Writing Workouts, Grades 6-12
Strategies to Build Students’ Writing Skills, Stamina, and Success
- Rebecca G. Harper - Augusta University, Augusta, GA, USA
Corwin Literacy
Student Writers Go the Distance with a Strength-Training Approach
Good writers don’t wing it—they have a plethora of skills. They list, picture, circle, strategize and revise to make language come alive. They know what to use and when. Like ace athletes, they are highly trained, well-versed in the techniques found in this lively book.
Writing Workouts provides a method for instruction that gives students the fun they want and the targeted skill practice they need. Slinky paragraphs, pop-up poems, paint chip plotting, and many other activities get the serious business of teaching critical and creative writing done. Author Rebecca Harper shows you how to go about it systematically, so writing is tied to relevant lessons and writing standards. Help students learn to:
- Hone skills in persuasive writing, argument, fiction, poetry, memoir and more
- Toggle between brief and multi-step writing tasks, to build stamina (and not hyperventilate when faced with complex compositions)
- Tap into auditory, visual, and kinesthetic, and digital components of crafting
- Think about word, sentence, and paragraph-level techniques
- Jump the high-jumps of research writing by getting good at each smaller leap
Students in middle school and high school often feel they are forever-sprinting toward a high-stakes writing task. With Writing Workouts, you help students crowd out stress with a strength-training approach to success.
Free resources
Rebecca G. Harper combines play and purpose throughout Writing Workouts, Grades 6–12: Strategies to Build Students’ Writing Skills, Stamina, and Success. Using the analogy of fitness training throughout the book, she brilliantly explains the importance of each component. The accompanying lessons and ideas follow a format that is not only easy to follow but also relevant and meaningful. Full of current and relatable resources, teachers will find inspirational and turnkey ideas in Harper’s latest book—ideas that will bring laughter, engagement, joy, and learning to the students in their classrooms.
Rebecca G. Harper has created the hyper-practical guide I wish I had had as an early-career writer’s coach. I love the emphasis on writing as a discipline and growth as the fruit of practice. There is a lot to play with and try in this volume.
Rebecca G. Harper cleverly leads us to rethink how we teach writing. She reminds us of the recursive nature of writing and demonstrates how writers move through their process not in a regimented lockstep but in a focused and deliberate manner with attention to various aspects at different times. Harper has created an impressive collection of strategies that students can use to build their writing muscles wherever they are in their process. Writing Workouts, Grades 6–12 is a book you’ll return to over and over as you plan instruction and confer with individual writers.
Developing as a writer is a hard lift for many students. Luckily, we now have Rebecca G. Harper’s Writing Workouts, Grades 6–12—an all-in-one guide for helping students develop the writing fitness needed to engage in such a difficult journey. Offering both an innovative framework and hundreds of practical resources and writing lessons, this is that rare writing-instruction book that offers clever and effective lessons and tips that will improve one’s lessons today and thought-provoking larger suggestions to improve one’s overall approach to writing instruction.