To the Student—Making Writing Work for You
Have you ever considered how much of your school day is spent writing? Although things are beginning to change a little—you probably also spend time discussing, working at a computer and listening too!)—writing still dominates much of what you do in the classroom, especially when it comes to assessment.

Becoming an Effective Writer has been compiled to help you to look at writing in a different way. This book contains a variety of strategies that will help to make writing work for you rather than against you. You will learn how to refine your thought processes through writing; how your reading is linked to how well you write; how working with a group of others can greatly improve your writing; and, finally, how teachers actually assess your writing! You should have fun doing these things too!

To the Teacher—Teaching Writers
Often the teaching of writing can be a rather hit-and-miss affair. We throw out some topics and hope that our students will turn out written pieces that will allow us to see where they need assistance. Using this method, a great deal of teaching is really done after the fact.

Becoming an Effective Writer tries to shift that balance by providing you with a range of process-based strategies that will actively improve your students’ writing before it reaches the publishing or assessment stage. It also requires you to seriously consider that writing needs to be taught systematically and that, for most students, effective and sustained writing rarely occurs through the setting of an isolated writing topic.

This book is structured in a way that allows you to pick and choose activities that will fit in with your own program, or it can be used progressively section by section as a writing program in its own right. Many of the activities are intended to create a successful writing environment in the classroom and to build confidence in writing as a process among your students. Each section has information for teachers with accompanying student activities pages. Bear in mind as you take your students through the tasks that one of the single most effective strategies you can use with students is to write with them. You are the best model most of them will ever have!

Download the Table of Contents page here.

Grades 6–8.