INTRODUCTION - Maupin House Publishing

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WhAT yOU’LL FIND IN ThIS BOOK Part I (Chapters 1-12) presents the writing strategies individually, with instructional notes and student exercises and reference sheets. Part II (Chapters 13-15) gives you tools to help students apply their practice to draft, revise, and edit their essays. Part III deals with problem-solving and assessment and includes student practice with scoring several essays against a rubric. Also in Part III are additional skill-sharpening games and activities for the whole class, some questions for close reading, a glossary of terms, a quiz on the terms, and 101 writing prompts. Together, this resource presents a metaphorical Swiss Army knife of writing strategies that you and your students can use to tackle any writing task with confidence. In Part I (Chapters 1-12), each chapter begins with an explanation, followed by reproducible student activities and worksheets that provide definitions, examples, and practice. “Teaching Notes and Answers” at the end of each chapter provide you with instructional information, examples, and activity answers. A Style Points Quiz with answers follows Chapter 12 as a culminating assessment activity. Use this assessment to guide instruction and assess understanding. Part II (Chapters 13-15) focuses on helping your students apply their style-points practice to the essay-writing process. Chapter 13 includes a powerful pre-writing strategy, summaries of the major points, two student-revision strategies, and ways to help your students edit for coherence and organization. Chapter 14 provides you with problem-solving and assessment information to pinpoint problems and to give your students practice scoring an essay against a provided sixpoint rubric. Finally, additional whole-class games and activities in Chapter 15 add even more effective spice to your instruction. The “Resource” section also provides you with 101 writing prompts and a glossary of key terms, along with a final quiz that tests their knowledge of the terms you’ve taught. An important organizational note: After you assess the worksheets, return them to the students for reference. Students can keep them in a binder or portfolio. This allows them to track their progress, review past strategies, and return to past drafts for revision. It will be especially helpful as they bridge the transition from learning and practicing Part I writing strategies to applying those strategies in Part II essays. x Introduction
hOW TO USE ThE STyLE POINTS LESSONS IN yOUR CLASSROOM Because the needs of teachers (and their students) vary so widely, this book is designed to give you as much flexibility as possible. Here are two basic approaches you might take. Option 1: Go through the book’s exercises in sequence. The student lessons in the first twelve chapters are cumulative: They progress from introductory exercises that introduce each strategy to short composition activities in which students apply each strategy in their own writing. Each of the student worksheets contains some background definitions, examples, and explanations. But you will get the best instructional results if you introduce and teach the lesson first. The notes in the beginning of each chapter give you ideas of how to introduce and teach each concept that the students will work on. Additionally, the “Teaching Notes and Answers” that follow each chapter provide you with specific instructional tips and information that applies to each exercise, as well as examples, definitions, and student-worksheet answers. As you lead students through the lessons’ concepts, focus on the examples and models provided to help you. Take time to read these aloud with students so they can see the strategies in action before they do their own writing. Allow at least one class period (forty–fifty minutes) for each activity. Using this approach, the first part of the book will take at least twelve weeks to complete (more if you do every activity in each chapter). Once students have completed Part I of the book, Part II will guide them through the process of applying the strategies by writing fully developed essays. The activities in Chapter 13 support students throughout the entire writing process: pre-writing, drafting, revising for coherence and organization, and self- and peer-revision. For the first essay you assign, spend at least one class period on each activity to ensure that students are well-grounded in each stage of the writing process. This groundwork will pay off later, as it equips students with strategies they can use at each stage. The whole-activities in Chapter 15 are designed to reinforce the strategies learned in Part I; these can be used at any time to practice and sharpen students’ use of these strategies. Option 2: Jump around based on the needs of your students. Each chapter in this book is self-contained so that you can use it individually out of sequence. If, for example, your students need work on verbs, use the activities in Chapter 3. For planning purposes, each activity is designed to take approximately one forty- to fifty-minute class period. Chapter 14 provides a section on “Pinpointing Problems,” which will help you identify specific strategies that you might teach based on past student-writing assessments. Because no two teachers use any one book the same way, this book is designed so that you can flip back and forth between Part I and Part II based on your preferences and needs. The Chapter 15 activities are the one exception; these activities, which provide whole-class options for practicing and reinforcing skills, presume knowledge of the strategies from Chapters 1-12. Persuasion Points xi
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INTRODUCTION - Maupin House Publishing

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