Building Strong Writers in Middle School: Classroom-Ready Activities That Inspire Creativity and Support Core Standards

by Jim Delisle

Improve proficiency in core language arts concepts with 24 classroom-ready activities that align with Common Core State Standards. By engaging students in meaningful language arts activities that relate to their lives, teachers can promote authentic writing in which students explore their personal thoughts and beliefs, resulting in richer work. Complete with step-by-step directions and student examples—and developed and tested in public and private classrooms with students of varying abilities—Building Strong Writers in Middle School helps students understand themselves and one another more deeply, contemplate how their writing can affect the larger world, and express themselves in literary forms. With writing now being required across the curriculum, teaching language arts at the middle school level is more important than ever. Digital content includes reproducible handouts.

Genres: Education

160 pages, Paperback

First published June 22, 2011

About the author

Dr. Delisle, Ph.D. has been a teacher of gifted children and those who work on their behalf for more than 30 years. A former classroom teacher, teacher of gifted children, and counselor of gifted adolescents, Jim recently retired from Kent State University, where he served as Director of undergraduate and graduate programs in gifted education for 25 years.

Jim has served on the Board of Directors of several schools and associations, including The National Association for Gifted Children, Duke University Talent Identification Board, Council for Exceptional Children and The Roeper School for the Gifted.

The author of more than 250 articles and 15 books, Jim's work has been published in multiple languages worldwide. Too, his work has been highlighted in such popular media as The New York Times, Washington Post, People Magazine and on Oprah!. His book, The Gifted Kids' Survival Guide: A Teen Handbook (with co-author Judy Galbraith) is among the most popular books ever published in the field of gifted child education, with more than 200,000 copies in print. The third edition of this book will be published in 2011.

In an effort to keep in touch with the "real world" of public schools, Jim left his University position in 1991, 1997, and 2005 to return to full-time classroom teaching. Each time he did this, Jim was reminded of how much easier it is to teach graduate students two evenings a week than it is to teach 2nd, 7th, or 9th grade students every day, hour after hour! From 1998-2008, Jim also taught middle school students one day each week in the Twinsburg, Ohio school system.

Jim has received several teaching honors in his career, but the most meaningful award came when a former 4th grade student selected Jim, upon high school graduation, as his "Most Inspirational Teacher."

Lastly, Jim's recent retirement will allow him to pursue different professional experiences, including writing children's books in which the main characters are young people that Jim has taught or counseled. Too, Jim hopes to revise his illustrated autobiography, Living by the Numbers, which has thus far been rejected by 14 eminent publishers. However, when this autobiography eventually gets published and optioned for Hollywood, Jim hopes that Richard Gere or George Clooney will play his character.

Reviews

[Joyce Yattoni · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just finished combing through this teacher friendly writing for middle schoolers book by Deb and Jim Delisle. The writing activities are organized by theme, such as getting to know you and each writing task has the CCSS that it relates to. I got a lot of ideas here especially for the beginning of the year. Also, some great writing tasks to help with descriptive writing, although they don’t call it that. My favorite activity is “Telling Your Own Story” which will help tremendously with student blogging.