Resource Topics
Teaching Writing - Writing across the Curriculum
A Moment of Understanding: Getting on the Bus of Justice
April 2008
Jan M. Sabin
In this chapter from Writing Intention: Prompting Professional Learning through Student Work, Jan Sabin, who is with the Upper Peninsula Writing Project, demonstrates how she pushes her second graders to write about social justice issues by focusing on familiar things like the cafeteria, the playground, and their homes.
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Book Review: Three Books Frame Content Area Literacy in Discussion of 21st Century Literacies
October 2008
Ken Martin
Three books on content area literacy instruction aim to help teachers think about the literacy demands of all content areas while framing their arguments in a larger discussion of 21st century literacies.
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Using Genre in the Social Studies Classroom
April 2008
Keri E. Scheidel
In this chapter from Writing Intention: Prompting Professional Learning through Student Work, Kari Scheidel, who is with the Lake Michigan Writing Project, discusses how she immerses her students in the study of American history by introducing them to writing in genres such as plays, news articles, and brochures.
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Writing Can Make Learning Math Personal
El Paso Times,
July 2008
Melinda Cofield, a math teacher and teacher-consultant with the West Texas Writing Project, contends that writing should be an integral part of teaching math.
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Statewide and District Professional Development in Standards: Addressing Teacher Equity
National Writing Project at Work,
2006
Richard Koch, Laura Roop, Gail Setter
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Book Review: I Am a Pencil: A Teacher, His Kids, and Their World of Stories
The Quarterly,
2005
Mike Rush
Mike Rush reviews I Am a Pencil: A Teacher, His Kids, and Their World of Stories, which chronicles the author's transformative experience working for three years with a class of children in Queens through the Teachers & Writers Collaborative. . . .
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Horn Island and Beyond: Mississippi Teachers Find Inspiration for a New Curriculum
The Voice,
2005
Mary Ann Smith
Mary Ann Smith recounts her visit, along with 15 others, to a remote, uninhabited island off of Mississippi for the purpose of contemplating harmonic learning...
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Writing to Learn for Preservice Teachers
The Quarterly,
2005
Samuel Totten
Why do few teachers incorporate writing-to-learn strategies into their classrooms? The answer, according to the author, is not very complicated: they have never been taught these strategies.
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Joined at the Hip: The Joys and Travails of Teaching "Linked" Courses
The Quarterly,
2004
Matthew Teorey
Interdisciplinary teaching gets a lot of lip service as a concept, but far less practice in the real world. Matthew Teorey describes how the University of New Mexico practice of linking English courses with social or hard science seminars can create cooperative learning communities. Teorey details his first, less successful linked experience and how he used the lessons he learned to develop in the next semester a truly robust, interactive environment that benefited both the students and the two instructors themselves.
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Book Review: A Field Guide to Using Visual Tools, by David Hyerle
The Quarterly,
2003
Julie McDonnell, Jane Zeni
Julie McDonnell and Jane Zeni review A Field Guide to Using Visual Tools by David Hyerle.
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Of Paint and Poetry: Strengthening Literacy Through Art
The Quarterly,
2003
Judith Jester
After freeing herself of a bias toward print-only learning in English class, Judith M. Jester found that correlating skills between visual and language arts helped her students generate lively writing and discussion.
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Writing Across the Hidden Curriculum
The Quarterly,
Winter 2003
William Strong
In this essay, William Strong introduces us to Kim, a teacher education student and a "poster child" victim of—as well as facilitator for—the "hidden curriculum." This curriculum, according to Strong, is an unstated collection of assumptions, such as "Writing in school is something you do to get a grade," that is shared by many teachers and students. Strong argues that teachers who adopt writing-to-learn strategies "will discover a powerful antidote to the mind-numbing effects of writing's hidden curriculum."
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An Art History Lesson at Sierrra Vista
The Voice,
March-April 2002
Rudy J. Miera
Rudy J. Miera describes a lunchtime conversation with a student about comparing a Rembrandt painting to a Seurat that becomes the kind of moment that makes teaching worthwhile.
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Book Review: Listening Up, by Rachel Martin
The Quarterly,
Summer 2002
Shirley Brown
Shirley Brown reviews Listening Up: Reinventing Ourselves as Teachers and Students by Rachel Martin.
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Making the Right Connections in High School: Developing Teaching Teams to Integrate the Curriculum
The Voice,
March-April 2002
Carla Gubitz Jankowski
Integrating high-school curriculum isn't easy, but Moffett award-winner Carla Gubitz Jankowski affirms it is worth the effort and produces powerful results for students and teachers.
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Sculpture Inspires Chicago-Area Students
The Voice,
January-February 2002
Judith Ruhana
A Chicago-area middle-school teacher used a nearby sculpture park and a grant from the James Moffett Memorial Award to create a multidisciplinary project for student learning and high-level interpretation of art.
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Writing to Build Community in a Time of Stress
The Voice,
September-October 2002
Sarah Robbins
Sarah Robbins describes the work of the program Keeping and Creating American Communities (KCAC), and the writing assignments that a group of middle and high school teachers developed after September 11.
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How to Build Better Engineers: A Practical Approach to the Mechanics of Text
The Quarterly,
Fall 2001
Ron E. Smelser
A good idea remains just that until it can be turned into a product, and the transition from idea to product requires that the engineer produce clear proposals demonstrating the idea's practicality and economic feasibility. Ron E. Smelser describes how writing is a key element in this process.
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Teaching Mining; Mining Teaching
The Quarterly,
Fall 2001
Peggy Riley
When writer-teacher Peggy Riley comes into possession of a packet of poems written by her great-grandfather, she is challenged with "doing something" with them. As a writing teacher, she is sure she can come up with a way to explore the poems-from both historical and literary perspectives-that will enhance her classroom work. . . .
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Joni Chancer Wins Fred Hechinger Award
The Voice,
January-February 2000
Art Peterson
A profile of 1999 Hechinger Award Winner Joni Chancer. Chancer describes the influences that lead her to "inquiry learning," a method that starts with a "genuine question," that grows out of a student's need to know. Chancer is the author, with Gina Rester-Zodrow, of Moon Journals: Writing Art and Inquiry Through Focused Nature Study (Heinemann, 1997).
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Note-Taking and Note-Making in Freshman Composition
The Quarterly,
Winter 2000
Mark Farrington
Teaching writing in a college class linked to a psychology course, Farrington discovers that by requiring students to read the text before they attend the lecture he can convert them from "note-takers" to "note-makers."
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Reflective Friday: Time Out to Think
The Quarterly,
Fall 2000
Kim Douillard
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Taking Out the Furniture, or What's Obvious: Lessons from the Literature Institute for Teachers
The Quarterly,
Winter 2000
Marjorie Roemer
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The Other Side of the Stone: Student Conversations with a Graveyard
The Quarterly,
Summer 2000
Patrick C. Pritchard
Patrick C. Pritchard, a teacher at an alternative school for adolescent boys, uses a cemetery as source material for writing and learning.
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Writing in the Museum: Myths, Images, and Language at the Palm Springs Desert Museum
The Voice,
May-June 2000
Martha Plender
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Book Review: Engaging Ideas, by John C. Bean
The Quarterly,
Spring 1999
Mary Beth Culp
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Book Review: Vision and Voice: Extending the Literacy Spectrum, by Linda Rief
The Quarterly,
Spring 1999
Nancy Kersell
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Where's the Beef? Mississippi's Tech-Prep Initiative in Action
The Quarterly,
Summer 1999
John Dorroh
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Writing Workshop and Real-World Learning: A Deweyian Perspective
The Quarterly,
Summer 1999
Jo-Anne Kerr
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Book Review: The Art of Workplace English: A Curriculum for All Students, by C. Boiarsky
The Quarterly,
Summer 1998
Ann Dobie
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Let's Take Another Look at the Fish: The Writing Process as Discovery
The Quarterly,
Fall 1998
Bob Tierney
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Mississippi Teachers are Big on WONDER
The Voice,
Fall 1998
Sherry Swain
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WONDER of Learning Leads to WONDER of Science
The Voice,
Fall 1998
John Dorroh
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Myths, Images and Language: One Site's Effort to Inspire and Exhibit Student Work
The Voice,
Fall 1997
Martha Plender
Plender recounts how the teachers at her site partnered with a local museum to use its rich resources to inspire student work, which was then featured in an exhibit.
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"Write for Your Life" Promotes Teen Literacy, Well-Being
The Voice,
Fall 1996
Ten NWP sites are involved with this program, which empowers children to create healthier futures for themselves by making their health the focus of their study.
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Energy Conversion: The Evolution of Experimenters' Workshop
The Quarterly,
Summer 1996
Alexa Stuart
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How Enzymes Act: Skit Writing in Science Class
The Quarterly,
Fall 1996
John Dorroh
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Muscle Car English
The Quarterly,
Fall 1996
JoAnne Dowd
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Writing History: Before and After Portfolios
The Quarterly,
Winter 1996
Stan Pesick
Pesick demonstrates how the use of writing portfolios in his history class prodded students to engage in aspects of "historical thinking."
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Widening the Circle: Poetry, Math and Beginning Adult Students
The Quarterly,
Fall 1995
Lynn McGee
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Historiography? What's That?
The Quarterly,
Spring/Summer 1994
Alice Kawazoe, Sue Johnson, Miriam Laska, Kathy Lee, Renee Swayne
What, if anything, makes the study of history compelling? Alice Kawazoe, curriculum director at the Oakland Unified School District, describes a workshop created by Shelly Weintraub, the district's social science coordinator, to address the institutionalized deadness in the teaching and learning of history. Engaging professional historians shared their expertise with 30 teachers, kindergarten to 12th grade, and the teachers met separately to explore applications of their learning to the classroom. Teachers Miriam Laska, Sue Johnston, Kathy Lee, and Renee Swayne describe how they applied their learning, giving examples of classroom exercises they created and illustrative work from their students.
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Reflections on Expressive Writing in the Science Class
The Quarterly,
Summer 1993
John Dorroh
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Writing and Performing Across Cultures
The Quarterly,
Summer 1993
Carol Collins, Barbara Everson
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TR 59. Constructing a Research Paper: A Study of Students' Goals and Approaches
National Center for the Study of Writing and Literacy Technical Report,
1992
Jennie Nelson
This study of twenty-one college freshmen considers the processes involved in writing an academic research paper in order to determine whether "high-investment" reading and writing processes such as note-taking led to higher-quality papers.
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TR 61. The Development of Writing Abilities in a Foreign Language: Contributions Toward a General Theory
National Center for the Study of Writing and Literacy Technical Report,
1992
Maria Paz Echevarriarza, Paz Haro, Guadalupe Valdes
The authors test the assumptions propagated by the Foreign Language Proficiency Guidelines, analyzing writing produced by university students studying Spanish at three levels of proficiency.
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TR 55. Writing from Sources: Authority in Text and Task
National Center for the Study of Writing and Literacy Technical Report,
1991
Stuart Greene
Fifteen undergraduates were asked to write either a report or a problem-based essay, integrating prior knowledge with information from six textual sources. The groups differed significantly in their interpretation and performance of the two tasks.
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OP 16. Using Student Writing to Assess and Promote Understandings in Science
National Center for the Study of Writing and Literacy Occasional Paper,
1990
Paul Ammon, Mary Sue Ammon
This paper suggests that writing assignments can be a rich source of information for science teachers who wish to take their students' present understandings into account as they plan instruction.
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Silent Voices: How Language Minority Students Learn in the Content Areas
The Quarterly,
Winter 1990
Beth Winningham
Through interviews with ELL students and their content–area teachers, Winningham is led to some concrete suggestions in math, science, and social studies.
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TR 40. Reading, Writing, and Knowing: The Role of Disciplinary Knowledge in Comprehension and Composing
National Center for the Study of Writing and Literacy Technical Report,
March 1990
John Ackerman
To explore how experienced writers use both knowledge of a specific discipline and knowledge of general rhetorical skills, Ackerman analyses 40 synthesis essays written by graduate students in psychology and business.
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TR 31. Strategic Differences in Composing: Consequences for Learning Through Writing
National Center for the Study of Writing and Literacy Technical Report,
May 1989
Ann M. Penrose
Penrose reports on a study of college freshman writers in which she identifies those features of the writing process that may influence learning.
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