Lesson Plans for Teaching Writing

Edited by Chris Jennings Dixon, this collection of lesson plans, grouped around popular categories such as Writing Process, Portfolios, and Writing on Demand, will help prepare high school and college students for college-level writing.

Why do students often graduate from high school unprepared for college writing? And what can we do about it?

These are the questions that a group of classroom teachers set out to explore. Over the course of seven years, a group of middle, high school, college, and university teachers participated in a federally funded writing coalition project to implement innovative approaches to teaching writing. Together they developed this series of lesson plans designed to make writing both fun and an integral part of diverse curricula.

“Practical” is the recurrent motif of each teaching strategy. Each lesson follows a standard format that includes:

• Purpose of the activity
• Necessary preparation
• Required props and materials
• Process and procedure for implementation
• Instructional pointers and/or possible pitfalls
• Reflections from the teacher that provide “behind the scenes” insights