Teaching the Qualities of Writing: Getting Started with Teaching the Qualities of Writing, Grades 3-6

"Our goal is to support and develop your professional skill as you make continual decisions about what and how to teach. It's our hope that TQW will make your classroom hum with writing!" JoAnn Portalupi and Ralph Fletcher

Learn how to improve your students' writing and how JoAnn Portalupi and Ralph Fletcher introduce students to the qualities of writing-ideas, design, language, presentation-and the power of their own voice. Through a practical Teacher's Guide, thirteen launch lessons, and eleven online video clips, JoAnn and Ralph introduce you to the strategies students need to improve the quality of their writing and at the same time develops your ability to read and assess your students' writing.

Through their concise Teacher's Guide JoAnn and Ralph introduce the four qualities of writing and describes the role of voice in effective writing; offer strategies for choosing lessons based on genre cycles or on student and teacher needs and interests; and provide a broad array of assessment and record-keeping forms.

Thirteen select launch lessons introduce you and your students to writing and help create the sense of community necessary to nurture their growth. This launch cycle offers students a chance to begin working within each of the four qualities while stressing the more important goal of developing in them an eagerness to keep writing. By the end of this six-week cycle, your students will have a notion of how writers find topics and will have taken several of their own pieces to final form. If you've built in time for sharing, they will understand the value of giving and receiving response. They are now ready for new challenges-information and strategies that will help them improve the quality of their writing.

Through eleven accompanying video clips, JoAnn and Ralph provide practical advice on how to organize and teach with TQW. Plus, an innovative electronic presentation allows you to listen in and observe the authors as the analyze eight student writing samples. (Video clips are free for 6 months upon registration. You must register within 6 months of purchase.)