Writing Smarter!: Over 100 Step-By-Step Lessons with Reproducible Activity Sheets to Build Writing Proficiency in Grades 7-12

by Keith T. Manos

Book Overview

Writing Smarter provides 106 detailed lesson plans with reproducibles to help students begin writing better immediately These writing improvement materials are complete and self-contained, can be used with individual students or an entire class in any order, and are organized into 13 sections: Orientation, Description, Character Sketch, Sentence Structure, Personal Narratives, Persuasion, Research, Interviews, The News, Writing Letters, Short Fiction,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0787967394
• ISBN13: 9780787967390
• Release Date: December 1998
• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Length: 398 Pages
• Weight: 2.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 8.3" x 10.9"
• Age Range: 12 to 17 years
• Grade Range: Grades 7 to 12

Customer Reviews

Very Usable

I teach high school ELL classes and for the upper level students i focus on writing. As I am not an "English" major I wanted suggestions for developing a writing program. This book has many great ideas and lessons. I imagine by the end of the year I'll have used at least half of the book.

What a lifesaver!

Many a night when I have been drained of ideas have I turned to this thick, handy book. It has ready-to-copy worksheets and complete lesson plans that are super-easy to individualize into a workshop model format, if that's your cup of tea. The author includes a variety of activities--solo, partner, small-group, and whole-class--so you can tailor the pre-written lessons to your preference or your class's needs. If you are a secondary English teacher, I HIGHLY recommend this fantastic helper of a book.

Good creative writing excercises, but could use grammar supplement

This book gives students the opportunity to write. Each lesson is approximately two pages for the teacher, with multiple "activities" and lectures to give to the class. Additionally, each lesson has one or two student handouts to reinforce the lesson's topic. I very much appreciate the creative writing component of the workbook-- lessons reinforce critical thinking and synthesis, as students must think up ways to describe items on the worksheets, come up with characters, think of plots, combine sentences, etc. The book makes writing enjoyable for students and challenges them to use their imaginations. However, when teaching a writing course, I also find it important to reinforce the grammar at hand, and this book is not a grammar book. Although it occassionally hints at some rules of grammar in various lessons, it does not have handouts sufficient enough to reinforce these principles. For example, it will have a lesson on using clauses, or compound and complex sentences, but will not get into the fine point rules of clauses (such as what makes a clause dependent or independent-- or how some conjunctive adverbs like "however" or "thus" are often mistaken for subordinating conjunctions). My fear is that although it encourages students to write with variety, it does not attack the source of many of their erroneous habits such as comma splice errors, mistaking adverbs for conjunctions, etc. In "conjunction" with a grammar series, I think this book can be an effective tool, but on its own, in some instances, lacks more technical "rules" that can help students to improve their technical writing skills. Although the text often prompts teachers to share these "rules" in the lesson, they often do not have a handout for the students that is explicit enough to really cement the concepts into the student's minds. Finally, I use this book with a group of 6th-7th grade students, for whom I believe it is appropriate. I would guess that it is not as useful for students above 9th grade, as the excercises may begin to feel too much like busy work and "imagination" practice.

Fantastic for Teaching Writing skills!

I am so happy and thrilled that I decided to purchase this book. It was an impulse purchase but it has become one of my favorite tools to use in my classroom. I teach middle school Language Arts and I have found this book to be so effective. The lessons are organized and outlined and there are more than enough activities to enhance learning and ensure mastery.I highly recommend it! It makes lesson planning and teaching so much easier!

Nice Collection of Lesson Plans

Writing Smarter includes 25 weeks' worth of writing lesson plans. Types of writing covered include description, character sketch, personal narrative, persuasion, research, interviews, news writing, letter writing, short fiction, and poetry. These lessons are presented in a step-by-step format and include ideas for debate, discussion, and peer review. Each lesson even offers a variety of homework options. Nearly every lesson offers reproducible handouts. The first chapter contains mini-lessons on parts of speech compatible with ideas presented in Weaver's Grammar in Context.