Write Like This: Teaching Real-World Writing Through Modeling and Mentor Texts

by Kelly Gallagher

Overview

If you want to learn how to shoot a basketball, you begin by carefully observing someone who knows how to shoot a basketball. If you want to be a writer, you begin by carefully observing the work of accomplished writers. Recognizing the importance that modeling plays in the learning process, high school English teacher Kelly Gallagher shares how he gets his students to stand next to and pay close attention to model writers, and how doing so elevates his students' writing abilities. Write Like This is built around a central premise: if students are to grow as writers, they need to read good writing, they need to study good writing, and, most important, they need to emulate good writers.

In Write Like This, Kelly emphasizes real-world writing purposes, the kind of writing he wants his students to be doing twenty years from now. Each chapter focuses on a specific discourse: express and reflect, inform and explain, evaluate and judge, inquire and explore, analyze and interpret, and take a stand/propose a solution. In teaching these lessons, Kelly provides mentor texts (professional samples as well as models he has written in front of his students), student writing samples, and numerous assignments and strategies proven to elevate student writing.

By helping teachers bring effective modeling practices into their classrooms, Write Like This enables students to become better adolescent writers. More important, the practices found in this book will help our students develop the writing skills they will need to become adult writers in the real world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781571108968
Publisher:	Stenhouse Publishers
Publication date:	11/28/2011
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	152,420
Product dimensions:	7.40(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.80(d)
Age Range:	9 - 17 Years

Editorial Reviews

"And this is what I love about Gallagher: he practices what he preaches. In Write Like This, he takes the reader by the hand and shows how the teaching process occurs in his own classroom, warts and all."  - MiddleWeb

"Specific approaches to teaching effective writing and analytical skills make Write Like This a fine pick for high school to college collections alike, packing in plenty of examples for effective writing development." - California Bookwatch

"This book grips you from the beginning to end. It is logical, reasonable and passionate — in other words, it is well written. It is the kind of guide to have at hand, to refer to often, and to put into action." - Professionally Speaking

From the Publisher