grading and responding to student work.

Straight-from-the-classroom writing samples and videos give teachers the opportunity to see how Laura uses compelling questions and powerful mentor texts to teach writing, support struggling writers, and weave twenty-first century literacies into the writing curriculum. Throughout, teachers learn ways of connecting to students’ lives in order to bring out their best writing, their best self.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780325026572
Publisher:	Heinemann
Publication date:	03/18/2010
Pages:	333
Product dimensions:	7.30(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.90(d)
Age Range:	10 - 13 Years

About the Author

Laura Robb is the author of several classic books on literacy, including Teaching Reading in Middle School (second edition, 2010) and Teaching Nonfiction Writing: A Practical Guide. She brings more than four decades of teaching experience to her authorship and her professional development workshops, which she conducts throughout the country. She is a sought-after speaker, beloved by teachers for her commitment to children and adolescents and her ability to show what best practices look like in day-to-day teaching. In addition to her speaking and consulting, she teaches part time in grades K–8. Recently, the Nassau Reading Council presented Robb with its 2009 Friend of Literacy Award. A survey conducted by Instructormagazine named Robb as one of the nation’s top twenty educators. Laura Robb lives in Winchester, Virginia. Visit LRobb.com for teaching tips and to find out more about her in-service offerings.

» Listen to an interview with Laura Robb on Education Talk Radio—12/06/2011 (42:17)