Inside Writing & My Quick Writes Notebook by Donald H. Graves and Penny Kittle

Inside Writing: How to Teach the Details of Craft
by Donald H. Graves, Penny Kittle

Pages: Paperback, 128 pages
Publisher: Heinemann (September 12, 2005)

My Quick Writes: For Inside Writing
by Donald H. Graves and Penny Kittle

Pages: Paperback, 112 pages
Publisher: Heinemann (September 12, 2005)

Your curriculum is packed, and you have barely enough instructional time to teach students essential writing skills, let alone how to combine those skills to form cohesive, compelling work. Fortunately, there is a solution to the time crunch, a quicker, more effective way to help children understand the complexities of writing, and Don Graves and Penny Kittle are ready to share it with you.

In Inside Writing, Graves and Kittle show you the power behind an apprenticeship approach to writing instruction where you mentor students using your own writing-even if you don't consider yourself a writer. Inside Writing is a practical, flexible three-part program that gives you numerous entryways for learning how to model the central elements of the craft:

• topic choice
• rereading
• details
• response
• conventions
• the writing life.

Begin with any aspect of Inside Writing, and you'll discover new insights about high-quality writing instruction.

The DVD: go inside real classrooms to watch as teachers from grades 2-6 demonstrate their writing process for students, and hear teachers and students share what a difference this teaching technique makes; hear commentary tracks from Graves and Kittle that underscore important instructional moments; listen in as the authors discuss their own writing processes; and print seventy-eight quick-writes prompts form your computer's DVD drive.
The book: read about the voluminous research that supports the efficacy of the apprenticeship method for teaching children to write; strengthen the link between instructional theory and your own day-to-day classroom-teaching practices; and gain a new understanding of the role of writing in both your students' lives and yours.
My Quick Writes notebook: Use Graves' favorite Quick Write topics to practice your own writing and reflect on it; find prompts for in-class quick writes with children that prepare them for timed testing situations without giving over your writing workshop to mere test prep; and make connections between your writing process and your students'.

Sharpen your writing instruction by learning to trust your own writing. Then teach your students in a powerful, lasting way that will help them to not only understand the elements of writing, but also to combine them into better finished products. Apprentice yourself to Donald Graves and Penny Kittle and go Inside Writing.

Click here for a brief walk through of the book, notebook and DVD.

Both of these were wonderful books that definitely have helped me determine how my year will be next year (in addition to other works from Penny Kittle and Nancie Atwell). The notebook is set up so that teachers can begin "practicing what they preach" and get in the habit of writing on a daily basis. It also gives you some quick writes for your students which are really great. Inside Writing takes teaching writing to a new level and shows teachers how to incorporate teaching craft into their lessons. Another bonus is the DVD. I love to read to see how to do things but I LOVE that I am able to see teachers in action and take from their experiences when putting writing into my classroom.

Thanks again to Ruth for introducing me to Penny and all of these wonderful authors!!