What Works in Writing Instruction: Research and Practices

“What works?”

As teachers, it’s a question we often ask ourselves about teaching writing. We consider questions such as:

• How can the writing process, including prewriting, product goals, and inquiry, become more meaningful for students?
• What is the best way to use models in the classroom?
• What can targeted strategies, word processing, or collaboration do for students’ writing?
• How can writing-to-learn develop students’ overall writing skills?
• How can sentence combining and summarizing benefit writing?

Through teacher-friendly language and classroom examples, Deborah Dean helps answer these kinds of questions by taking a close look at research-based practices that have proved to be effective and interpreting the principles behind them.

Based on the Carnegie Institute’s influential Writing Next report, What Works in Writing Instruction will help teachers apply the findings to their unique classroom environments. We all must find the right mix of activities for our own students, and this book offers the best of what is currently known about effective writing instruction to help students improve their writing abilities.

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