Secondary - Writing Magazine 2021

A selection
of useful
resources
Secondary
Writing

Teach Writing Well:
How to Assess Writing, Invigorate
Instruction, and Rethink
Culham (2018)
This book shows you how to assess and teach writing in a way
that’s practical and achievable.
Part 1 walks you through the traits of writing and their key
qualities, showing step by step how to read students’ writing
and offer feedback that nudges them forward through the
revision process.
Part 2 focuses on instruction, offering specific guidance for
how to use what you’ve learned from reading student writing
to design lessons that scaffold students toward making their
own craft decisions and revisions. In addition, there’s an
entire chapter devoted to mentor texts that you can use to
model traits and key qualities for your students.

Hidden Gems: Naming and
Teaching from the Brilliance in
Every Student’s
Bomer (2010)
This book focuses on building teacher capacity to name and
notice the strengths in student writing.
Bomer discusses the importance of the admiring lens and
provides advice on giving effective feedback to students
including:
• spot hidden stylistic gems in writing that are
unconventional or vernacular
• uncover content and organisational gems even when
you don't find the subject matter engaging or
significant
• respond by naming and celebrating writers' gems
instead of hunting for mistakes

Notebook Know How: Strategies
for the Writer’s Notebook
Buckner (2005)
This book shows teachers how to transform the Writer's
Notebook from just a place to write stuff down, to a vital,
constantly evolving tool for each individual child. From notebook
set up, tips, lessons and questions of whether to evaluate the
notebook, Buckner gives teachers a lot to consider.
Some teacher questions Buckner addresses include:
• How do I launch the notebook?
• What mini-lessons can be used throughout the year to
help students become more skilled in keeping notebooks?
• How can writer’s notebooks help students become better
readers?
• How do I assess notebooks?

The Writing Strategies Book
Serravallo (2017)
This book has 300 effective strategies for teaching. They have
been grouped beneath 10 crucial goals. This book supports
teachers to:
• provide students step-by-step strategies for writing
with skill and craft
• coach writers using prompts aligned to a strategy
• present mentor texts that support a genre and strategy
• adjust instruction to meet individual needs
• demonstrate and explain a writing move
• provide feedback to young writers
There are suggestion for stocking your writing centre, planning
units of study, celebrating student writing, keeping records,
ideas for anchor charts and examples of student work.

Traits of Writing:
The Complete Guide for Middle
School
This book introduces each trait in depth. It
examines samples of students’ writing
looking for evidence of the traits.
This would be a useful book study to build
teacher knowledge of each of the traits.
It is designed for teachers of years 5 - 8
Culham (2010)

Write Like This:
Teaching Real-World Writing Through
Modeling & Mentor Texts
In this book, Gallagher emphasises the need for students to
write for real-world purposes. He provides practical
strategies that are based on his own long experience as a
high school teacher, with the purpose of teaching students
to work with specific forms of discourse. These are, express
and reflect, inform and explain, evaluate and judge, inquire
and explore, analyse and interpret, and take a
stand/propose a solution.
Gallagher suggests mentor texts, provides student writing
samples and indicates the sort of assignments that are likely
to grow your student writers.
Gallagher (2011)

Disciplinary Literacy in Action
Lent & Voigt (2018)
This book is highly recommended for teachers and leaders who
are seeking ways to ensure all teachers understand how to teach
literacy in their subjects. The book guides teachers in all subjects
to identify the literacy features of their disciplines, and to use that
knowledge to inform their teaching.
Often differences in disciplines are perceived to be one of
content, but disciplinary literacy recognises that each subject has
its own ways of thinking, reading, writing and speaking.
Furthermore, each discipline has its own forms of writing. For
example, an essay in history is quite different to one in psychology
or geography.
Central to the ideas in this book, is the concept of a whole school
literacy culture where teachers understand the literacy of their
disciplines while also the more general literacy practices that
function across disciplines.

Content-Area Writing:
Every Teacher’s Guide
Daniels, Zimelman & Steineke (2007)
Content-Area Writing guides you strategically through the two
major types of writing that every student must know:
• Writing to Learn and Public Writing
Daniels, Zemelman & Steineke provide valuable lessons for
encouraging growth in both types of writing with subjectspecific
ideas for planning, organising, and teaching, as well as
samples of student work and guidelines for evaluation and
assessment.
They also include detailed information on how their strategies
fit into the writing process, how they can be used in writing
workshops across the curriculum, and how they prepare
students for testing and other on-demand writing situations.

Writing Matters in Every
Classroom
In this book the author provides teachers
with practical information and strategies to
teach non-fiction writing across all subjects.
Peery explains simple strategies and shares
implementation ideas about how writing
can be used in every classroom to increase
success for students.
Perry (2009)

Writing Workshops:
The Essential Guide
A valuable resource for developing and maintaining a
writing workshop in the classroom.
The authors lay out each step in the writing workshop
process, including strategies, ideas and the foundational
classroom principles necessary for incorporating successful
writing workshops into each student’s daily schedule.
Each chapter details how a specific component of the
writing workshop looks, functions, and is taught.
Fletcher & Portalupi (2001)

Feedback That Moves Writers
Forward: How to Escape Correcting
Mode to Transform Student Writing
In this book McGee encourages teachers to resign from
being the Corrector-in-Chief.
She encourages teachers to have a growth mindset where
they view student work formatively and recognise the
positives of student work and provide feedback to students
that meet them at their point of need.
McGee also provides teachers with practical strategies to
support students to discover their own writing identities,
understand their next steps and be prepared to take risks to
achieve their writing goals.
McGee (2014)

Literacy Continuum:
A Tool for Assessment, Planning &
Teaching (Expanded EDITION)
This expanded edition enables teachers to
construct a common vision for student
achievement that effectively and efficiently
engages all students in the robust, authentic and
meaningful literacy learning.
It also provides a way to look for specific evidence
of learning from foundation to grade eight, and
across eight instructional contexts.
Fountas & Pinnell (2016)

Better Learning:
Through Structured Teaching
Describes how teachers can help
students develop stronger learning skills
by ensuring the instruction moves from
modelling and guided practice, to
collaborative learning and finally to
independent tasks.
By: Fisher & Frey (2013)

Texts and Lessons for
Content-Area Writing
This is the third in Daniels & Steineke series of Texts and
Lessons books - this time helping teachers of any subject to
enhance their students’ ability to understand and write
about texts and topics.
Daniels & Steineke have compiled more than 50
reproducible mentor texts, 36 ready to use lessons, and
more than 200 options for meaningful, extended writing
projects.
This resource has three main sections: two are in your
hands; the third is online.
Steineke & Daniels (2016)