A Classroom Teacher's Guide to Struggling Writers: How to Provide Differentiated Support and Ongoing Assessment

by Curt Dudley-Marling, Patricia Paugh

"Creating inclusive classrooms considerate of the needs of ALL children requires that teachers design structures that enable them to provide struggling learners with frequent, intensive, explicit, and individualized support and direction." Curt Dudley-Marling and Patricia Paugh What do struggling writers really need? The research says they need more of what every student access to high-quality writing instruction. A Classroom Teacher's Guide to Struggling Writers shares a framework for teaching every child that helps you give frequent, intensive, explicit, and differentiated support to students who struggle. Curt Dudley-Marling and Patricia Paugh (coauthors of A Classroom Teacher's Guide to Struggling Readers ) draw on a deep, thirty-year research base as well as classroom knowhow. Through observations of master teachers they show how the writing workshop gives you the instructional space Best of all, A Classroom Teacher's Guide to Struggling Writers illustrates how writing workshop can increase your instructional flexibility. You'll find information to help you guide struggling writers in grades 2 through 6 in areas where they commonly need support, such as planning, fluency, audience, organization, genre, word choice, mechanics, and revision. What do your struggling readers need? Instruction that provides the support to gain independence-the kind of effective, efficient, flexible teaching you'll read about in A Classroom Teacher's Guide to Struggling Writers.

176 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[Deborah]

I know some secondary teachers at summer institute didn't like this book as much as I did, but I think that's because it has lots of elementary-level examples. However, I think secondary teachers can still benefit. I found the chapter on a genre approach to writing particularly well informed and thoughtful. Several great quotes from this chapter include these: " Children do not learn to write 'once and for all' (Gee 1996). Instead, writers learn to write particular kinds of text, for particular purposes and audiences, in particular (social) settings" and "Effective writers don't master genre features; they learn to use these features flexibly according to their appraisal of their purposes, audiences (including their own relationship to that audience), and the social situations in which they are writing."