The Writing Revolution: A Guide to
Advancing Thinking Through Writing in All Subjects and Grades
By Judith C. Hochman and Natalie
Wexler
Why this Book:
This
book gives detailed examples and activities that a teacher can do in any
classroom that are proven to help improve students’ writing abilities which
will then improve other skills such as: viewing, speaking, listening, reading,
and thinking.
Outline:
I)
Chapter 1: Sentences
1)
Use sentence activities to teach grammar and
conventions.
2)
When introducing a new activity, begin by
modeling it and having students practice it orally.
3)
Have students practice activities with sentence
fragments, scrambled sentences, and run-on sentences to grasp the concept of a
complete sentence.
4)
Familiarize students with the four sentence
types – statement, command, question, and exclamation – to equip them to vary
their sentence structure and create effective topic and concluding sentences.
5)
Have students develop questions about texts or
pictures to spur them to read closely and deepen their content knowledge.
6)
Give students sentence-stem activities with but,
because, and so to enable them to think critically and to use and
understand more complex sentences in their writing and reading.
7)
Have students practice beginning sentences with
subordinating conjunctions (although, since, etc.) to familiarize
them with the syntax used in written language, help them extend their
responses, enhancing their reading comprehension, and provide a way to create
interesting topic sentences.
8)
Introduce students to appositives to help them
create effective topic sentences and give a reader more information.
9)
Have students practice sentence combining to
teach grammar and help them create longer sentences using varied structures.
10)
Embed sentence activities in the content you’re
teaching as much as possible to check students’ comprehension and deepen their
understanding.
II)
Chapter 2: Sentence Expansion and Note-Taking
1)
List question words on a wall chart in this
order: who, what, when, where, why, and how.
2)
Provide kernel sentences that express complete
thoughts but are not commands or questions.
3)
Have students start expanding sentences using
the question words when, where, and why.
4)
Teach students how to reduce text to key words
and phrases, abbreviations, and symbols to help them process what they have
read and take notes more efficiently.
5)
Have students write answers to question words in
the form of notes on dotted lines only, and write their expanded sentences on
solid lines only.
6)
Have students begin their expanded sentences
with the answer to when if it is one of the question words provided.
7)
Make sure that students’ expanded sentences
contain all the information in the responses they’ve noted on the dotted lines.
8)
Use sentence expansion activities to help
students anticipate what readers need to know.
9)
Use sentence expansion activities to check students’
comprehension of content
III)
Chapter 3: One Step at a Time
1)
Writing places heavy demands on the aspects of
cognition known as executive functions and working memory.
2)
Break the writing process down into a series of
four steps – planning and outlining, drafting, revising, and editing.
3)
Spend the most instructional time on planning
and outlining and revising.
4)
Students don’t need to take every piece of
writing through all four steps, but they shouldn’t stop after the drafting step
– they should always revise and edit.
5)
Before students can plan a piece of writing,
they need to identify the topic, the audience, and the purpose
6)
Introduce students to the meaning of expository
term such as enumerate and justify to help them understand the
purpose of an assignment or a prompt.
IV)
Chapter 4: First Steps in Planning
1)
An outlining format should be linear and simple,
enabling students to rank material in order of importance, eliminate irrelevant
information, and put points in a logical order.
2)
To help students understand the concept of a
topic sentence, have them distinguish topic sentences from supporting details,
generate detail sentences, match details with the appropriate topic sentence,
and eliminate the least relevant detail sentences.
3)
Build on students’ knowledge of sentences to
introduce the three strategies for constructing topic and concluding sentences:
sentence types, appositives, and subordinating conjunctions
4)
Have students practice writing topic sentences
from notes you provide.
5)
Guide students through the process of creating
non-repetitive concluding sentences.
6)
Have students convert a paragraph you provide
into an SPO to help them grasp the structure of a paragraph.
7)
Model the process of creating an SPO as a
whole-class activity: brainstorming or relating details and crafting a topic
sentence, putting details in categories or a logical sequence, writing them as
notes on the dotted lines of the SPO, and generating a concluding sentence.
8)
Have students create their own SPOs and covert
them in draft paragraphs.
V)
Chapter 5: Putting Flesh on the Bones
1)
Revising, or making structural improvements to a
draft, should be done before editing, which consists of correcting mechanical
errors.
2)
Before you have students try to revise their own
writing, have them practice on bare-bones unelaborate paragraphs that you
provide.
3)
To create a draft of a paragraph, have students
transfer their topic and concluding sentences from the SPOs onto a sheet of
paper and convert the notes for their detail sentences into complete sentences.
4)
To help students revise their drafts, remind
them to use sentence expansion, sentence types, and subordinating conjunctions
to vary their sentence structure.
5)
Encourage students to use vivid and precise
words in the revision process.
6)
Have students practice using the various types
of transition words to signal the connections between their ideas and create
smoothly flowing prose.
7)
Help students incorporate quotations by having
them select the text to be quoted carefully, reduce it to note form to ensure
they understand it, and frame it with an appropriate introduction and
explanation.
8)
Make sure your students are familiar with
proofreading symbols so that you can give them feedback briefly and
efficiently.
VI)
Chapter 6: Summarizing
1)
Summarizing builds on skills students have
developed in sentence-expansion activities and in creating SPOs
2)
Before asking students to summarize, make sure
they have sufficient knowledge of the topic to understand the text you’re
asking them to summarize and that they understand the intended audience,
purpose, and format.
3)
Once students are familiar with sentence
expansion, you can have them summarize a text in a summary sentence.
4)
Students who have been introduced to the SPO can
use it to summarize a specific text.
5)
Level 2 students can create summaries using the
Combined Outline, which uses the summary sentence on the top half of the
template as its topic sentence and requires students to provide additional
information for the detail lines.
VII) Chapter
7: Moving on to Compositions
1)
Before trying to create MPOs, students need
ample experience developing topic sentences, writing supporting details in note
form, and constructing coherent paragraphs.
2)
Level 1 students can use these skills to create
simple three- or four-paragraph MPOs for book reports and biographies.
3)
Students who are ready for multiple-paragraph
writing but still need more support can use the Transition Outline, which has
them write topic sentences for each paragraph.
4)
Introduce students in Levels 1 and 2 to MPOs by
modeling the process of creating one.
5)
Assign topics to students who are still learning
to create MPOs and provide guidance in selecting a topic for more experienced
students
6)
If students’ MPOs require independent research,
have them commit to a schedule with deadlines for each step of the process.
7)
Provide students with models of thesis
statements that fit the type of MPO they’re constructing, and have them include
a plan of development that maps out the structure of the composition
8)
Have students fill in the Main Idea and
corresponding Detail boxes for each paragraph of the MPO in note form.
9)
To prepare students to write introductory
paragraphs, introduce them to the GST formula – incorporating general,
specific, and thesis statements – and have them practice distinguishing among
and creating the three types of statements.
10)
Have students reverse the formula to TSG for the
conclusion.
11)
Have students convert their completed MPOs to
draft, revise them by varying sentence structure, and use transitions to link
paragraphs and sentences.
VIII)
Chapter 8: Take a Stand
1)
Understand the difference between fact and
opinion.
2)
Present a claim using emphasis, illustration,
and conclusion transitions to underscore an important point, provide an
example, or indicate they’re coming to the end of their argument.
3)
Use conjunctions such a but,
subordinating conjunctions such as although, and change-of-direction transitions
such as however, to signal that they’re introducing a different point of
view.
4)
Use nouns and verbs that are well suited to
argumentative writing.
5)
Integrate quotations with appropriate
introductions and explanations.
6)
Determine which piece of evidence is the
strongest and therefore should be mentioned last.
7)
Use the SPO to plan two paragraphs presenting
opposing points of view and evidence to support them.
8)
Use the MPO to plan pro-con essays that present
two points of view and supporting evidence in a neutral manner.
9)
Use the MPO to plan four- and five-paragraph
argumentative essays that take a position backed by evidence.
IX)
Chapter 9: A Gauge and a Guide
1)
When assessing student writing, be aware of the
factors that can interfere with an accurate picture – such as a student’s
difficult decoding or understanding the text used as a prompt and the frequency
of mechanical errors.
2)
Administer brief independent writing assessments
in response to a prompt or a text three times a year to measure students’ independent
writing ability.
3)
Assess students’ ability to develop outlines and
to revise their work.
4)
Use the Single Paragraph Checklist, Independent
Writing Rubric, or Independent Writing Tracker to record individual students’
progress and that of the class as a whole.
5)
Administer diagnostic assessments two or three
times a year to gauge whether students have mastered the specific strategies
you’ve recently taught them.
6)
Use data from assessments to help set your
objectives for the class as a whole and differentiate instruction to meet
students’ individual needs.
7)
Maintain a folder or portfolio of each student’s
work to track progress made over the year.
X)
Chapter 10: Putting the Revolution into Practice
1)
To decide how long to spend of a particular TWR
strategy or set of activities, you’ll need to use your own judgment about your
particular students’ needs and abilities.
2)
By weaving TWR strategies into regular
instruction and embedding them in curricular content, you’ll be able to use
writing instruction as a powerful teaching tool.
3)
Continue using TWR strategies that you have
already taught, alongside new ones that you are introducing.
4)
All students, regardless of grade or ability
level, should begin with TWR sentence-level activities and practice all of the
scaffolding steps that lead to creating outlines.
5)
Expect students to revise their own work and
unelaborated paragraphs regularly. Give feedback that draws on the sentence
strategies students have learned.
6)
Use several strategies concurrently while
teaching a single book or topic.
7)
Differentiate TWR activities for students who
are struggling or are racing ahead, without altering the basic form of the
activity or using different content.
8)
Use TWR’s pacing guides, in combination with
beginning-of-the-year assessments, to determine goals for the year.
9)
Note that the pacing guide for each grade
incorporates all TWR activities described as having been introduced in previous
grades.
Challenges:
Although full of
examples and ways of assessing students’ abilities, the book repeatedly
emphasizes that teachers are the only one who can judge what students need to
work on and must learn when to use the different activities.
