Writing: Teachers & Children at Work

by Donald H. Graves

Twenty years after Don Graves first guided you to new, more effective, and more professionally satisfying practices, Heinemann celebrates his continuing influence with a special 20th Anniversary Edition of Writing, the book that revolutionized literacy teaching.

Genres: Professional Development

352 pages, Paperback

First published September 15, 1989

About the author

Donald Graves was one of the greatest voices of his generation, a plain spoken, thoughtful genius. He was an educator, a writer, an outspoken advocate for educational best practices. His death was a loss too great to put into words for people the world over, whether they were aware of it or not. A Professor Emeritus at the University of New Hampshire, Donald Graves, with the help of mentor Donald Murray and contemporaries like Lucy Calkins and Ralph Fletcher, revolutionized writing instruction in the U.S. with the widespread practice of practical workshop-based language arts instruction. In his decades at the forefront of writing instruction research, Donald offered numerous works that continue to shape the face of instruction today and for the foreseeable future.

Reviews

[Mark]

I understand the stature this book enjoys, and when it was first published, I imagine it was a groundbreaking departure from the contemporaneous pedagogical thinking about writing. At this point, however, the process model has been, I fear, overhyped and its method overstated. In any case, my own problems with this book stem from the fact that I found it turgid and repetitious: this is a book about writing that I believe should have been more judiciously edited. If nothing else, the book might enjoy more focus from such an endeavor.