Table of Contents 1. Writing Quotations 2. Workshop Quotations 3 ...

Overview 

1. Preparing to Write 

What can we do before students write? 

2. The Elements of Effective Writing Instruction 

What do good writing teachers do? 

3. Strategies for Expository Writing 

What strategies can help students write effective 

expository prose? 

4. Helping All Students Write Better 

What can you do to differentiate writing 

instruction? 

5. Assessing and Responding to Writing 

What kind of feedback and evaluation helps 

improve writing most? 

Producing Good Writers 

Presenter: Jim Burke 

www.englishcompanion.com 

Table of Contents 

1. Writing Quotations 

2. Workshop Quotations 

3. Types of Text 

4. Rhetorical Modes 

5. Academic Essentials Matrix 

6. Instructional Principles 

7. Article: Rueben Martinez 

8. Main Idea Organizer 

9. Article: “Robo-Legs” 

11. Article Notes 

12. Article: “MySpace.com” 

15. Conversational Roundtable 

16. Argument Organizer 

17. Comparison Organizer 

18. Test-Maker Tool 

19. Excerpt: Compare and Contrast (from EL) 

23. Excerpt: Because Writing Matters: Effective Instruction and Assignments 

24. Writing Analysis: FODP 

25. Organizational Patterns: FODP 

26. FODP Illustrated: Sample (original) 

27. FODP Illustrated: Sample (annotated) 

28. Rubric: FODP 

29. Rubric: Introduction (FODP) 

30. Rubric: AP Essay Scoring 

31. Assignment: AP Independent Reading Prompts 

32. Assignment: The Weekly Paper 

33. Response to Research: Langer’s Beat the Odds Study 

34. Paperwork: Handling the Paperload 

35. Report: Executive Summary of Write Next 

38. Summary Notes 

39. Report: “Making Writing Instruction a Priority” 

46. Report: “Reading and Writing in the Academic Content Areas”

from Writing Reminders: Tools, Tips, and Techniques, by Jim Burke 

1. Students can’t be the only learner in a 

classroom. Teachers have to learn, too. 

–––Nancie Atwell, In the End 

2. I’m just trying to look at something without 

blinking. 

–––Toni Morrison 

3. Finally, one just has to shut up, sit down, and 

write. 

–––Natalie Goldberg 

4. All of us, ages four to ninety-four, want our 

reading and writing to be meaningful, to 

make sense and to be good for something. 

–––Nancie Atwell, from Side by Side 

5. Remember that effective e communication 

takes two---the writer and the reader. 

–––Bryan Garner, from the Oxford Dictionary of 

American Usage and Style 

6. Read over your compositions, and wherever 

you meet with a passage which you think is 

particularly fine, strike it out. 

–––Samuel Johnson 

7. Read, read, read. Read everything––trash, 

classics, good and bad, and see how they do 

it. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it is 

good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out 

the window. 

–––William Faulkner 

8. You just sit down and write every day for 

three or four hours. You do it like piano 

scales until you have a story to tell. 

–––Annie Lamott 

9. It helps if you have someone to talk to, it 

really helps. I don’t think you can write a 

book completely alone. 

–––Judith Krantz 

10. I never write exercises, but sometimes I write 

poems which fail and call them exercises. 

–––Robert Frost 

11. I know a good many fiction writers who paint, not 

because they are any good at painting, but because it 

helps their writing. It forces them to look at things. 

–––Flannery O’Connor 

12. Growing up with five brothers taught me that 

it’s good to be the guy telling the story after 

the lamp gets broken. 

–––Jon Scieszka 

13. Cross out every sentence until you come to 

one you cannot do without. That is your 

beginning. 

–––Gary Provost 

14. I have forced myself to begin writing when 

I’ve been utterly exhausted, when I’ve felt my 

soul as think as a playing card…and somehow 

the activity of writing changes everything. 

–––Joyce Carol Oates 

15. Images always come first. 

–––C. S. Lewis 

16. See everything. Overlook a great deal. Correct 

a little. 

–––Pope John XXIII 

17. My working habits are simple: long periods of 

thinking, short periods of writing. 

–––Ernest Hemingway 

18. You just shouldn’t have standards that inhibit 

you from writing…. I can imagine a person 

beginning to feel he’s not able to write up to 

that standard he imagines the world has set for 

him….The only standard I can rationally have 

is the standard I’m meeting right now. 

–––William Stafford 

19. Errors are unintentional and unprofitable 

intrusions upon the consciousness of the 

reader. 

–––Mina Shaughnessy 

20. Writing teachers draw upon three distinct 

areas of expertise. We must know our 

students. We must know how to teach. And 

we must know something about writing itself. 

–––Ralph Fletcher 

1

Workshop Quotations 

Daybook 

“Well Words” 

1. Relax 

2. Connect 

3. Listen 

4. Exercise 

5. Celebrate 

6. Challenge 

7. Laugh 

8. Breathe 

9. Confront 

10. Change 

11. Ask 

12. Eat (well) 

13. Join 

14. Trust 

15. Give 

16. Learn 

17. Wait 

18. Delegate 

19. Simplify 

20. Enjoy 

21. Choose 

22. Create 

23. Love 

24. Refuse 

25. Accept 

26. Try 

27. Remember 

28. Praise 

29. Engage 

30. Toss 

31. Renew 

32. Experience 

33. Participate 

34. Appreciate 

35. Balance 

36. Imagine 

37. Contribute 

38. Thank 

39. Clarify 

40. Limit 

41. Entertain 

42. Forgive 

43. Express 

44. Notice 

45. Grow 

46. Respect 

47. Risk 

48. Practice 

49. Honor 

50. Eliminate 

51. Smile 

52. Reward 

First, therefore, we must seek what it is that we are aiming at; then we must look 

about for the road by which we can reach it most quickly, and on the journey itself, 

if only we are on the right path, we shall discover how much of the distance we 

overcome each day, and how much nearer we are to the goal toward which we are 

urged by a natural desire. But so long as we wander aimlessly, having no guide, and 

following only the noise and discordant cries of those who call us in different 

directions, life will be consumed in making mistakes—life that is brief even if we 

should strive day and night for sound wisdom. Let us, therefore, decide both upon 

the goal and upon the way, and not fail to find some experienced guide who has 

explored the region towards which we are advancing; for the conditions of this 

journey are different from those of most travel. On most journeys some wellrecognized 

road and inquiries made of the inhabitants of the region prevent you 

from going astray; but on this one all the best beaten and the most frequented paths 

are the most deceptive. Nothing, therefore, needs to be more emphasized than the 

warning that we should not like sheep, follow the lead of the throng in front of us, 

traveling, thus, the way that all go and not the way that we ought to go. 

–––Seneca, “On the Happy Life” (c. A.D. 58) 

When we enter a house for the first time, we of course find it unfamiliar. By walking 

around for a while, however, looking into various rooms and peering into cupboards, 

we quickly get to know it. But what if we cannot enter the house, and our own 

knowledge of it comes from the instructions and plans that were used to build it? 

Moreover, what if those instructions and plans are written in a highly technical 

language that we find intimidating and incomprehensible? What if, try as we may, 

we cannot form any mental picture of the house? Then we are not going to get much 

of a sense of what it is like to live there. We are not going to be able to enter the 

house even in our imagination. 

–––Keith Devlin, from The Math Gene 

Although some students show up at school as “intentional learners”––people who 

are already interested in doing whatever they need to do to learn academic subjects– 

–they are the exception rather than the rule. Even if they are disposed to study, they 

probably need to learn how. But more fundamental than knowing how is 

developing a sense of oneself as a learner that makes it socially acceptable to 

engage in academic work. The goal of school teaching is not to turn all students 

into people who see themselves as professional academics, but to enable all of them 

to include a disposition toward productive study of academic subjects among the 

personality traits they exhibit while they are in the classroom. If the young people 

who come to school do not see themselves as learners, they are not going to act like 

learners even if that would help them to be successful in school. It is the teacher's 

job to help them change their sense of themselves so that studying is not a selfcontradictory 

activity. One's sense of oneself as a learner is not a wholly private 

construction. Academic identity is formed from an amalgamation of how we see 

ourselves and how others see us, and those perceptions are formed and expressed in 

social interaction. How I act in front of others expresses my sense of who I am. 

How others then react to me influences the development of my identity. 

–––Magdalene Lampert, from Teaching Problems and the Problems of Teaching 

2

Types of Text 

To Inform 

• abstract 

• annual report 

• ballot 

• bibliography 

• forms 

• job applications 

• pager codes 

• pager text messages 

• precis 

• recipe 

• report 

• tax forms 

• bills 

• brochures 

• catalog 

• executive summary 

• financial statement 

• flyer 

• gauges 

• index 

• Instruments 

• labels 

• manual 

• map 

• menu 

• meters 

• minutes 

• multimedia encyclopedia 

• obituaries 

• product labels 

• schedule 

• statistic 

• table of contents 

• tables 

• want ads 

To Persuade 

• advertisement 

• allegory 

• blurbs 

• broadsides 

• buttons 

• campaign documents 

• clothing 

• editorial 

• flag 

• gestures 

• headlines 

• letterhead 

• pamphlet 

• parable 

• proposal 

• resume 

• reviews 

• signs 

• slogans 

• television commercial 

To Explain 

• affidavit 

• diaries 

• journals 

• memos 

• word problems 

• narratives (slave and Indian 

captivity) 

• prospectus 

• rubric 

• rule 

• summary 

• textbook 

• theory 

• timeline 

• travelogue 

• annotated text 

• caption 

• constitution 

• contracts 

• dictionary entries 

• directions 

• law 

• memoir 

• policy 

• school 

assignment/worksheet 

• service agreements 

• warranties 

Multiple Functions 

• autobiography 

• biography 

• business letter 

• cartoon 

• event program 

• chart 

• newspaper article 

• chatroom 

• cover letters 

• deposition 

• diagram 

• dialogues 

• email 

• essay 

• fable 

• fairy tale 

• film 

• flow charts 

• folktale 

• hypertexts 

• illustration 

• instant messages 

• lists 

• listserv 

• logos 

• magazine article 

• mixed media (e.g. art work) 

• monologue 

• montage 

• multimedia product 

• myth 

• names 

• newsgroup postings 

• novel 

• online magazine 

• oral storytelling 

• painting 

• personal letter 

• photograph 

• play 

• poem 

• popular magazines 

• professional journals 

• screen capture 

• short story 

• song lyric 

• speech 

• documentary film 

• graph 

• event program 

• symbols 

• product packaging 

• tattoos 

• web page 

• web site 

Miscellaneous 

• chapbooks 

• eulogy 

• graffiti 

• history 

• icons 

• MOO 

• MUD 

• occasional letter 

• sermon 

• situations 

• television program 

• test/examination 

• testimony 

• tracts 

• wikis 

• blogs 

• IMs 

• textmessages 

3

ACADEMIC ESSENTIALS MATRIX 

Abilities 

Skills 

Read 

• Fiction 

• Information 

• Argument 

• Poetry 

Write 

• Reader Response 

• Narrative 

• Expository 

• Argument 

Talk 

• Discussion 

• Speech 

• Presentation 

Take Notes 

• Expository 

• Research 

• Literary 

• Textbook 

Take Tests 

• Multiple Choice 

• Essay 

• Short Answer 

• Standardized 

Generate 

• Questions 

• Hypotheses 

• Claims 

• Explanations 

• Examples 

Evaluate 

• Importance 

• Effectiveness 

• Relevance 

• Validity 

• Accuracy 

Analyze 

• Cause/Effect 

• Meaning 

• Implications 

• Logic 

• Consequences 

Organize 

• Events 


• Process 

• Ideas 

• Emphasis 

Explanation of the Academic Essentials (AE) Matrix 

The AE matrix gives structure, depth, and sequencing to my lessons. For example, when I decide which of the “Skills” (reading, writing, talking, 

taking notes, or taking tests) I need to focus on next, I then use the “Abilities” to organize and improve that instruction. If we are reading an article 

on the topic of personal success, for example, I might have students “generate” a list of factors they think contribute to such success. I might then 

have students, to increase their processing of the information, “evaluate” which three factors from their list are the most important, then “analyze” 

how they contribute to success. The matrix challenges me to achieve more but in a structured sequence; thus I might have students “organize” their 

three essential factors from most to least important or in some other logical order. Finally, to integrate the different skills, I would have students 

“synthesize” by first writing a well-organized paragraph and then, if time allows, discussing it with each other or the class. In addition, I would ask 

myself (before, during, and after this instructional sequence) what other skills––writing, talking, taking notes, taking tests––I could or should 

integrate. In this way, the AE matrix ensures my instruction is designed to achieve maximum effectiveness in ways that promote learning and 

academic success. A sixth “essential” (Managing Oneself) is not included here but is nonetheless…essential. 

© 2005 Jim Burke. May be reproduced for classroom use only. Visit www.englishcompanion.com for more information. 

Synthesize 


• Events 

• Ideas 

• Sources 

• Perspectives 

5

Instructional Principles 

Effective instruction requires that students: 

1. Work independently and with others to solve a range of intellectual problems. 

2. Process material on multiple levels and in various ways. 

3. Use tools and strategies to help them solve a range of academic problems. 

4. Learn skills and knowledge through a variety of instructional modes. 

5. Communicate their understanding by multiple means, including other media. 

6. Monitor and evaluate their performance and progress towards goals. 

7. Connect what they learn today to their other studies, the world, and themselves. 

8. Develop and use skills and knowledge in the context of meaningful conversations. 

9. Know what a successful performance looks like on all tasks and assessments. 

10. Read a variety of types of texts, including multimedia and visual. 

Burke, Jim. 2006. 50 Essential Lessons: Tools and Techniques for Teaching English/Language 

Arts. Portsmouth, NH: firsthand/Heinemann. 

6

Name: Period: Date: 

PQ: 

Inc. Magazine: Most Fascinating Entrepreneurs 

#26 Rueben Martinez Libreria Martinez Books and Art Galleries (by Jeffrey L. Seglin) 

––for simultaneously building a business and nurturing Latino culture 

Rueben Martinez is a genius, and he has the grant to prove it. Last year, he became the first 

bookseller to receive one of those $500,000 fellowships from the MacArthur Foundation that have 

come to be called "genius grants." The selection committee lauded Martinez for "fusing the roles of 

marketplace and community center to inspire appreciation of literature and preserve Latino literary 

heritage." All of that is certainly true, but that's not why we love Martinez. We love him because he 

exhibits the improvisational flair and versatility that is innate to master entrepreneurs. 

Martinez's business, Libreria Martinez Books and Art Galleries, began its life as a small shelf in 

a barbershop in Santa Ana, Calif. For years, Martinez, a barber and the son of Mexican copper 

miners, lent copies of books like Juan Rulfo's El Llano en llamas to his customers. Eventually, he 

started selling books by Latino writers. By 1993, the book business had so outgrown its shelf that 

Martinez decided to put down his shears and turn the shop into a bookstore. He began hosting 

readings and community events, and Libreria Martinez was soon thronged with people. Martinez 

was fast becoming a leading advocate of literacy and cultural education in the Latino community. 

From 1997 until 2001, he partnered with actor Edward James Olmos to establish the Latino Book 

and Family Festival. It has since become the country's largest Spanish-language book exposition, 

now held regularly in four states. (You've got to love a guy who teams up with Lt. Martin Castillo of 

Miami Vice.) 

Martinez, who left the festival to focus on his business, has three stores in California now, 

including one that focuses on children's books. Combined, they generate nearly $1 million in annual 

sales. He would like to have as many as 25 locations by 2012. "The plan is that if a new store meets 

its goals, we'll open another," he says. And though business is booming, Martinez, who is now 65, 

still likes to make time to cut hair for some of his longtime customers. "If I cut one or two haircuts a 

month, I'm in heaven," he says. Of course, while he trims away, he also recommends a couple of 

good reads. 

1. What I Learned 2. What I Already Know 

3. What I Infer (about the characters, event, or situation) 

7

Main Idea Organizer Name: 

Subject 

What are you or the 

author writing about? 

Main Idea 

What are you (or the 

author) saying about 

the subject? (i.e., what 

is the point you or the 

author want to make?) 

Subject 

Main Idea 

Details 

• Examples 

• Stories 

• Quotations 

• Explanations 

Detail Detail Detail 

8 

© Jim Burke 2004. May reproduce for classroom use only. www.englishcompanion.com

Expository Reading: Robo-Legs 

By Michael Marriott (Upfront Magazine) 

New prosthetic limbs are providing increased mobility for many amputees — and blurring the 

line between humans and machines 

5 

10 

15 

20 

25 

30 

With his blond hair, buff torso, and megawatt smile, Cameron Clapp is in many ways the 

quintessential California teenager. There are, however, a few things that set him apart: For 

starters, this former skater boy is now making his way through life on a pair of shiny, state-ofthe-art 

robotic legs. 

"I make it look easy," he says. 

Clapp, 19, lost both his legs above the knee and his right arm just short of his shoulder 

after getting hit by a train almost five years ago near his home in Grover Beach, Calif. 

Following years of rehabilitation and a series of prosthetics, each more technologically 

advanced than the last, he has become part of a new generation of people who are embracing 

breakthrough technologies as a means of overcoming their own bodies' limitations. 

"I do have a lot of motivation and self-esteem," Clapp says, "but I might look at myself 

differently if technology was not on my side." 

The technology he's referring to is the C-Leg. Introduced by Otto Bock HealthCare, a 

German company that makes advanced prosthetics, the C-Leg combines computer technology 

with hydraulics. Sensors monitor how the leg is being placed on terrain and microprocessors 

guide the limb's hydraulic system, enabling it to simulate a natural step. It literally does the 

walking for the walker. The technology, however, is not cheap; a single C-Leg can cost more 

than $40,000. 

The C-Leg is one of the examples of how blazing advancements, including tiny 

programmable microprocessors, lightweight composite materials, and keener sensors, are 

restoring remarkable degrees of mobility to amputees, says William Hanson, president of 

Liberating Technologies Inc., a Massachusetts company that specializes in developing and 

distributing advanced prosthetic arms and hands. 

Three sets of legs 

For example, Clapp, who remains very involved in athletics despite his condition, has three 

different sets of specialized prosthetic legs: one for walking, one for running, and one for 

swimming. In June, he put all of them to use at the Endeavor Games in Edmond, Okla. — an 

annual sporting event for athletes with disabilities — where he competed in events like the 

200-meter dash and the 50-yard freestyle swim. 

Man or Machine? 

35 

40 

But increased mobility is only part of the story. Something more subtle, and possibly farreaching, 

is also occurring: The line that has long separated human beings from the machines 

that assist them is blurring, as complex technologies become a visible part of the people who 

depend upon them. 

Increasingly, amputees, especially young men like Clapp, and soldiers who have lost limbs 

in Afghanistan and Iraq, are choosing not to hide their prosthetics under clothing as previous 

generations did. Instead, some of the estimated 1.2 million amputees in the United States — 

more than two thirds of whom are men — proudly polish and decorate their electronic limbs 

for all to see. 

9

45 

50 

55 

60 

65 

70 

75 

80 

Long an eerie theme in popular science fiction, the integration of humans with machines 

has often been presented as a harbinger of a soulless future, populated with flesh-and-metal 

cyborgs like RoboCops and Terminators. But now major universities like Carnegie Mellon and 

the University of California at Berkeley, as well as private companies and the U.S. military, 

are all exploring ways in which people can be enhanced by strapping themselves into wearable 

robotics. 

"There is a kind of cyborg consciousness, a fluidity at the boundaries of what is flesh and 

what is machine, that has happened behind our backs," says Sherry Turkle, director of the 

Initiative on Technology and Self at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which studies 

technology's impact on humanity. "The notion that your leg is a machine part and it is exposed, 

that it is an enhancement, is becoming comfortable in the sense that it can be made a part of 

you." 

While some users are eager to display their prosthetic marvels, others like them to appear 

more human. Besides selling prosthetics, Liberating Technologies, for one, offers 19 kinds of 

silicone sleeves for artificial limbs to make them seem more natural. 

"There are two things that are important; one is functionality and the other is cosmetic," 

says Hanson, the company's president. "Various people weigh those differences differently. 

There are trade-offs." 

But many young people, especially those who have been using personal electronics since 

childhood, are comfortable recharging their limbs' batteries in public and plugging their 

prosthetics into their computers to adjust the software, Hanson says. 

Nick Springer, 20, a student at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Fla., who lost his arms 

and legs to meningitis when he was 14, recalls doing just that at a party when the lithium-ion 

batteries for his legs went dead. 

"I usually get 30 hours out of them before I have to charge them again," he says. "But I 

didn't charge them up the day before." 

Terminator Legs 

When his legs ran out of power, he spent most of his time sitting on a couch talking to 

people while his legs were plugged into an electrical outlet nearby. According to Springer, no 

one at the party seemed to care, and his faith in his high-tech appendages appears unfazed. "I 

love my Terminator legs," he says. 

Springer also remembers going to see Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith with 

his father. While he liked the movie, he found the final scenes — in which Anakin Skywalker 

loses his arms and legs in a light-saber battle and is rebuilt with fully functional prosthetics to 

become the infamous Darth Vader — a little far-fetched. 

"We have a long way to go before we get anything like that," he says. "But look how far 

humanity has come in the past decade. Who knows? The hardest part is getting the ball rolling. 

We pretty much got it rolling." 

10

Article Notes Name: 

Period: Date: 

VOCABULARY 

1. 

2 

3. 

Title: 

Author: 

Subject: 

1. Purpose Question (PQ): Identify the goal 

4. 

5. 

Definitions on back. 

2. Preview: Gather useful information 



3. 

3. Pause and Reflect: List important details and ideas related to your PQ 



3. 

4. 

5. 

4. PQ: Answer the PQ: What is the subject and the author’s main idea about it? 

5. Practice Questions: Create two test questions about the subject, article, or author 

1. Factual: 

2. Inferential: 

6. Post: Post a comment or question on the board for class discussion 

© 2006 Jim Burke. May photocopy for classroom use only. Visit www.englishcompanion.com 

11

MySpace.com article 

The siren call of myspace.com 

Do you MySpace? A growing number of South Sound teens use the Web site to express 

themselves and meet friends, but some adults worry about their sharing personal information. 

By DEBBY ABE 

The News Tribune 

Eighteen-year-old Aaron 

VanMeer’s daily routine goes 

something like this: Get home 

from school, grab a snack and slide 

in front of the family computer for 

his daily fix. 

He’s just gotta log on to 

MySpace.com, the Web site where 

millions of teens and young adults 

gather to socialize. 

For an hour - OK, maybe three 

or four sometimes - the Puyallup 

High School senior sends messages 

to some of the 149 friends listed on 

his site, tinkers with his site profile 

and surfs through other MySpace 

pages. 

“This Web site is pretty important 

to me and my friends’ social 

lives. . . . It’s an unphysical way of 

hanging out,” he said. “It’s probably 

the first and last thing I do each 

and every night.” 

MySpace.com, along with similar 

sites, has exploded into a social 

necessity for more and more 

young people in the South Sound 

and across the country. 

The free site allows members to 

create a personal Web page, called 

a profile, describing themselves 

and their interests. 

Users can send e-mail and 

instant messages, and post music 

samples, snapshots and blogs by 

themselves and friends. 

They can download music, talk to 

local and national band members, 

meet people and join online 

groups to ramble about topics as 

diverse as scrapbooking, music 

from the ‘90s or surviving cancer. 

Yet for all the enthusiasm the 

site generates, it’s also raising concerns 

among some parents and 

causing headaches for schools. 

Parents wonder about the safety 

and content of the site, where 

tech-savvy kids spend hours each 

day communicating in the 

anonymity of cyberspace. 

“The fact you don’t know who 

you’re meeting on there is kind of 

scary,” said Bonney Lake resident 

Kim Halter, whose 14-year-old son 

recently joined MySpace. “It makes 

him happy, so I hate to just cut 

him off. I do watch him and limit 

the time he’s on there.” 

Meanwhile, high schools are 

starting to see spillover effects 

from the site now that such a mass 

of teens has a forum to communicate 

with electronic speed. 

“www.MySpace.com has hit 

schools with a vengeance,” said 

Jim Boyce, dean of student affairs 

at White River High School in 

Buckley. “We have seen a very negative 

impact with MySpace.com as 

students from our school and others 

use it for negative purposes 

such as threats, harassment and 

malicious gossip.” 

Massive popularity 

Launched in January 2004, 

MySpace.com counts more than 46 

million members. In November, an 

Internet measurement service 

found MySpace was the thirdmost-viewed 

site on the Internet in 

terms of total page views, outranking 

Google and eBay. 

The site is open to anyone 14 or 

older, and advertisers use the site 

to reach 16- to 34-year-olds, 

according to information forwarded 

by Rena Grant with Edelman 

public relations firm for MySpace. 

VanMeer, the high school senior, 

speculates most students at 

Puyallup High have a MySpace 

account. A quick search on the site 

found more than 900 users who 

say they attend the 1,650-student 

school. 

Samantha Smith, a 15-year-old 

Curtis High School sophomore in 

University Place, says one of the 

most commonly asked questions 

when meeting another teen these 

days is “Do you have a MySpace?” 

“Most of my friends at school 

are on it,” she said. 

If anything, users say one of the 

site’s biggest downsides is too 

much MySpace. 

132 Tools and Texts 

12

“It pretty much is ruining my 

life because I’m constantly checking 

on it at work, at home, you 

name it,” said Travis Noble, 19, a 

Pierce College student who estimates 

he spends up to six hours a 

day on the site. “It’s such a timewaster. 

You spend your time on 

there instead of doing things you 

should be doing.” 

University of Washington sociology 

professor and author Pepper 

Schwartz sees MySpace and similar 

social networking sites as a means 

to connect people in new ways and 

to maintain less intense relationships 

across distance and time. 

It also feeds peoples’ desires to 

be a star. 

“This allows you to be on the 

Web and to have your own page,” 

she said. “People like to read about 

their friends, their hobbies. We’re 

interested in ourselves and others.” 

MySpace pages are as unique as 

each individual. Some feature girls’ 

dreams of the perfect date, photos 

of favorite actors and screen backgrounds 

decorated with hearts. 

Others include photos of 16- 

year-olds mugging next to halfempty 

bottles of beer. Raunchier 

profiles ooze lewd and profane 

language and display snapshots of 

barely clothed women. 

All sites contain thumbnail photos 

of virtual “friends” - MySpace 

users who’ve requested or been 

asked to join the member’s friends 

list, enabling them to exchange e- 

mail and post messages on each 

others’ sites. 

Not all users are enamored with 

the site. 

Travis Collett, 17, occasionally 

uses his MySpace account, but he 

said, “Most of the people in 

advanced placement classes (at 

Tacoma’s Wilson High School) 

don’t have them. A lot of them 

think it’s ridiculous, it’s an attention-getter. 

I think it’s a teenage 

girl thing.” 

Schools, parents worry 

Parent concerns have grown 

amid national media reports of 

problems at schools over information 

posted on MySpace sites or 

isolated cases of men assaulting or 

starting sexual relationships with 

underage girls they’ve met through 

the site. 

In Graham, Claudia Chapman 

limits her 15-year-old daughter, 

Dani Clark, to chatting with known 

friends. Dani also must give 

Chapman her password, let her 

mom check her site profile and sit 

at the computer when the teen 

chats online. 

“I’ve heard so much bad stuff 

about MySpace,” Chapman said. 

“Predators . . . can come in and act 

like a high schooler. Unless we 

know who they are, there’s blocked 

access to her. I don’t want her to 

become a statistic.” 

Dani says her friends would flip 

out if their parents were as strict, 

but she doesn’t mind. 

“I understand my mom’s trying 

to watch out for me,” the Graham 

Kapowsin High sophomore said. 

“That’s the one thing my mom and 

I can do, is play on the computer.” 

The Washington State Patrol’s 

Missing and Exploited Children 

Task Force began working on its 

first MySpace case a couple of 

weeks ago by posing as a teenager 

with a site, said Detective Sgt. Dan 

Sharp, who supervises the task 

force. 

“We’ve noticed how the language 

and chatting in there is very 

sexual in nature,” Sharp said. 

“Then we received a profile of an 

adult advertising himself as being 

over the age of 18, and his language 

was sexual in nature.” 

Preteens and adults alike should 

remember that personal information 

they post and discuss on 

MySpace can go to anyone on the 

Internet, including predators or 

pornographers, Sharp said. 

He advises against placing a 

name, age, address, school, personal 

photo or other identifying 

information anywhere on the Web. 

When a News Tribune reporter 

asked MySpace.com about safety 

concerns, the company’s public 

relations firm referred to the site’s 

safety tips area and provided a 

news release about its partnership 

with wiredsafety.org to create a 

safer site. 

MySpace.com lists extensive 

safety tips, and the news release 

said the site has algorithms, specially 

designed software and staff 

to monitor the site for rule violators 

and underage users. 

“If we find out a user is under 

14, we will delete his or her profile,” 

the safety tips say. 

The list tells parents how to 

remove information from their 

child’s site or delete the profile 

altogether. MySpace profiles also 

13 

Tools and Texts 133

can be set so that users must 

approve who can view their site 

and send them e-mail. 

Many teen users say they take 

care to avoid problems. 

Jill Nguyen, an 18-year-old Foss 

High School senior, says she made 

up some of her profile details both 

as a joke and to keep from giving 

out too much personal information. 

She uses the site to communicate 

with friends, not meet new 

people. 

“I don’t think it’s that dangerous,” 

she said of MySpace, “but 

you should always be cautious.” 

Difficult to police 

Aside from attracting predators, 

My Space, like any type of online 

communication, can lead to misunderstandings 

and become a 

technological monster. 

Although most schools attempt 

to block the site from appearing on 

school computers, students often 

find ways to enter. 

Mount Tahoma High commercial 

design teacher Lisa-Marie 

McDonald said students constantly 

try to sneak onto MySpace on 

one of the 30 computers in her 

room. Sometimes, they’re successful. 

If she catches them on the site 

twice, she bans them from her 

class computers for the rest of the 

quarter. 

“It’s the hugest problem I have,” 

McDonald said. 

Meanwhile, at White River High, 

administrators have intervened to 

prevent disagreements over what’s 

written on MySpace blogs from 

escalating into something serious, 

said Boyce, the dean of student 

affairs. 

“Put yourself in a teenager’s 

shoes. Someone writes in and says 

‘Jim Boyce is blah blah blah.’ You’d 

write in and say ‘no he isn’t.’ 

Another person would say ‘you 

shut up.’ That would happen at a 

school in the course of a day, but it 

doesn’t have the speed of the 

Internet.” 

At Curtis High in University 

Place, administrators have asked 

students to remove two inappropriate 

photos posted on MySpace 

profiles in the past year, said associate 

principal David Hammond. 

In one case, three cheerleaders 

wearing their Curtis outfits were 

photographed playfully spanking 

the backside of a fourth uniformed 

cheerleader, who was bent over to 

receive the swats. 

In the other case, a boy took a 

camera-phone photo of a teacher, 

and posted the picture and inappropriate 

comments about the 

teacher on his MySpace site, 

Hammond said. 

While schools generally can’t 

dictate what content students put 

on personal sites outside school, 

Hammond said they can impose 

discipline if the content leads to 

threats or violence at school. 

With the less-serious Curtis 

cases, administrators talked with 

the students and their parents, and 

the students voluntarily removed 

the photos, he said. 

Despite the concerns about 

MySpace and similar sites, neither 

the school administrators nor 

Detective Sharp suggest banning 

teens from using MySpace. 

Instead, they say young users 

need to learn about Internet hazards 

and parents need to monitor 

their computer use. 

“I’m confident with some education, 

kids will do just fine,” Boyce 

said. “It’s up to parents and educators 

to help them become aware.” 

134 Tools and Texts 

14

Name: ________________________________________________________ Period: ______________________ Date: _________________ 

Conversational Roundtable Topic: ______________________________________________ 

DIRECTIONS 

Ask yourself what the focus of your paper, discussion, or inquiry is. Is it a character, a theme, an idea, a trend, or a place? Then 

examine it from four different perspectives, or identify four different aspects of the topic. Once you have identified the four areas, 

find and list any appropriate quotations, examples, evidence, or details. 

© 2007 by Jim Burke from 50 Essential Lessons (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann). This page may be reproduced for classroom use only. 

Tools and Texts 

15 

21

Argument Organizer Name: 

Claim 

What is the main 

point you will argue? 

Reason 

Why should readers 

accept your claim? 

Claim 

Reason 

Evidence 

• Facts 

• Figures 

• Statistics 

• Observations 

Evidence Evidence Evidence 

Acknowledge 

& Respond 

to other 

perspectives on 

the subject 

Acknowledge Respond 

© 2005 Jim Burke. May reproduce for classroom use only. www.englishcompanion.com 

16


Comparison Organizer 

Subject A: Subject B: 


DI R ECTIONS 

Use these “signal words” when 

writing your paragraph: 

CONTRAST 

• although 

• but 

• however 

• on the other 

hand 

• yet 

• even though 

• still 

• while 

• despite 

• on the contrary 

• in contrast 

• regardless 

• though 

• nonetheless 

• instead 

COMPARE 

• again 

• also 

• similarly 

• likewise 

EXAMPLES 

• for example 

• indeed 

• such as 

• after all 

• even 

• in fact 

• for instance 

Subject (what you will focus on): 

Main Idea (what you say about the subject): 

Paragraph (continue on the back of this page): 

17 


19


Test-Maker Tool 

Book Title 

Vocabulary 

Sample Words: valiant, pessimistic, legitimate, persevere, bureaucratic, memoir 

• Word 

• Defined 

Sample Question: which of the following best defines as it is used in this sentence... 

• Explained 

aChallenging 

aRelevant 

aUnimportant 

Factual 

Question & Answer 

Example: How long did the Wright brothers’ first plane stay in the air? 

• Find the answer in the 

text. 

aImportant 

aUseful 

aIrrelevant 

Analytical 

Question & Answer 

• Find the answer between 

the lines. 

aInsightful 

aUseful 

aUnimportant 

Essay 

Question & Response 

• Write one paragraph. 

• Establish main idea for the 

paragraph. 

• Develop your paragraph 

with supporting 

details/examples. 

• Make sure your writing 

flows from one idea to 

the next. 

aChallenging 

aInteresting 

aSuperficial 

Example: How—and why—does the character change by the end of the story? Provide examples. 

Example: Agree or disagree: Socrates was guilty. Support your claim with specific examples from 

the readings. 


18 

84 Tools and Texts

E S S E N T I A L L E S S O N S : R E A D I N G 85 

“My own ambition, 

both for myself and my 

students, is to think about 

the different structures, 

patterns, and ideas that 

govern our lives, stories, 

and cultures, and see what 

they have in common.” 

Compare and Contrast 

Writers are able to identify key similarities and 

differences and convey them in effective prose. 

—The English Teacher’s Companion, p. 252 

Essential Skill Set 

◗ Identify common 

ground between the 

two subjects you 

are comparing. 

◗ Examine specific 

similarities and 

differences. 

◗ Develop a point you 

are trying to make 

about the two subjects. 

◗ Use transitions to 

organize the comparison 

and make it flow. 

Frame the Lesson 

COMPARING AND CONTRASTING ARE SKILLS ESSENTIAL TO ALL AREAS of secondary and postsecondary 

success. They are also vital personal and vocational skills. Although the model 

lesson takes place in an Advanced Placement (AP) class, analytical thinking, reading, and 

writing skills are essential at all levels. State and other standardized tests typically ask 

students to compare characters, perspectives, texts, or authors. In this case, we are 

comparing two poems by different poets to analyze their treatment of the subject of war, 

a task very typical of the AP Literature test. 

Gather and Prepare 

In this model lesson, my students compare “Facing It” by Yusef Komunyakaa and “Dulce 

et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen. These poems are provided in the tools resource 

book. You can adapt the lesson sequence to compare any texts or subjects that have 

points of commonality. 

◗ After reading the model lesson, consider the poems or 

other subjects your students will compare. Preview the 

texts to anticipate students’ needs. Identify points of 

commonality and decide how your class will use the 

Comparison Organizer. 

◗ Make copies of “Facing It” and “Dulce et 

Decorum Est,” or the texts you have 

chosen, for each student. 

◗ Make copies of the Comparison 

Organizer for each student. 

Justine and Sibel discuss the two poems, 

generating points of commonality they can 

apply to both poems; they use these details to 

complete the organizer, which they will then use 

to help them write a comparative analysis of the 

two poems. 

19

86 

E S S E N T I A L L E S S O N S : R E A D I N G 

Help kids 

connect to 

comparing and 

contrasting. 

Summarize each poem. 

Teach 

I KNOW SOME OF YOU WONDER HOW WHAT WE STUDY IN AN ENGLISH CLASS relates to the 

world beyond school. I thought about this yesterday when I was talking to a tax attorney 

I met. When I mentioned that I taught high school English, he perked up and 

went on at some length about how much that class helped him in college and even 

now as an attorney. He has to read all sorts of documents in his work, analyzing 

details, comparing and contrasting one side with another, evaluating people’s arguments. 

So when you are reading and doing a comparative analysis of these two poems 

today, I want you to realize that this kind of thinking—comparing and contrasting—is 

essential in the workplace and at home as you compare products, services, and so on. 

I’m going to give you this page with the two poems—Komunyakaa’s “Facing It” and 

Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est”—that you read last night so you can annotate them. 

Before you get into groups, I want you to read them and write a rough summary of 

each poem on the back. On a scale of 1 to 10, assess how well you understand the 

poems right now and explain your score. 

To help students think about the poems from other perspectives, I show two five-minute video clips from Robert Pinsky’s 

Favorite Poem Project, available online at http://www.favoritepoem.org/. In the clips a Vietnam vet and the 

daughter of a World War II vet talk about why, respectively, “Facing It” and “Dulce et Decorum Est” are their favorite 

poems. This quick multimedia comparison helps students think about how the poems are similar and different. It also 

helps them connect the poems to real people and events. After watching, students review their summaries to see how 

their understanding has increased. The Favorite Poem Project video collection includes 50 clips about different poems. 

Using a three-column 

organizer, identify common 

points and record specific 

similarities and differences. 

Now that you have reread the poems, get into groups and use a three-column organizer 

to take notes on your comparison. (I draw this on the board. There is also a Three-Column 

Organizer in the tools resource book. Create or use an organizer that fits the subjects 

your students are comparing.) In the middle, you should generate a list of possible 

common points that link the two poems. For example, we can write “subject” in the 

middle since the subject for both is war. What will be different is their treatment of the 

subject; for that you can make specific observations in the outer columns, which are 

reserved for notes about each poem. 

“Dulce et Decorum Est” Common Ground “Facing It” 

Students move into groups and begin to generate different points 

of commonality, which they list in the middle column. 

Caption caption caption caption, 

caption caption. 

Remember, as you are working through the poems, 

to think across the poems for more effective comparison. What I mean is that if you 

write something in the middle area, “tone” for example, then apply that equally to 

both poems and jot down your ideas, organizing them by comparisons (similarities) 

and contrasts (differences). Make sure you have quotations from each poem to illustrate 

your ideas. This “reading-across” gives improved structure to your writing. 

Keep in mind what I said earlier about these analytical skills applying to other areas of 

study and life outside of school. Here, you are looking for ways in which two poems are 

similar and different; down the line, you might be comparing different economic theories 

or scientific discoveries, two presidents or different types of governmental systems. 

As a consumer, you will have to learn to weigh different products and services so you 

can make the right decisions. 

20

COMPARE AND CONTRAST 87 

After students have had time to get into the poems and record some specific observations, I check their progress. 

So what did you come up with? What are some common points between the poems? (As 

they call these out, I write them on the board.) As I write these up here you should add 

to your own list those ideas your group did not consider. 

Take a look at our list here now. It’s a good list of points of comparison. And I can see 

that you have many details and quotations to illustrate your ideas. Are some of them 

more important than others, though? 

CASEY: Sure. 

But which ones? Can you give an example and tell us why you think that is so important? 

CASEY: Well, they have totally different attitudes toward the war. 

What do you mean? 

CASEY: Well, the one writer, Owen,…he is arguing against it. The other guy, Komunyakaa,…he says 

that we need to be honest about what we did and how it affected us, not hide from it as if it was a 

shameful thing he and others did. 

I want to push them a bit further, move them into another area of contrast, so I ask more questions. 

How does Owen try to persuade his readers of his argument? 

LIZ: Owen places the reader right in the immediate experience of war, using gruesome imagery to persuade 

the reader of the horrors of war, whereas Komunyakaa utilizes a series of images and impressions. 

We go along like this for a while until we’ve had a good discussion about the poems, their meanings, and how the 

poets create that meaning. I need to push them toward the ongoing focus of our writing work lately: writing to 

compare and contrast. They are ready now, so I give them the Comparison Organizer. 

You don’t need to fill out the two columns on the Comparison Organizer. You already 

have those, but I want to focus on developing a compelling point to your comparison. 

Too often inexperienced writers say things like, “These two poems have many similarities 

and differences.” That’s a useless thing to say. It’s like saying, “Some things are red 

and others are not.” You need to identify your subject and come up with a compelling, 

thoughtful claim about it that you can use your notes to support. I’ll give you an example 

from two poems we recently read: 

The Comparison Organizer 

tool can be found on the 

CD–Rom. 

Use the Comparison Organizer 

to develop a point and 

prepare to write. 

While Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” and Keats’ “Bright Star” 

both address the subject of nature, Frost emphasizes its beauty and the need to stop 

and reflect on its majesty. 

Take that example and come up with something that works for these poems about war. 

They write and, if there is time, share their claims. Before class ends, I explain the writing assignment. 

You’re all set now to write. I want you to go home and, using the comparison and contrast 

words in the box on the organizer, write a brilliant paragraph in which you compare 

what you will argue is the most important point of difference (contrast) between 

the two. Make sure you have examples to support and illustrate what you say. Write 

that up for homework tonight and have it ready to work with tomorrow. 

Write a comparison-contrast 

paragraph using transition 

words. 

21

88 

E S S E N T I A L L E S S O N S : R E A D I N G 

Assess and Extend 

If students need to write an 

analytical essay… 

If students need more 

work on comparing 

and contrasting… 

If students need more support 

to understand the poems… 

If students are ready for 

independent practice… 

◗ EXPAND THE LESSON To follow through on these two poems in particular, have 

students follow a similar sequence the next day on another two or three aspects of the 

poems, working toward a rough draft of an essay that builds on their comparative 

analysis. Move through an expanded writing process to improve and finish the essay. 

◗ ANALYZE THE PARAGRAPH To work further on comparing and contrasting, have 

students go through the paragraph they wrote and label or highlight the transition 

words they used. Talk about how those specific words work to compare or contrast the 

two texts. 

◗ FOCUS ON SUMMARIZING If your students need help summarizing, work on this skill 

first. Refer to Lesson 22, Summarize One or More Texts or Lesson 24, Paraphrase a Text 

or Passage before teaching this lesson. 

◗ COMPARE OTHER POEMS To provide independent practice, have students start from 

scratch on two more poems the next day. I tell my students to find any two poems in 

the anthology (or from a list of poems in the anthology that already have been paired 

by the editors) and then read them and write a comparative analysis. They do this in a 

timed period for practice toward the Advanced Placement test. 

22

Key Details from Because Writing Matters: Improving Student Writing in Our Schools, by 

National Writing Project and Carl Nagin (Jossey-Bass 2006). 

Traits of Effective Writing Instruction 

Analysis of NAEP writing assessments shows that students perform highest when they: 

• plan their writing at least once a week or twice a month 

• write more than one draft 

• talk with their teacher about what they wrote 

• save their work (or had it saved by the teacher) in folders or portfolios 

• write long answers to test questions or reading assignments at least once a week 

• engage in a series of activities (“especially in combination”) as part of a writing process 

• approach writing as “problem-solving” which they use a variety of strategies (e.g., 

prewriting, defining audience, planning, drafting, revising) to solve 

Traits of Effective Writing Assignments 

Studies done by the ETS, NWP, NAEP, and Academy for Educational Development found that 

effective writing assignments: 

• Use some kind of writing process 

• Avoid or go beyond “formulaic use of prewriting, drafting, and revision” by having students: 

o do more than wrote about what they read or experienced 

o reflect, analyze, synthesize in order to engage with and make the material their own 

(e.g., read a story and compare the motivation of two characters which allows them to 

choose and demands that they generate ideas, evaluate their importance, analyze their 

relations, organize them into sentences and paragraphs, and synthesize them into a 

cohesive essay). 

• Provide a framework and strategies for developing ideas and organizing details 

• Communicate to real audiences as opposed to just the teacher 

• Offer choice––but not so much that the student feels overwhelmed––in the topic and effective, 

not overly specified directions for how to write about the topic 

• Establish the criteria by which their performance will be evaluated and, if possible, exemplars 

that show what a successful performance on this assignment looks like. 

23

Writing Analysis: FODP 

Use the following guide to analyze and make notes on how to improve your 

essay: 

FOCUS Focus applies to the paper, paragraphs, and sentences. It 

combines the subject and your main point about the subject. 

• Identify the focus of each paragraph (write it in the margin) 

• Determine (highlight/underline) the subject of each sentence 

• Ask: How does the subject of each sentence relate to the subject 

of the paragraph and the paper in general. 

ORGANIZATION Organization refers to how the writer arranges information 

throughout the paper and within paragraphs or sentences to 

achieve a specific effect (e.g., to emphasize). 

• Explain how you organized the whole paper 

• Identify the organizational pattern within the paragraph 

• Explain why that is an effective organizational strategy 

DEVELOPMENT Development refers to two elements: details and commentary. 

Details include the examples, evidence, and quotations the 

author uses to support or illustrate his or her focus. 

Commentary includes analysis, interpretations, insights, 

opinions, and responses to the question, “So what?” 

• Label/color code the details the author uses 

• Label/color code (in different color than details) the commentary 

PURPOSE Purpose accounts for the writer’s intended effect in the paper 

as a whole and within each paragraph. 

• What effect are you trying to achieve in the paper? 

• What effect are you trying to achieve in each paragraph? 

• How do you go about trying to achieve this effect? 

24

Organizational Patterns 

FOCUS ORGANIZATION DEVELOPMENT PURPOSE 

Subject 

What you are 

writing about (e.g., 

Hamlet, the 

Depression, modern 

art) 

Main Idea 

What you are trying 

to say about the 

subject; this is also 

known as “your 

point,” as in “What’s 

your point?!” 

1. Cause-Effect 

Arranged to show 

connections between a result 

and the events that preceded 

it. Some call this Problem- 

Solution order instead. 

2. Classification 

Organized into categories or 

groups according to various 

traits. 

3. Comparison-Contrast 

Organized to emphasize 

similarities and differences 

4. Listing 

Arranged in a list with no 

consideration for other 

qualities. 

5. Mixed 

Organized using a blend of 

the above. Might, for 

example, classify groups 

while also comparing or 

contrasting them. 

6. Order of Degree 

Organized in order of 

importance, value, or some 

other quality. Known also as 

Order of Importance 

Examples 

• Primary text 

• Secondary texts 

• Class discussions 

• Outside world 

Details 

• Sensory 

• Background 

• Factual 

Quotations 

• Direct 

• Indirect 

• Primary text 

• Secondary texts 

Explanations 

• Importance 

• Meaning 

• Purpose 

• Effect 

Elaborations 

• Connections 

• Clarifications 

• Comparisons 

• Contrasts 

• Consequences 

• Concessions 

Cause and Effect 

• Answers the question, “Why 

did it happen?” 

Classify 

• Answers the questions, 

“What kind is it?” or “What 

are its parts?” 

Compare-Contrast 

• Answers the questions, 

“What is it like?” or “How is 

it different” 

Define 

• Answers the question, “What 

is it?” 

Describe 


does it look, feel, smell, or 

feel like?” 

Illustrate 


is an example?” 

7. Sequential 

Arranged in order that events 

occur. This pattern is also 

known as Time, or 

Chronological order. 

8. Spatial 

Arranged according to 

location or geographic order. 

Some call this pattern 

Geographical order. 

Narrate 


happened and when?” 

Persuasion 

• Answers the question, “Why 

should I want to do, think, or 

value that?” 

Problem-Solution 


is the problem and how can 

it be solved?” 

Process Analysis 

• Answers the question, “How 

did it happen?” 

© 2005 Jim Burke. Visit www.englishcompanion.com for more information. 

25

FODP Illustrated 

Not everyone agrees that Shakespeare is the greatest playwright of all time; however, 

all concede that his language poses difficulties for the modern reader. After only a few 

lines readers encounter words they have not heard or familiar words used in unfamiliar 

ways. Some of these words are now obsolete. We no longer use a word like “marry” or 

“soft” as they did then. Other words suggest meanings other than those we expect. Early 

in Hamlet, for example, Hamlet refers to two companions as “rivals,” a term we now 

associate with an opponent not a companion. Though we find such terms throughout his 

plays, we can learn to read them as Shakespeare intended them if we get to know the 

characters who speak these words. In addition to words, sentences also challenge readers 

of the plays as he uses a variety of sentence structures. Readers often struggle with one of 

his favorite: the inversion. Inverted sentences, in which the verb precedes its subject, 

allow him to connect or emphasize ideas as well as add the unique music that makes his 

writing his own. Thus when Horatio says of King Hamlet’s ghost, “So frowned he once,” 

he stresses the frown not the “once” so as to identify that the ghost was, in fact, the dead 

king. In addition to inversions, Shakespeare often interrupts sentences, placing long 

passages between the subject and is verb. Horatio, for instance, interrupts himself 

repeatedly when he begins, “Our last king,” then adds five lines of detail prior to the verb 

“dared.” Shakespeare interrupts for a reason, though never for the same reason. Some 

interruptions add detail, others serve to complicate or even (intentionally) to confuse the 

reader who struggles to understand the speaker’s rambling speech only to realize later 

that this was Shakespeare’s way of showing you that the character was oblivious. One 

last element of his language merits attention: his wordplay, particularly his use of puns 

and metaphors. Some puns inject humor; others, however, carry more weight such as 

when Hamlet, replying to the uncle who is now his (step) father, says he is “a little more 

than kin and less than kind.” While puns appear throughout any of his plays, metaphors 

add depth to the text. When, for example, Horatio refers to the Ghost as “a mote…that 

troubles the mind’s eye,” he employs a metaphor to convey the event but also its larger 

meaning to Hamlet. 

26

Focus: Subject (language) + claim (posses 

difficulties for modern reader) 

Purpose: To describe the different 

“difficulties” of Shakespeare’s 

language 

Development 

Organization 

Development 

Development 

1. Not everyone agrees that Shakespeare is the greatest playwright of all time; 

however, most concede that his language poses difficulties for the modern reader. 

2. After only a few lines readers encounter words they have not heard or familiar 

words used in unfamiliar ways. 

3. Some of these words are now obsolete. 

4. We no longer use a word like “marry” or “soft” as they did then. 

3. Other words suggest meanings other than those we expect. 

4. Early in Hamlet, for example, Hamlet refers to two companions as 

“rivals,” a term we now associate with an opponent not a companion. 

5. Though we find such terms throughout his plays, we can learn to 

read them as Shakespeare intended them if we get to know the 

characters who speak these words. 

2. In addition to words, sentences also challenge readers of the plays as he uses a 

variety of sentence structures. 

3. Readers often struggle with one of his favorite: the inversion. 

4. Inverted sentences, in which the verb precedes its subject, allow him to 

connect or emphasize ideas as well as add the unique music that makes 

his writing his own. 

5. Thus when Horatio says of King Hamlet’s ghost, “So frowned he 

once,” he stresses the frown not the “once” so as to identify that the 

ghost was, in fact, the dead king. 

3. In addition to inversions, Shakespeare often interrupts sentences, placing 

long passages between the subject and is verb. 

4. Horatio, for instance, interrupts himself repeatedly when he begins, 

“Our last king,” then adds five lines of detail prior to the verb “dared.” 

5. Shakespeare interrupts for a reason, though never for the same 

reason. 

6. Some interruptions add detail, others serve to complicate or even 

(intentionally) to confuse the reader who struggles to understand 

the speaker’s rambling speech only to realize later that this was 

Shakespeare’s way of showing you that the character was 

oblivious. 

2. One last element of his language merits attention: his wordplay, particularly his 

use of puns and metaphors. 

3. Some puns inject humor; others, however, carry more weight such as when 

Hamlet, replying to the uncle who is now his (step) father, says he is “a 

little more than kin and less than kind.” 

4. While puns appear throughout any of his plays, metaphors add depth to 

the text. 

5. When, for example, Horatio refers to the Ghost as “a mote…that 

troubles the mind’s eye,” he employs a metaphor to convey the event 

but also its larger meaning to Hamlet. 

27

Focus 

Specific subject about which you make a compelling point 

General subject about which you make an obvious point 

Vague subject about which you attempt to make a point 

No subject; your writing lacks any clear point 

Organization 

Shows clear, effective organization 

Shows general, basic organization 

Lacks effective or consistent organization 

Lacks any evidence of organization 

Development 

Provides compelling, effective examples, details, quotations, and commentary 

Includes basic or obvious examples, details, quotations, and commentary 

Offers inconsistent or effective examples, details, quotations, and commentary 

Lacks examples, details, quotations, or commentary 

Purpose 

Demonstrates a clear rhetorical purpose in sentences, paragraphs, or paper 

Establishes a general purpose that undermines effectiveness of writing 

Shows a flawed or inconsistent purpose that undermines the writing 

Lacks a clear purpose at the sentence, paragraph, or paper level 

Focus 





Organization 





Development 





Purpose 





Focus 





Organization 





Development 





Purpose 





Focus 





Organization 





Development 





Purpose 





28


Introduction Evaluation 

1 2 3 4 5 Establishes a compelling focus you must prove 

1 2 3 4 5 Establishes your credibility to the reader 

1 2 3 4 5 Every sentence serves a specific purpose: no fluff! 

1 2 3 4 5 Connects the topic to your reader in a meaningful way 

1 2 3 4 5 Conveys the importance of the topic 

1 2 3 4 5 Implies or creates an organizational structure for the essay 

1 2 3 4 5 Provides an effective transition at the end to subsequent divisions 

1 2 3 4 5 Addresses the writing prompt (or shows that it clearly will do so) 

F 

O 

D 

P 

Comments 






1 2 3 4 5 Connects the topic to your reader in a meaningful way 

1 2 3 4 5 Conveys the importance of the topic 




F 

O 

D 

P 

Comments 






1 2 3 4 5 Conveys the topic to your reader in a meaningful way 

1 2 3 4 5 Explains the importance of the topic 




F 

O 

D 

P 

Comments 

29

AP Essay Scoring Rubric Student: 

Paper: Score: 

Score Description 

9-8 responds to the prompt clearly, directly, and fully 

approaches the text analytically 

A+/A 

supports a coherent thesis with evidence from the text 

explains how the evidence illustrates and reinforces its thesis 

employs subtlety in its use of the text and the writer’s style is fluent and flexible 

has no mechanical and grammatical errors 

7-6 

A-/B+ 

5 

B 

4-3 

B-/C 

responds to the assignment clearly and directly but with less development than an 8-9 paper 

demonstrates a good understanding of the text 

supports its thesis with appropriate textual evidence 

analyzes key ideas but lacks the precision of an 8-9 essay 

uses the text to illustrate and support in ways that are competent but not subtle 

written in a way that is forceful and clear with few if any grammatical and mechanical errors. 

addresses the assigned topic intelligently but does not answer it fully and specifically 

shows by a good but general grasp of the text 

uses the text to frame an apt response to the prompt 

employs textual evidence sparingly or offers evidence without attaching it to the thesis 

written in a way that is clear and organized but may be somewhat mechanical 

marred by conspicuous grammatical and mechanical errors 

fails in some important way to fulfill the demands of the prompt 

does not address part of the assignment 

provides no real textual support for its thesis 

bases its analysis on a misreading of some part of the text 

presents one or more incisive insights among others of less value 

written in a way that is uneven in development with lapses in organization and clarity 

undermined by serious and prevalent errors in grammar, and mechanics 

2-1 

D/F 

Comments 

combines two or more serious failures: 

may not address the actual assignment 

may indicate a serious misreading of the text (or suggest the student did not read it) 

may not offer textual evidence 

may use it in a way that suggests a failure to understand the text 

may be unclear, badly written, or unacceptably brief 

marked by egregious errors 

written with great style but devoid of content (rare but possible) 

30

AP English 

Independent Reading Topics 

April 8, 2007 

Directions: Choose whichever topic here best suits your book and thinking. Write the best 

essay you can about it, following the guidelines of the topic. Be sure to: 

• Double-space 

• Number pages 

• Follow all conventions (e.g., format titles, etc.) 

• Underline key details of the prompt prior to writing 

• Take time to plan what you will say before you say it. 

1. Novels and plays often depict characters caught between colliding cultures--national, 

regional, ethnic, religious, institutional. Such collisions can call a character's sense of 

identity into question. How does the character respond to such a collision? Write a 

well-organized essay in which you describe the character's response and explain its 

relevance to the work as a whole. 

2. Novels and plays often depict characters caught between colliding cultures--national, 

regional, ethnic, religious, institutional. Such collisions can call a character's sense of 

identity into question. How does the character respond to such a collision? Write a 

well-organized essay in which you describe the character's response and explain its 

relevance to the work as a whole. 

3. A recurring theme in literature is "the classic war between a passion and 

responsibility." For instance, a personal cause, a love, a desire for revenge, a 

determination to redress a wrong, or some other emotion or drive may conflict with 

moral duty. Choose a work of recognized literary merit in which a character confronts 

the demands of a private passion that conflicts with his or her responsibilities. In a 

well-written essay, show clearly the nature of the conflict, its effects upon the 

character, and its significance to the work. 

4. The eighteenth-century British novelist Laurence Sterne wrote, "No body, but he who 

has felt it, can conceive what a plaguing thing it is to have a man's mind tom asunder 

by two projects of equal strength, both obstinately pulling in a contrary direction at 

the same time." From a novel or play choose a character (not necessarily the 

protagonist) whose mind is pulled in conflicting directions by two compelling desires, 

ambitions, obligations, or influences. Then, in a well-organized essay, identify each 

of the two conflicting forces and explain how this conflict within one character 

illuminates the meaning of the work as a whole. 

31

The Weekly Paper Guidelines 

Overview The following guidelines apply to the Weekly Paper, which is due each 

Monday. It is based on whatever you read from The Weekly Reader. This 

assignment, both the reading and the writing, has several important goals. 

Through this weekly assignment, you will: 

• read a variety of types of text (images, essays, films, articles, poems, 

stories, and multimedia productions) 

• improve your familiarity with how to use the web and its resources 

• reinforce and extend your knowledge of how to write paragraphs that 

are focused, organized, and developed using examples and details 

• write about a subject of interest to you and your audience that 

demonstrates your ability to read a variety of texts with insight 

• write with an emphasis on clarity and correctness 

Step One Decide what you will read. Go to: 

http://www.englishcompanion.com/room82/weeklyreader.html 

If you don’t have much time, try one of the Quick Picks. If you have more 

time or the inclination, take time to investigate one of the other sites listed in 

The Weekly Reader. 

Step Two Read the text you choose. I say "text" because you might choose an image, a 

web-based documentary, a painting, a poem, or a video essay. Before you 

begin, jot down some questions about the text you chose, questions that will 

help you read it better. If you are not sure how to take your reading to the 

next step, go to www.englishcompanion.com and scroll down the main page 

to the list of How-To-Reads in the left-hand margin. 

Step Three Write a one-page paper that: 

• is double-spaced and typed; uses 12-point serif font and 1.25 inch margins 

• establishes a clear thesis in your opening paragraph 

• organizes itself into paragraphs, each with a main idea that relates to and 

builds on your thesis 

• includes examples and details from the text you read; these examples 

should maintain the focus, organization, and development of each 

paragraph 

• gives your paper a title that helps clarify or even extend the idea of your 

paper. It should not be anything like, "The Weekly Paper." 

• follows the prescribed format of the sample paper: headers, citation, 

recommendation, etc. 

• shows you know how to properly format titles 

Quotation marks: poems, articles, stories, essays, songs 

Italics: books, CDs, movies, magazines, newspapers 

• is revised 

• is proofread 

32

Responding to Research 

Beating the Odds: Teaching Middle and High School Students to Read and Write Well 

by Judith Langer (http://cela.albany.edu) 

Feature One: Students learn skills and knowledge in multiple lesson types. 

Provide overt, targeted instruction and review as models for peer and self-evaluation 

Teach skills, mechanics, or vocabulary that can be used during integrated activities such as 

literature discussions 

Use all three kinds of instruction to scaffold ways to think and discuss (e.g., summarizing, 

justifying answers, and making connections) 

Feature Two: Teachers integrate test preparations into instruction. 

Analyze the demands of a test 

Identify connections to the standards and goals 

Design and align curriculum to meet the demands of the test 

Develop instructional strategies that enable students to build the necessary skills 

Ensure that skills are learned across the year and across grades 

Make overt connections between and among instructional strategies, tests, and current learning 

Develop and implement model lessons that integrate test preparation into the curriculum 

Feature Three: Teachers make connections across instruction, curriculum, grades, and life. 

Make overt connections between and across the curriculum, students' lives, literature, and 

literacy 

Plan lessons that connect with each other, with test demands, and with students' growing 

knowledge and skills 

Develop goals and strategies that meet students' needs and are intrinsically connected to the 

larger curriculum 

Weave even unexpected intrusions into integrated experiences for students 

Feature Four: Students learn strategies for doing the work. 

Provide rubrics that students review, use, and even develop 

Design models and guides that lead students to understand how to approach each task 

Supply prompts that support thinking 

Feature Five: Students are expected to be generative thinkers. 

Explore texts from many points of view (e.g., social, historical, ethical, political, personal) 

Extend literary understanding beyond initial interpretations 

Research and discuss issues generated by literary texts and by student concerns 

Extend research questions beyond their original focus 

Develop ideas in writing that go beyond the superficial 

Write from different points of view 

Design follow-up lessons that cause students to move beyond their initial thinking. 

Feature Six: Classrooms foster cognitive collaboration. 

Students work in small and large groups to 

Share their ideas and responses to literary texts, questions, etc. 

Question and challenge each others' ideas and responses 

Create new responses 

Teachers provide support during discussions and group work by 

Moving from group to group 

Modeling questions and comments that will cause deeper discussion and analysis 

Encouraging questions and challenges that cause students to think more deeply 

33

Paperwork: Teaching Students to Write without Drowning in Paper 

Jim Burke 

Overview The saying goes that if we had to respond to everything they wrote they would not 

write enough, and if they wrote as often as we wanted we could never possibly 

respond to it. Guiding questions regarding writing and responding to student 

writing: 

• What should they write? 

• Why should they write? 

• How should they write this text? 

• How much writing and what type makes a difference? 

• Do students improve simply by writing more? 

• What are the criteria for assessing this text? 

• What kind of feedback would make an instructional difference? 

• What purpose would my comments serve? 

• Can I provide useful feedback by other means that will improve their writing 

while affording me time to prepare my lessons and enjoy my life? 

• How much feedback is enough to make a difference? 

Writing Students should write: 

• In a variety of modes, styles, and formats 

• For a variety of purposes: 

o Learn to write 

o Write to learn 

o To reflect, to think, to understand 

o On demand; for self; full process for essay or research paper 

Responding Here are a few general ways to respond to or follow up with student writing: 

• Comment instead of correct 

• Use scoring guides and rubrics 

• Identify and teach traits of an effective performance 

• Provide models of successful a performance 

• Collaborative or group scoring 

• Peer and Self-Assessment 

• Confer with students 

• Cull examples from representative papers and teach (via overhead) to these 

• Self-evaluation during the process (e.g., highlighting in different colors) 

Effective feedback is: 

• Clear and worded in a way that guides revision (e.g., a well-phrased question that 

suggests what the student can do without doing the thinking for them) 

• Based on instruction and qualities of effective writing––not on a teacher’s stylistic 

preference 

• Anchored in specific criteria or lessons taught in class 

• Positive but productive; personal but useful 

• Limited to a few specific items 

• Diagnostic not judgmental: “Read like a doctor not a judge” 

• Used to improve the writer’s performance on this assignment and his or her skill in 

general (as opposed to merely explaining the grade) 

34

Writing Next: Effective strategies to improve writing of adolescents in middle and high schools 

A Writing Proficiency Crisis 

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 

Writing well is not just an option for young people—it is a necessity. Along with reading comprehension, 

writing skill is a predictor of academic success and a basic requirement for participation in civic 

life and in the global economy.Yet every year in the United States large numbers of adolescents graduate 

from high school unable to write at the basic levels required by colleges or employers. In addition, 

every school day 7,000 young people drop out of high school (Alliance for Excellent Education, 

2006), many of them because they lack the basic literacy skills to meet the growing demands of the 

high school curriculum (Kamil, 2003; Snow & Biancarosa, 2003). Because the definition of literacy 

includes both reading and writing skills, poor writing proficiency should be recognized as an intrinsic 

part of this national literacy crisis. 

This report offers a number of specific teaching techniques that research suggests will help 4th- to 

12th-grade students in our nation’s schools.The report focuses on all students, not just those who 

display writing difficulties, although this latter group is deservedly the focus of much attention.The 

premise of this report is that all students need to become proficient and flexible writers. In this report, 

the term low-achieving writers is used to refer to students whose writing skills are not adequate to meet 

classroom demands. Some of these low-achieving writers have been identified as having learning 

disabilities; others are the “silent majority” who lack writing proficiency but do not receive additional 

help. As will be seen in this report, some studies investigate the effects of writing instruction on groups 

of students across the full range of ability, from more effective to less effective writers, while others 

focus specifically on individuals with low writing proficiency. 

Recent reports by the National Commission on Writing (2003, 2004, 2005) have helped to bring 

the importance of writing proficiency forward into the public consciousness.These reports provide 

a jumping-off point for thinking about how to improve writing instruction for all young people, 

with a special focus on struggling readers. Reading Next (Biancarosa & Snow, 2004), commissioned by 

Carnegie Corporation of New York, used up-to-date research to highlight a number of key elements 

seen as essential to improving reading instruction for adolescents (defined as grades 4–12). Writing 

Next sets out to provide guidance for improving writing instruction for adolescents, a topic that has 

previously not received enough attention from researchers or educators. 

3 

35

A Report to Carnegie Corporation of New York 

While Reading Next presented general methods and interventions that several of America’s most 

respected adolescent literacy experts found to be useful for improving reading instruction, Writing 

Next highlights specific teaching techniques that work in the classroom. It does so by summarizing 

the results of a large-scale statistical review of research into the effects of specific types of writing 

instruction on adolescents’ writing proficiency.Although several important reviews of research on 

writing instruction exist (e.g., Langer & Applebee, 1987; Levy & Ransdell, 1996; MacArthur, Graham, 

& Fitzgerald, 2006; Smagorinsky, 2006), the special strength of this report is its use of a powerful 

statistical method known as meta-analysis.This technique allows researchers to determine the 

consistency and strength of the effects of instructional practices on student writing quality and to 

highlight those practices that hold the most promise. 

The Recommendations 

Eleven Elements of Effective Adolescent Writing Instruction 

This report identifies 11 elements of current writing instruction found to be effective for helping 

adolescent students learn to write well and to use writing as a tool for learning. It is important to note 

that all of the elements are supported by rigorous research, but that even when used together, they do 

not constitute a full writing curriculum. 

1. Writing Strategies, which involves teaching students strategies for planning, revising, and 

editing their compositions 

2. Summarization, which involves explicitly and systematically teaching students how to 

summarize texts 

3. Collaborative Writing, which uses instructional arrangements in which adolescents work 

together to plan, draft, revise, and edit their compositions 

4. Specific Product Goals, which assigns students specific, reachable goals for the writing they 

are to complete 

5. Word Processing, which uses computers and word processors as instructional supports for 

writing assignments 

6. Sentence Combining, which involves teaching students to construct more complex, 

sophisticated sentences 

7. Prewriting, which engages students in activities designed to help them generate or organize 

ideas for their composition 

8. Inquiry Activities, which engages students in analyzing immediate, concrete data to help 

them develop ideas and content for a particular writing task 

4 

9. Process Writing Approach, which interweaves a number of writing instructional activities in 

a workshop environment that stresses extended writing opportunities, writing for authentic 

audiences, personalized instruction, and cycles of writing 

36

Writing Next: Effective strategies to improve writing of adolescents in middle and high schools 

10. Study of Models, which provides students with opportunities to read, analyze, and emulate 

models of good writing 

11. Writing for Content Learning, which uses writing as a tool for learning content material 

The Writing Next elements do not constitute a full writing curriculum, any more than the Reading 

Next elements did for reading. However, all of the Writing Next instructional elements have shown 

clear results for improving students’ writing.They can be combined in flexible ways to strengthen 

adolescents’ literacy development.The authors hope that besides providing research-supported 

information about effective writing instruction for classroom teachers, this report will stimulate 

discussion and action at policy and research levels, leading to solid improvements in writing 

instruction in grades 4 to 12 nationwide. 

5 

37


▼ 

◗ 

Summary Notes Subject: ________________________________________________ 

BEFORE 

1. Determine your purpose. 

2. Preview the document. 

3. Prepare to take notes. 

DURING 

4. Take notes to help you answer 

these questions: 

• Who is involved? 

• What events, ideas, or people does 

the author emphasize? 

• What are the causes? 

• What are the consequences or 

implications? 

5. Establish criteria to determine what is 

important enough to include in the 

summary. 

6. Evaluate information as you read to 

determine if it meets your criteria for 

importance. 

Sample summary written by a student 

In “Surviving a Year of Sleepless Nights,” Jenny Hung discusses success and how it 

may not be so good. Hung points out that having fun is better than having success 

and glory. Jenny Hung survived a painful year because of having too many honors 

classes, getting straight A’s, and having a GPA of 4.43. Why would any of this be bad? 

It’s because she wasn’t happy. She describes working so hard for something she 

didn’t really want. At one point she says, “There was even a month in winter when 

I was so self-conscious of my raccoon eyes that I wore sunglasses to school.” She 

says she often stayed up late doing work and studying for tests for her classes. After 

what she had been through, she decided that it was not her life and chose her 

classes carefully once sophomore year came around. 


AFTER 

7. Write your summary, which should: 

• Identify the title, author, and topic in 

the first sentence. 

• State the main idea in the second sentence. 

• Be shorter than the original article 

• Begin with a sentence that states the 

topic (see sample). 

• Include a second sentence that states 

the author’s main idea. 

• Include 3–5 sentences in which you 

explain—in your own words—the 

author’s point of view. 

• Include one or two interesting quotations 

or details. 

• Maintain the author’s meaning 

• Organize the ideas in the order in 

which they appear in the article. 

• Use transitions such as “according to” 

and the author’s name to show that 

you are summarizing someone else’s 

ideas. 

• Include enough information so that 

someone who has not read the article 

will understand the ideas. 

Sample verbs: The author: 

• argues 

• asserts 

• concludes 

• considers 

• discusses 

• emphasizes 

• examines 

• explores 

• focuses on 

• implies 

• mentions 

• notes 

• points out 

• says 

• states 

• suggests 

38 


77

April 2007 

Making Writing Instruction a Priority 

in America’s Middle and High Schools 

For as long as there have been secondary schools in America, critics have railed against the inadequate 

writing skills of America’s students. 

In recent years, the alarm has been sounded most urgently by the National Commission on Writing, which 

has argued in a series of reports that this “neglected ‘R’ ” must no longer be overshadowed by reading and 

’rithmetic. A generation ago, Newsweek magazine, in a 1973 cover story titled “Why Johnny Can’t Write,” 

blasted high schools for failing to teach this fundamental skill. 

And similar criticism rang out in previous generations too, dating 

back at least as far as the 1870s, when professors at Harvard and 

other elite colleges complained that incoming students were 

unable to write coherent essays—and this at a time when only a 

tiny fraction of students went to college at all, much less to the Ivy 

League (Connors, 1997). 

JOHNNY STILL CAN’T WRITE 

• Approximately 70–75 percent of 

students in grades 4–12 are lowachieving 

writers (Persky et al., 2003). 

Obviously, calls to improve student writing are nothing new. But 

the stakes are far higher today than at any time in the nation’s 

history. 

The role that writing now plays in the everyday experience of 

average Americans is unprecedented. The typical high school 

graduate of the 1870s, 1970s, or even 1990s couldn’t have 

dreamed of a world as saturated with writing as now exists, both 

in the workplace and in private life, where email and instant 

messaging are becoming increasingly common forms of 

communication. 

The majority of American employers now consider writing 

proficiency to be an essential skill that is becoming ever more 

critical as the information-based economy continues to expand 

(National Commission on Writing, 2004). Managerial and 

professional jobs have always required some amount of writing, 

but that requirement now extends to technical, clerical, and 

support positions as well, and to sectors ranging from 

manufacturing to construction, government, and the service 

industries. Evidence suggests, however, that few students have the 

level of writing proficiency that their jobs demand. According to a 

2006 survey, 81 percent of employers describe recent high school 

graduates as “deficient in written communications” such as 

memos, letters, and technical reports (Casner-Lotto & Barrington, 

2006). As a result, private companies are spending an estimated 

• College instructors estimate that 50 

percent of high school graduates are 

unprepared for college-level writing 

(Achieve, Inc., 2005). 

• U.S. graduates’ literacy skills are lower 

than those of graduates in most 

industrialized nations, and comparable 

only to the skills of graduates in Chile, 

Poland, Portugal, and Slovenia (OECD, 

2000). 

• Very few teachers require their 

students to write more than a few hours 

per week, and two thirds of students 

say their weekly writing assignments 

add up to less than an hour (Applebee 

& Langer, 2006). 

• 81 percent of employers describe 

recent high school graduates as 

“deficient in written communications” 

such as memos, letters, and technical 

reports (Conference Board, 2006). 

• The nation’s private companies now 

spend an estimated $3.1 billion per 

year—and state governments spend an 

additional $200 million—teaching their 

employees to write (National 

Commission on Writing, 2004; 2005). 

39

$3.1 billion per year—and state governments are investing another $200 million—to provide writing 

instruction to their employees (National Commission on Writing, 2004; 2005). 

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP, or “the Nation’s Report Card”) writing exam 

was last given in 2002; it measured the writing skills of fourth, eighth, and twelfth graders and translated 

their scores into three levels of proficiency: basic, proficient, and advanced. Across the three grades, only 

22–29 percent of students scored at the proficient level, and only 2 percent were found to write at the 

advanced level (Persky et al., 2003). In other words, 70–75 percent of students were found to be writing 

below grade level. 

Even among students who plan to go to college, proficiency is far from certain. According to research from 

ACT (2005), roughly a third of all college-bound students fall short of readiness benchmarks for collegelevel 

writing composition, making it unlikely that they will 

earn a grade of C or better in this basic first-year course 

(a core requirement in most undergraduate programs). 

This translates to extremely high enrollments in remedial 

writing courses at the college level, particularly at the 

nation’s community colleges, which shoulder a large and 

growing share of the burden for remediation (Grubb et al., 

1999; Perin & Charron, 2006). At least a quarter of new 

“Many students are not 

writing a great deal for any 

of their academic subjects ... 

and most are not writing at 

any length.”(Applebee & Langer, 2006) 

community college students must enroll in a remedial writing class—which in most colleges doesn’t count 

toward a degree—and this figure likely underestimates the number of students who actually need help with 

writing (National Center for Education Statistics, 2003; Perin, 2006). Further, the costs to individual 

students comprise just a small part of the overall expense; the bulk falls on the taxpayers, whose bill for 

community college remediation in writing, reading, and math comes to more than a billion dollars a year. 

And that doesn’t even include the funding that supports the middle and high schools that were supposed to 

have taught students those skills. In effect, taxpayers are paying twice for basic writing instruction—first in 

the secondary schools, then again at the college level. 

How Much Writing Instruction Goes On in School? Not Much 

People often assume that writing is merely the “flip side” of reading, and that if adolescents are proficient 

readers, they must be proficient writers too. But in fact, while reading and writing are indeed 

complementary skills, they do not necessarily go hand in hand. Many students learn to read and comprehend 

difficult academic materials yet struggle to write coherent or compelling texts of their own (Fitzgerald & 

Shanahan, 2000). Simply put, reading instruction isn’t enough. America’s students will not become skilled 

writers unless and until their schools make writing a priority. 

Unfortunately, few schools do so. 

According to a recent study by the Center for English Learning & Achievement (CELA), the last two 

decades have seen “some increase in emphasis on writing and the teaching of writing, both in English 

language arts classrooms and across the curriculum,” but “many students are not writing a great deal for any 

of their academic subjects, including English, and most are not writing at any length” (Applebee & Langer, 

2006). 

2 40

Very few teachers require more than a few hours of 

writing per week, and two thirds of students say their 

weekly writing assignments add up to less than an 

hour. Indeed, “9 percent of high school students are 

doing almost no writing at all” (Applebee & Langer, 

2006). 

Of the writing that does occur, much of it is cursory, 

such as when students compose a sentence or two in 

response to a textbook question or write a brief 

summary of material assigned for homework. More 

extensive writing projects tend to be much less 

common. For instance, CELA finds that “over 40 

percent of the students at Grade 8 and a third at 

Grade 12 report writing essays requiring analysis or 

interpretation at most a few times a year.” 

Why do middle and high school teachers provide so 

little writing instruction? For one thing, very few 

teachers—whether in English or other content 

areas—receive more than a token amount of training 

in the teaching of writing, whether in their preservice 

preparation or in professional development 

workshops. Further, it can be very time-consuming 

to read and respond to student writing, and given a 

teaching load of four or five classes of twenty to 

thirty or more students each, many teachers are 

reluctant to require students to write regularly or to 

produce more than one draft of their essays. (For 

instance, imagine that a teacher were to assign just 

two ten-page papers per year, each of them including 

a rough draft and just one revision. Even with a 

relatively light teaching load of a hundred students, 

this would require the teacher to read 4,000 pages of 

student text, in addition to teaching students about 

the composing process, guiding them through 

revisions, and helping them with grammar, style, 

logic, and organization. And even if the teacher 

assigns students the responsibility to read and 

comment on each others’ drafts—a common strategy 

designed to teach critical reading and editing skills 

while also saving time for the teacher—those 

students still must be shown how to provide 

constructive criticism, and they must be supervised 

in doing so.) 

Moreover, many teachers (especially in math, 

science, and social studies but also in the English 

department) assume that writing instruction isn’t 

Writing Next: Eleven Teaching 

Strategies That Work 

In 2006, Carnegie Corporation of New York commissioned a pair of 

leading scholars—Steve Graham of Vanderbilt University and Delores 

Perin of Teachers College, Columbia University—to survey the 

existing research into the effectiveness of various approaches to 

secondary school writing instruction. The most recent comprehensive 

review of the research had been conducted twenty years earlier 

(Hillocks, 1986), and a considerable body of research had 

accumulated since that time, including many high-quality experimental 

and quasi-experimental studies. As described in the report, the 

knowledge base has grown strong enough to recommend a number of 

specific teaching practices and to suggest new directions for state and 

federal policymaking. 

The resulting report—Writing Next: Effective Strategies to Improve 

Writing of Adolescents in Middle and High School, published by the 

Alliance for Excellent Education in 2006—identifies eleven classroom 

practices that rigorous scientific research has determined to be 

effective at helping to improve the writing abilities of students in 

grades 4–12. These include: 

Writing Strategies: Teaching students strategies for planning, 

revising, and editing their compositions. 

Summarization: Explicitly and systematically teaching students how 

to summarize texts. 

Collaborative Writing: Instructional arrangements in which 

adolescents work together to plan, draft, revise, and edit their 

compositions. 

Specific Product Goals: Specific, reachable goals for the writing 

they are to complete. 

Word Processing: Using computers and word processors as 

instructional supports for writing assignments. 

Sentence Combining: Teaching students to construct more complex, 

sophisticated sentences. 

Prewriting: Engaging students in activities designed to help them 

generate or organize ideas for their composition. 

Inquiry Activities: Engaging students in analyzing immediate, 

concrete data to help them develop ideas and content for a particular 

writing task. 

Process Writing Approach: Interweaving a number of writing 

instructional activities in a workshop environment that stresses 

extended writing opportunities, writing for authentic audiences, 

personalized instruction, and cycles of writing. 

Study of Models: Providing students with opportunities to read, 

analyze, and emulate models of good writing. 

Writing for Content Learning: Using writing as a tool for learning 

content material. 

available on the Web at: 

www.all4ed.org/publications/WritingNext/index.html 

3 41

their responsibility. Typically, secondary-level teachers understand their role to be teaching the content of 

the academic disciplines, which they distinguish from the teaching of skills, such as reading and writing. 

Similarly, state standards documents are more or less silent on the teaching of writing in every content area 

other than English language arts. And while open-ended writing activities are now included in nearly every 

state’s accountability system, state achievement tests place far greater emphasis on multiple-choice and 

short-answer items than on independent writing. To the extent that writing is included, students tend to be 

rewarded for writing quick, superficial essays. Thus, some experts worry that existing state tests create 

incentives for teachers to drill students in simple, formulaic kinds of writing, at the expense of time they 

might otherwise spend teaching them to write clearly and for a variety of purposes that they will need as 

they move through college, the workplace, and life (Hillocks, 2003; Applebee & Langer, 2006). 

Students Need More Engaging Opportunties to Write 

Experts often refer to two main goals for writing in school: writing to learn and learning to write. 

For decades, education reformers have recognized that writing can be an effective means by which to learn 

about a given topic, whatever the academic content area (Shanahan, 2004; Sperling & Freedman, 2001). 

Writing assignments require students to wrestle with ideas, identify points of confusion, clarify their 

thoughts, and defend their arguments, and they provide teachers with a useful way to assess students’ 

growing knowledge and understanding of the issues. Thus, experts often recommend that teachers in 

English, the social sciences, the hard sciences, mathematics, and other disciplines assign frequent writing 

projects of various kinds, from short, ungraded pieces to longer, more formal essays. 

At the same time, reformers have stressed that writing is an enormously complex activity and that students 

need a lot of practice in order to master the many skills and subskills required to become competent writers. 

For instance, students must become proficient in spelling, grammar, and punctuation; they must learn to 

write in various styles and formats, depending on the particular situation and audience; they must build 

strong vocabularies and deep reservoirs of background knowledge; they must learn to cope with writer’s 

block and develop the stamina needed to get through long and difficult assignments; and they must learn 

strategies (such as preparing an outline of the piece to be written, soliciting feedback, and writing and 

revising multiple drafts) that help them to organize their writing projects and complete them successfully. 

In short, writers have a lot to learn. Some people may have more raw talent than others, but all writers need 

a lot of practice, over a period of many years, under the guidance of well-trained teachers. As things stand, 

though, few students get anything close to the amount of instruction and practice they need to become competent 

writers. Further, a rigidly formulaic approach to teaching writing has been the norm in America’s schools for 

well over a century (Connors, 1997). To the extent that teachers do assign essays, they tend to insist that students 

use a specific organizational structure (most often the well-known “five paragraph essay”) and write in a 

constrained, impersonal style (often referred to as “academic,” even though, in truth, no such universal style 

exists among the various academic disciplines). Further, when responding to student writing, teachers tend to 

devote the bulk of their attention to formal features (mostly grammar, spelling, and punctuation), and their 

responses are often punitive, limited to the pointing out of errors. 

Advocates of the five-paragraph essay argue that such formulas can provide useful guidance for beginning 

writers, offering them a crutch upon which to rely until they are ready to try other styles and formats. 

However, there exists no evidence to support this theory, and most experts in writing instruction now argue 

that this approach does more harm than good, giving students the false impression that good writing 

involves nothing more than following a set of rules. Rather, the expert consensus holds that the best writing 

instruction teaches students to become comfortable with a wide variety of styles and formats, so they can 

4 42

communicate effectively with many different kinds of readers in many different contexts, adapting their 

writing to the particular situation and audience at hand. 

Moreover, experts caution that the more formulaic and constrained the assignments, the more students learn 

to think of writing as a rote, unengaging activity. Far better—and far more consistent with the research 

findings on motivation and engagement in school (e.g., Pajares, 2003)—are assignments that encourage 

students to invest their writing with a compelling purpose, beyond merely pleasing the teacher or getting an 

acceptable score on a state test. Rather than insisting that students always conform to a prescribed style and 

format, or that they limit themselves to a narrow set of topics, the idea is to require them to make active 

choices in their writing, with the teacher providing guidance and suggesting ways to improve their drafts. 

For example, students might choose the topic they wish to write about, the intellectual position they wish to 

argue, the purpose they have for writing, the style and format they take to be most appropriate, the language 

they find most compelling, and so on, with the teacher playing the roles of editor, critic, and audience. 

Students should be given many opportunities to write, and they should be taught not just a single kind of 

writing but writing for many audiences, for many reasons, and from many points of view. 

Recommendations for Federal Policymakers 

As long as millions of American adolescents struggle to write, they have little hope of competing in a global 

economy or becoming the truly engaged citizens the nation needs in order to thrive. The federal government 

has a major role to play in middle and high schools—just as it does in early grades—to help improve 

writing instruction. The resources directed over the years toward teaching early literacy skills have shown 

results; a similar investment in older students is now needed to sustain that earlier commitment and provide 

the continuum of supports that can raise achievement levels. Based upon research and best practices, the 

Alliance for Excellent Education strongly recommends that federal policymakers: 

Invest in a comprehensive federal adolescent literacy program. 

The federal Striving Readers grant program must be included in the reauthorization of the No Child Left 

Behind Act. In order to capitalize fully upon the benefits of Reading First, Striving Readers should become 

a $1 billion formula grant program to states to support professional development and targeted interventions 

to improve all aspects of adolescent literacy, including writing and oral communication. 

Give schools the flexibility and resources they need to schedule more time for writing instruction. 

To prepare for college and the modern workplace, middle and high school students will need to write 

extensively, immersing themselves in various kinds of texts and learning how to communicate to many 

different audiences, for many different purposes. Because writing instruction can be time intensive, teachers 

are unlikely to assign more independent writing, such as drafts and revision of student work, without 

significant adjustments in their class sizes, teaching loads, and schedules. The federal government should 

encourage states to leverage Title I and Title II funds in the No Child Left Behind Act to use time for 

writing instruction and train teachers in effective approaches to writing instruction. 

Encourage states to incorporate writing skills into content-area standards. 

Federal policymakers should create incentives for state standards to address the writing skills that are 

specific to each discipline. So long as writing is relegated to its own standards document—or solely to the 

standards document for English—content-area teachers will have tacit permission to ignore it. 

5 43

Increase federal support for the National Writing Project. 

The National Writing Project is a proven, effective professional 

development network that has helped thousands of middle and 

high school teachers incorporate writing into the curriculum, 

primarily in English classes but also in the other content areas. 

Increased funding would permit the NWP to seek greater 

participation from math, science, and social studies teachers. 

Increase federal funding for enhanced assessments to help 

states include more student writing in No Child Left 

Behind accountability systems. 

While open-ended writing tests can be more expensive than those 

that rely on multiple-choice and short-answer questions, they 

create a greater incentive for teachers to offer more and better 

literacy instruction. A federal program to support enhanced 

assessments exists, but it has been poorly funded and is used 

almost exclusively to develop tests for students with disabilities 

and English language learners. Support to develop those tests 

should continue, but funding should increase to cover additional 

needs such as open-ended questions and prompts that encourage 

students to write in a range of styles and formats. 

What Is the National 

Writing Project? 

The National Writing Project (NWP), 

created in 1974 in Berkeley, California, 

began as a single, university-based, 

peer-to-peer professional development 

program for local teachers. Over three 

decades it has grown into a network of 

nearly 200 sites across the country, 

offering workshops and summer 

institutes on writing instruction to roughly 

140,000 fourth- through twelfth-grade 

teachers every year, including teachers 

from all academic content areas. 

Since 1991, the NWP has received 

support from Congress through Title II of 

the Elementary and Secondary 

Education Act (known as No Child Left 

Behind). As of 2007, federal funding 

stands at $21.5 million per year, and the 

NWP continues to enjoy strong support 

from House and Senate leaders on both 

sides of the aisle. 

Support more teacher professional development in adolescent literacy. 

The Higher Education Act reauthorization bill should include literacy partnerships (similar to the existing 

Math and Science Partnerships program), designed to support research into and the development of 

innovative teaching strategies. In addition, as part of the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act, 

Title II funding should be targeted to ensure more teachers learn to incorporate writing strategies into their 

teaching. 

Conclusion 

Given how important a role writing now plays in college, work, and everyday life, students cannot afford to 

leave high school without strong writing skills. In past decades, Johnny and Jane may not have been able to 

write, but at least they stood a reasonable chance of finding a satisfying, well-paying job in any number of 

industries that were willing to reward them for manual skills, hard work, and a strong back. Today, those 

jobs are fast disappearing, and education—including sophisticated literacy skills—is quickly becoming the 

coin of the realm. 

Educators and policymakers have spent more than a century complaining that adolescents can’t write. Now 

it’s time to put the complaints aside and make a real commitment to improving writing instruction in the 

secondary schools. 

6 44

References 

Achieve, Inc. (2005). Rising to the challenge: Are high school graduates prepared for college and work? 

Washington, DC: Author. 

ACT. (2005). Crisis at the core: Preparing all students for college and work. Iowa City: Author. 

Applebee, A., & Langer, J. (2006). The state of writing instruction in America's schools: What existing data tell 

us. Albany, NY: Center on English Learning and Achievement. 

Casner-Lotto, J., & Barrington, L. (2006). Are they really ready to work? New York: The Conference Board. 

Connors, R. (1997). Composition-Rhetoric: Backgrounds, theory, and pedagogy. University of Pittsburgh Press. 

Fitzgerald, J., & Shanahan, T. (2000). Reading and writing relations and their development. Educational 

Psychologist, 35, 39–50. 

Graham, S., & Perin, D. (2007). Writing next: Effective strategies to improve writing of adolescents in middle 

and high schools. A report to Carnegie Corporation of New York. Washington, DC: Alliance for Excellent 

Education. 

Grubb, W. N., Worthen, H., Byrd, B., Webb, E., Badway, N., Case, C., et al. (1999). Honored but invisible: An 

inside look at teaching in community colleges. New York: Routledge. 

Hillocks, G. (1986). Research on written composition: New directions for teaching. Urbana, IL: National 

Council of Teachers of English. 

——. (2003). The testing trap: How state writing assessments control learning. New York: Teachers College 

Press. 

National Center for Education Statistics. (2003). Remedial education at degree-granting postsecondary 

institutions in fall 2000: Statistical analysis report. (Technical Report, NCES 2004-0101.) Washington, DC: 

U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Science. 

National Commission on Writing for America’s Families, Schools, and Colleges. (2004). 

Writing: A ticket to work ... Or a ticket out: A survey of business leaders. New York: The College Board. 

——. (2005). Writing: A powerful message from state government. New York: The College Board. 

OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development). (2000). Literacy in the information age: 

Final report of the international adult literacy survey. Paris, France: Author. 

Pajares, F. (2003). Self-efficacy beliefs, motivation, and achievement in writing: A review of the literature. 

Reading & Writing Quarterly, 19, 139–158. 

Perin, D. (2006). Can community colleges protect both access and standards? The problem of remediation. 

Teachers College Record, 108, 339–373. 

Perin, D., & Charron, K. (2006). “Lights just click on every day”: Academic preparedness and remediation in 

community colleges. In T. R. Bailey & V. S. Morest (Eds.), Defending the community college equity 

agenda. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press. 

Persky, H. R., Daane, M. C., & Jin, Y. (2003). The nation’s report card: Writing 2002. (NCES 2003–529.) U.S. 

Department of Education. Institute of Education Sciences. National Center for Education Statistics. 

Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. 

Shanahan, T. (2004). Overcoming the dominance of communication: Writing to think and to learn. In T. L. 

Jetton & J. A. Dole (Eds.), Adolescent literacy research and practice. New York: Guilford. 

Sperling, M., & Freedman, S. W. (2001). Review of writing research. In V. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of 

research on teaching (4th ed.). Washington, DC: American Educational Research Association. 

7 45

June 2006 

Reading and Writing in the Academic Content Areas 

For years, the nation’s education policymakers have spotlighted the importance of literacy 

instruction in grades K–3, where students develop the basic reading skills upon which they will 

build their future academic success. Now that federal and state investments in early literacy are 

starting to pay off—with the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) showing 

significant gains on fourth-grade reading scores, especially among poor and minority students—it is 

time to shine the light upon the urgent literacy needs of older students. 

It is a terrible mistake for schools to stop teaching reading and writing after the third grade; 

unfortunately, most schools do just that. At that point, students may be able to sound out words on 

the page, or understand simple texts, or follow the plot of a story. However, unless they receive 

ongoing and explicit instruction—with special attention to vocabulary, reading comprehension, and 

writing—they will never master the more advanced skills required to succeed in high school, 

college, and the workforce. 

Today, less than one-third of America’s high school students 

read or write at grade level. Among low-income students, the 

figure is fewer than one in six (Perie et al., 2005). In a typical 

high-poverty urban school, roughly half of incoming ninth-grade 

students read at a sixth- or seventh-grade level (Balfanz et al., 

2002). 

Older students 

must be skilled at 

reading to learn, but 

they are never 

finished learning 

to read. 

Literacy skills are alarmingly low even among those students who plan to go to college. For 

instance, a major study of high school juniors and seniors taking the ACT college entrance exam 

found that only half were ready for college-level reading assignments in core subjects like math, 

history, science, and English (ACT, 2005). Of students who enroll in a four-year college, nearly 8 

percent will take at least one remedial reading course—and only about one-third of those students 

are likely to graduate within eight years. 

That’s not going to cut it—not at a time when the fastest growing occupations demand far greater 

than average literacy skills (Barton, 2000), and not in an era of rapid technological change, 

knowledge-driven markets, and fierce global competition. 

Clearly, vast numbers of middle and high school students need help with their reading and 

writing skills. The question is: Whose job should it be to teach them? 

At the elementary school level, the answer is obvious: it’s everybody’s job. Most primary school 

teachers are generalists, and all fifty states require them to be knowledgeable about and skilled in 

reading and writing instruction, among other subjects. 

46

But at the secondary level—where teachers have traditionally been defined as specialists in 

particular academic content areas—the responsibility for teaching reading and writing appears to 

belong to nobody in particular. Ask the math, science, and history teachers, and they’ll point to the 

English department. Ask the English teachers, though, and they’ll probably shake their heads— 

English teachers tend to regard themselves first and foremost as teachers of literature and only 

secondarily, if at all, as reading and writing instructors. 

So what’s the answer? What will it take to get more secondary level teachers to shoulder the 

responsibility for helping kids improve their literacy skills? 

Among researchers, school reformers, and professional associations, the consensus view is that 

every middle and high school teacher has a role to play in helping students to become fully literate. 

But that is not to say that all teachers should play precisely the same role. Content-area teachers can 

and should provide certain kinds of literacy instruction, but they cannot be expected to do exactly 

the same work as reading specialists. 

TO BE LITERATE IS TO READ AND WRITE IN MANY DIFFERENT WAYS 

It is often said that in the first few years of school kids “learn to read,” so that in later years they can 

“read to learn.” That is, an important shift is supposed to occur around the fourth grade. Before that 

point, students are given a steady diet of nursery rhymes, storybooks, and other simple texts, which 

help them to practice the basic mechanics of reading. After that point, teachers begin to assign 

longer and more content-rich materials, and students are expected to read for information, to gather 

facts, remember details, look for main points, follow directions, and so on. 

But reading assignments do not just become longer and more full of content; they also become 

varied in their style, format, vocabulary, purpose, and intended audience. 

By the time students enter the middle grades, the curriculum divides into a number of discrete 

subject areas, each of which has its own distinct kinds of texts and ways of reading and writing. 

Science textbooks, for example, look and feel quite different from textbooks in history and math, 

and differ even more from the whole universe of other materials that teachers might assign, from 

newspaper columns to historical documents, reference materials, Internet-based hypertexts, and on 

and on. 

It is true that older students must be skilled at reading to learn; but it is also true that they 

never finished learning to read. 

For instance, they must learn to skim some kinds of books quickly, checking for main points and 

broad themes, but to pore over others, in search of fine details. In some classes they must follow 

written instructions to the letter, while in others they are expected to read skeptically, or to question 

the author’s assumptions, or to analyze the writer’s style. Moving from one subject area to the next, 

they must tap into entirely different sets of vocabulary, jargon, and background knowledge. They 

must learn to write in many styles, applying a myriad of discipline-specific conventions and rules. 

And they must learn that chemists, historians, mathematicians, journalists, and members of every 

other profession have their own characteristic ways of talking, reasoning, arguing, presenting their 

thoughts, and responding to critics. 

47

WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR LITERACY 

INSTRUCTION? 

Over the last two decades, a number of leading 

researchers have conducted large-scale studies 

and historical analyses to find out what types of 

reading and writing occur in America’s middle 

and high schools, and their findings have been 

quite consistent: Students engage in very little 

sustained reading, and when they do it is mainly 

from brief, teacher-created handouts and, to a 

lesser degree, from textbooks. Most teachers 

encourage and require very little reading of 

primary sources or real-world materials. Most 

teachers devote little, if any, class time to 

showing students, explicitly, what it means to 

be a good reader or writer in the given subject 

area. And most students engage in very little 

discussion of what they have read, how to write, 

or how to interpret, analyze, or otherwise 

respond to texts (Wade & Moje, 2000; Connors, 

1997; Cuban, 1989; Hillocks, 1986). 

Historically, many teachers in the academic 

content areas have been reluctant to define 

reading and writing instruction as part of their 

job. To some extent, this may reflect nothing 

more than the natural human aversion to 

change—secondary level teachers have long 

regarded themselves as content specialists, not 

as teachers of skills, and they may have little 

desire or incentive to disturb the status quo. But 

it is also a likely result of the fact that most 

secondary school teachers have never received 

more than a token amount of training in literacy 

instruction, and they are quite reasonably 

hesitant to take on responsibility for work they 

have not been trained to do. 

There are other legitimate concerns. For 

instance, teaching students how to read and 

write can be quite time-consuming, especially if 

teachers require students to produce and revise a 

lot of written work. Given a teaching load of 

four or five classes of up to thirty students each, 

A Day in the Life of a 

Struggling Reader 

Imagine if you were required to speak Italian, Arabic, and 

Russian in the morning, followed by French, Swahili, and 

Spanish in the afternoon. 

For struggling adolescent readers, that’s what it seems like 

to move from one subject to the next. From math to English 

to history to science to civics, each academic content area 

has its own vocabulary, textual formats, stylistic 

conventions, and ways of understanding, analyzing, 

interpreting, and responding to words on the page. 

Here is a sampling of texts a student might be asked to 

read over the course of a typical school day: 

BIOLOGY 

Until the mid-1800's scientists thought organic chemicals (those with a 

C-C skeleton) could only form by the actions of living things. A French 

scientist heated crystals of a mineral (a mineral is by definition 

inorganic), and discovered that they formed urea (an organic chemical) 

when they cooled. Russian scientist and academician A.I. Oparin, in 

1922, hypothesized that cellular life was preceded by a period of 

chemical evolution. These chemicals, he argued, must have arisen 

spontaneously under conditions existing billions of years ago (and quite 

unlike current conditions). 

WORLD HISTORY 

EDWARD by the grace of God, King of England, Lord of Ireland, and 

Duke of Guyan, to all Archbishops, Bishops, etc. We have seen the 

Great Charter of the Lord HENRY, sometimes King of England, our 

father, of the Liberties of England, in these words: Henry by the grace of 

God, King of England, Lord of Ireland, Duke of Normandy and Guyan, 

and Earl of Anjou, to all Archbishops, Bishops, Abbots, Priors, Earls, 

Barons, Sheriffs, Provosts, Officers, and to all Bailiffs and other our 

faithful Subjects, which shall see this present Charter, Greeting. 

ENGLISH 1 

Romeo and Juliet, Act 1, Scene 1. Verona. A public place. Enter 

SAMPSON and GREGORY, of the house of Capulet, armed with 

swords and bucklers. 

SAMPSON: Gregory, o' my word, we'll not carry coals. 

GREGORY: No, for then we should be colliers. 

SAMPSON: I mean, an we be in choler, we'll draw. 

GREGORY: Ay, while you live, draw your neck out o' the collar. 

SAMPSON: I strike quickly, being moved. 

ALGEBRA 1 

Emma invested money at Party Bank three years ago. She signed up for 

a CD that paid 6% yearly interest, compounded semiannually. The 

interest is added to the balance and is accumulated with the original 

investment. At the end of three years, her account is worth $4,417.99. 

How much was her initial investment? 

CURRENT EVENTS 

BOSTON - Boston Scientific Corp. on Monday recalled nearly 23,000 

pacemakers and defibrillators that could fail because of an electrical 

flaw, and the company asked doctors to check 27,000 patients already 

implanted with potentially faulty devices. 

48

how likely are teachers to assign frequent essays, and then read and comment on them and require 

revisions? 

Additionally, existing state achievement tests and graduation exams do very little to encourage 

content-area teachers to provide extensive literacy instruction. Today, most assessment systems 

consist almost exclusively of multiple-choice and short-answer items, with an emphasis on recall of 

factual information, not analytic reading or independent writing. If anything, current accountability 

systems tend to create incentives for content-area teachers to help students memorize the content to 

be tested, at the expense of time they might otherwise spend giving students opportunities to read 

and write like scientists, historians, mathematicians, and other kinds of scholars (Hillocks, 2003). 

A FOUR-PART AGENDA FOR LITERACY IN THE CONTENT AREAS 

If teachers of math, English, history, science, and other subjects are to shoulder more responsibility 

for literacy instruction, they will need to be given the kinds of professional development that will 

enable them to succeed, along with the kinds of encouragement and organizational incentives 

needed to break from familiar routines and beliefs. Moreover, reformers will have to be sensitive to 

content-area teachers’ fears that they could be asked to provide instruction that lies well beyond 

their expertise—for instance, high school math or history teachers would be perfectly justified in 

rejecting the suggestion that they teach word recognition, decoding, basic comprehension, and other 

fundamentals of literacy. 

What is needed today is for reformers to spell out more clearly and in much more detail precisely 

which responsibilities ought to belong to which teachers, and to describe the conditions that 

education leaders and policymakers will need to create in order to promote meaningful change. 

Some reading comprehension strategies should be taught in every content area. 

The kind of general literacy instruction that should be provided in every content area does not 

require a master’s degree in reading or a significant amount of specialized training. Rather, the 

research identifies and recommends a set of relatively manageable and straightforward strategies for 

helping students comprehend all sorts of texts (Pressley, 2000). These include pre-reading activities 

such as reviewing vocabulary to be found in the text, making predictions as to what the text is likely 

to say, and pointing out features such as tables of contents and authors’ biographical statements. 

These strategies also include things that students can do while reading texts, such as drawing a 

visual representation of the unfolding argument, or stopping to check a dictionary or encyclopedia. 

And they include post-reading activities such as summarizing and restating the text’s main points, 

or identifying key points of ambiguity, or comparing notes with other students. 

In short, there are fairly simple reading comprehension strategies that any teacher, in any content 

area, can and should use when students are having trouble making sense of particular reading 

materials. Those strategies might tend to come in handy more often in literature or history courses 

than in chemistry or calculus, but they can be equally useful in math and science classes, such as 

when teachers assign essays from popular science magazines or examples of real-world 

mathematical applications. And, finally, these are the sorts of teaching strategies that can be learned 

in a matter of days or weeks, not months. 

49

In every content area, teachers should provide instruction in the reading and writing skills 

that are specific to that content area. 

To become an expert, whatever the field, is to learn how to do things more or less automatically. 

For instance, accomplished tennis players don’t stop to think about the proper way to hit backhand 

shots; they just hit the ball. Accomplished artists don’t need to remind themselves which colors 

combine to make green; they simply go ahead and mix the blue with the yellow. And accomplished 

biologists don’t ask themselves which style one uses in a laboratory report; they simply sit down at 

the computer and start writing. 

For content-area teachers—those teaching social studies, sciences, math, and humanities—this 

familiarity is both a blessing and a curse. Well-trained teachers are intimately familiar with the 

disciplinary standards against which their students’ work is to be judged. The expertise possessed 

by biology teachers, for example, allows them to distinguish between clever experiments and ones 

that are poorly designed, or between good laboratory reports and bad ones. But on the other hand, 

those teachers may no longer remember what it was like to learn these things for the first time. 

Because the format and style of a laboratory report has become so familiar, they may assume that 

these things are self-evident to everybody else as well. 

Just as important, though, is to recognize that some of those essential, taken-for-granted skills 

belong to the world of reading and writing. Traditionally, the school subject of biology has not 

defined literacy as one of its core concerns, but successful biologists and biology students do in fact 

conduct much of their work through the written word. To become accomplished in this or any other 

academic field is as much a process of learning to read and write in certain ways as it is a process of 

learning facts, methods, theories, and other kinds of “content.” Hence, biologists must know how to 

collect samples, sterilize equipment, dissect specimens, and classify organisms. They must know 

photosynthesis from bioluminescence, viruses from bacteria, and Watson from Crick. And they 

must also know how to read and comprehend articles in biology journals, write up their lab notes in 

an appropriate style, and describe their findings in a format with vocabulary that other biologists 

will understand. 

For teachers in every academic subject area, then, the challenge is to make themselves aware of the 

skills, knowledge, and concepts they take for granted, and which are particularly important for 

students to be shown explicitly. Simply put, all teachers should know what is distinct about reading 

and writing in their discipline, and they should, as a matter of basic professional competence, know 

how to make those rules, conventions, and practices apparent to students. 

Schools and districts should invest in reading specialists to address local needs for the 

teaching of basic reading skills to middle- and high school-age students. 

Many of the nation’s middle and high school students are unable to decode texts, or they decode 

with too little accuracy or too slowly to permit them to comprehend the meaning of what they are 

reading. Those students need intensive, high-quality reading interventions that will allow them to 

finally master the basic mechanics of reading that they should have been taught in elementary 

school. 

50

Some educators believe that when middle and high school students struggle with basic reading 

skills, the best approach is to pull them out of the regular curriculum, give them intensive support, 

and return them to their content-area courses once they can decode fluently. Others argue that it is 

better to provide basic reading support as an add-on to the regular curriculum, so that students don’t 

fall further behind in their content-area studies even as they catch up in their decoding skills. But 

whatever the specific intervention model, the key is to hand the assignment over to teachers who are 

ready, willing, and trained to provide such instruction. Teachers of biology, literature, or civics 

cannot be expected to play this role. 

Districts and states should revise their standards, accountability systems, and other policies to 

encourage more reading and writing in the content areas. 

At present, no state in the nation includes specific reading and writing skills in their standards for 

each academic content area (ACT, 2005). However, so long as reading and writing are relegated to 

their own standards document—or solely to the standards document for English Language Arts— 

teachers in the content areas will have tacit permission to ignore them. Drawing from the most 

current scholarship, then, states and districts should take steps to ensure that their math, science, 

English, and social studies standards address the reading and writing skills that are specific to the 

given discipline. 

But standards are only as good as the resources and incentives that accompany them. Thus, if 

standards documents call for higher levels of literacy, then individual schools and districts must be 

given the flexibility they need to schedule more time for reading and writing instruction in all 

content areas. Because that instruction can be quite time intensive, teachers are unlikely to assign 

more independent reading and writing (and especially drafts and revisions of student work) without 

significant adjustments in their class sizes, teaching loads, and schedules. 

Likewise, schools, districts, and states should provide content-area teachers with access to more and 

better reading materials in their classrooms, in their school libraries, or by other means. Particularly 

lacking are reading materials that are “high in interest but low in frustration”; that is, books dealing 

with topics that appeal to older students while using language and vocabulary that struggling 

readers find manageable. Further, many teachers have little access to primary sources, real-world 

documents, and other disciplinary texts (or they have little knowledge of how to access those texts 

for free, when available, through the Internet). As research from ACT (2005) makes clear, exposure 

to sophisticated, high-level reading materials is a powerful predictor of student success when they 

go on to college math, science, history, and other courses. 

And finally—but by no means of least importance—states should invest in accountability systems 

that utilize open-ended writing and analytic reading items in all content-area tests and graduation 

exams. While such tests can be much more expensive than those that rely on multiple-choice and 

short-answer items, they create a much more powerful incentive for teachers to offer more and 

better literacy instruction. 

51

CONCLUSION 

It is unacceptable that two-thirds of the nation’s high school students read below grade level; 

however, given the way schools currently provide reading instruction, it is perhaps understandable. 

When schools stop the teaching of reading after the third grade, students are left to struggle as they 

tackle much more advanced material. Instead, all secondary school teachers must do their part to 

build students’ literacy skills, and policymakers must assure that those teachers have the supports 

and resources necessary to be able to teach effectively. A strong commitment by teachers, 

administrators, and policymakers, coupled with appropriate training and professional development 

and targeted interventions for those students most behind, will raise adolescent literacy levels and 

help students to graduate from high school prepared for college, work, and successful lives. 

The time has come to change the status quo. America’s global competitiveness may rely upon it, 

and America’s children deserve no less. 

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