Teaching Middle School Writers: What Every English Teacher Needs to Know

by Laura Robb

"My whole goal with this book was to come at teaching writing from the angle that matters students' perspective. They taught me what I needed to know to make this book live up to their passion for writing." Laura Robb Adolescents have robust and rewarding writing lives outside of school that involve journals, emails, text messages, blogs, and an astounding array of genres. Unlike their personal reading lives that teachers frequently tap into, their personal writings typically exist under the curricular radar-that is until now. While grounded in the common schedule constraints and curriculum demands of middle school, Laura Robb's Teaching Middle School Writers offers teachers lessons and routines that are uncommonly attuned to adolescents' developmental and social needs. As she taps into the energy and enthusiasm of adolescents' personal writing lives, Laura Straight-from-the-classroom writing samples and videos give teachers the opportunity to see how Laura uses compelling questions and powerful mentor texts to teach writing, support struggling writers, and weave twenty-first century literacies into the writing curriculum. Throughout, teachers learn ways of connecting to students' lives in order to bring out their best writing, their best self.

Genres: Teaching, Education, School, Writing

352 pages, Paperback

First published March 18, 2010

About the author

Author, teacher, coach, and speaker, Laura Robb has completed 43 years of teaching in grades 4-8.

She presently coaches teachers in reading/writing workshop at Powhatan School in Virginia and coaches teachers in grades K-8 in Staunton, Virginia, Long Island, and Ann Arbor, Michigan, and West Nyack, New York.

Reviews

[Amanda Levy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great insight. So much work to do!

[Jenny Henry · Rating 5 out of 5]

An extremely helpful book for writing teachers. I really enjoyed the assessment ideas - setting criteria WITH students before they start a new piece, as opposed to using set rubrics that are not always applicable. Robb shares specific strategies for guiding students that struggle in each step of the writing process and includes examples of conferences with students. This will be a go-to resource for me.

[Grace · Rating 5 out of 5]

My goodness, is this ever a valuable book. Robb uses her decades of teaching experience to share what she believes to be the most important strategies for teaching writing. I learned a LOT from this book, and almost all of the tips given can be tailored up to high school and college (my professor uses many of them herself) or down to elementary. While Robb doesn't explicitly mention psychology, she incorporates quite a bit of it into the book (how grading and evaluation can affect a student's morale, how to boost a student's confidence in their writing, how to help students assist their peers, et cetera). Every English teacher from K-12 and up should read this book. It's even written in a conversational tone that make it seem like an informational nonfiction book instead of a college textbook.

[Heather · Rating 3 out of 5]

Renowned educator and author of several books on literacy, Laura Robb is back again with Teaching Middle School Writers. Robb’s book is well-seeped in best practice, deriving information from “four zones of knowledge”— research, teachers’ realities, students’ feedback, and her own teaching experiences. Robb’s book draws information from study she designed which surveyed 1501 middle school students from twelve states, including Michigan. An accompanying DVD includes student interview footage, mentor text lessons, and editable reproducible form files. Additional structuring beckons it to be used by professional learning communities as the book provides discussion questions and suggestions for study groups to examine their own student writing.


Throughout the book, Robb emphasizes and incorporates giving students choice in their writing assignments in order to engage students because it occurred so frequently in student surveys and interviews.


I found chapters four and five, Making Powerful Writing Happen Day to Day, especially helpful as I venture into writing workshop this year. However, Robb designed the book so teachers will be able to use the suggestions for routines and lessons that work whether or not they use writing workshop in their classrooms. The section about setting criteria (157-175) introduced a new (to me) concept about setting criteria for each writing assignment as opposed to using rubrics.

Many of the suggestions in Robb’s book come from the results of her national survey and interviews she conducted with students, either via email or in person. As I was reading, I wondered how many of these practices she already used in her classroom prior to the research, what she used after the survey that succeeded, and what she has not yet tested but suggests because of the results.


Teaching Middle School Writers covers a vast range of topics for teaching writing in middle school, including using mentor texts, routines and lessons for writing workshop, using criteria instead of rubrics for grading, conferring, and the usage of technology in the middle school classroom. While I appreciate the breadth of this book because it allowed me to see how all of these elements work together, Robb is not able to go the depth that I need at this point in my career. I can see this being valuable to use as a book study due to its organization and the accompanying DVD. Also, its breadth would make it an excellent choice as a text for a survey education course in teaching writing in the middle school.

[Deborah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not anything new, just packaged a little differently. I guess I was hoping for more from the title. There were a couple of things I liked: some charts about intervention strategies during the writing process and ways to reach middle school students. Also the drafts of Katherine Patterson's writing in the back to use as discussion for revision. But overall, there just wasn't anything really new. And what was there seemed to be about negotiating with students more than about teaching them. I'm saying this wrong. Example: In several examples of feedback, I saw advice like this: I liked your story and the descriptions. Can you think of a better title and correct your spelling before you turn in your final draft? The advice wasn't substantive, and overall that's what I kept feeling: getting at the heart of things wasn't the purpose. Getting kids happy about writing might have been, and that's important, too. But to me the hard part is getting at the substance, and this book didn't do that for me.

[Mr. Holt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Teaching Middle School Writers: What Every English Teacher Needs to Know With DVD is a fantastic resource for all Middle Level educators. The author shares lots of personal experiences and insights about the teaching of writing. The information is based on extensive research and directly linked to the neuroscience research as well. The author's main point is to pass the writing torch to students. Give the students choice in regards to writing topics and then guide them on their journey. The book includes lots of great strategies and ideas to motivate students to write and help students become better writers. I highly recommend this book for any and all Middle Level teachers as writing is not reserved for English class.

[Aaron · Rating 4 out of 5]

Laura Robb goes into careful and meticulous detail of we as English Teachers need to nurture budding writers without coddling them or giving them too many restrictions. Robb expounds upon the belief that crafting writing pieces needs structure and we absolutely must conference with students and give them the one on one time that each student needs. She has some great ideas about keeping lists of each students strengths and weaknesses for each piece and selecting a few weaknesses for that student to improve upon in order to see each student's personal growth. Her methods of crafting mini lessons based on what each student is struggling with is eye opening and her scaffolding techniques open possibilities for thoughtful discussions and promote sound cognitive development among adolescents and teachers themselves.

[Mel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book! I see this being a go-to book on my professional library shelf! Although the book started slow reviewing research, it was full of logical, practical suggestions and mini-lesson ideas. I just finished filling the book with post-its to mark the parts that I was most enthusiastic about. Even though it is for middle school, there are ideas that could be modified for writers as young as 4th grade (in my opinion!) I recommend this book to teachers of writing!

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was transformative in how I teach writing. It was recommended to me by Dr. Brooke in the NeWP and it took me all summer to read (no time!). This book made me THINK, especially about how I approach writing and what I should be expecting of my students, as well as what they should expect of me. I think any English teacher could benefit from this book.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every middle school L.A. teacher, every Freshman/Sophomore E.L.A. teacher, maybe every English teacher has something to learn from Robb. She's got the data, she's got the experience, she's got the creative mind and she's got the anecdotal evidence.

It's a very readable book.

[Kristin Hundt · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book gave me a lot of strategies to improve my teaching of writing. This author clearly understands middle school minds :)

[Daven · Rating 4 out of 5]

Robb's decades of experience as a writing teacher provide valuable insights on tapping the potential of writing for early adolescents. Lots of "ah-hah" moments as I read this.

[Whitney Kelley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great book for pre-service teachers or someone who is completely new to Writers Workshop and needing step-by-step, pragmatic implementation. More of a field-guide.

[Jess · Rating 4 out of 5]

reading for work. interesting.