How Writers Grow
A Guide for Middle School Teachers
Teachers who take up Cynthia’s book will find it rich with ideas for the teaching of writing in classrooms, and wise in the attitudes toward writing and learning that it helps teachers to cultivate in themselves and in their students.
-Sheridan Blau

You may be a teacher preparing for your first classroom, wondering what teaching writing will be like. Or you may have run dozens of workshops and felt both elation and frustration at student progress. Either way, Cynthia Carbone Ward has three words for you: You’re not alone.

In How Writers Grow Ward offers you what so many teachers wish they’d started their career with, a slim, practical, and warmly reassuring handbook on the craft of writing instruction. With emotional, intellectual, and instructional guidance as well as strategies and activities, How Writers Grow gives you the quintessence of planning for instruction, teaching lessons about different types of writing, and assessing what your students have learned. Through it all, Ward shows you examples of student writing along with tips on overcoming resistance, encouraging risk taking, and empowering every writer’s improvement. In addition, descriptions of teaching moments offer a realistic sense of what to expect from yourself, including when and how to take an active classroom role, and when to step back and trust in the process.

Cynthia Carbone Ward believes the power of writing to be, as the National Commission on Writing says, "liberating, satisfying, even joyful … not simply a way for students to demonstrate what they know." Teachers, like students, need a patient, supportive, helpful guide to make the most of writing instruction. Let How Writers Grow be that guide and help your teaching blossom.

Table of Contents
Foreword by Sheridan Blau
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1
Finding A Way In: How to Get Started
Chapter 2
The Light in the Language: Looking into Poetry
Chapter 3
Making Words Work: Writing for Results
Chapter 4
Book-Based Journeys: Writing About Literature
Chapter 5
Bringing Writing to Life: Wisdom and Discovery Through Memoir
Chapter 6
Coming Full Circle: Assessment and Sharing
Bibliography
Index
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