Come to Class: Lessons for High School Writers

by Carol Jago

Teaching students to write well is hard. Team teaching with a master writing teacher can make it easier-and more productive. Come to Class offers you that opportunity. In Come to Class, Carol Jago shares the writing lessons and classroom survival skills she honed over 32 years of teaching. Each lesson describes Carol's teaching moves and language and includes suggestions on pacing the lesson, setting students up for success, organizing flexible groups, and troubleshooting common classroom management problems. Organized around five fundamental types of writing-expository writing, persuasive writing, writing about literature, narrative writing, and reflective writing- Come to Class will help you personalize your writing curriculum while at the same time it will support you as you prepare your students for district assessments.

416 pages, Paperback

First published March 14, 2008

About the author

Carol Jago is an American English teacher, author, and past president of the National Council of Teachers of English. In 2016, Jago received the CEL Kent Williamson Exemplary Leadership Award from the National Council of Teachers of English.

Reviews

[Terry]

This is an interesting collection of assignments from the NCTE President and author of With Rigor for All: Teaching the Classics to Contemporary Students, Papers, Papers, Papers: An English Teacher's Survival Guide, and many other professional books. This collection is practical, the sort of thing to get if you're looking for help teaching writing tomorrow. Each lesson is relatively self contained, although it makes sense to sequence some before others. Teachers new to the profession or new to HS might especially appreciate having mentor texts and pacing spelled out.

I'm surprised that Jago spends relatively little time on evaluation. The lessons aren't built around the Understanding By Design Expanded 2nd Edition backwards lesson planning, so the books feel too open-ended. Then again, perhaps that keeps them flexible enough to be used at most grade/ability levels.

In such an expensive package, I'd have appreciated seeing a couple of student exemplars as well. I prefer what Heinemann has done with Atwell's Lessons That Change Writers, but that won't be as useful for high school teachers.