A Fresh Look at Writing

By Donald H. Graves

Book Overview

In an era when teachers struggle for quality time with their students, Donald Graves introduces a text that creates lifetime writers as well as responsible learners--a text that focuses on teaching that lasts.

A Fresh Look at Writing is Graves's most comprehensive book yet. In it, he expands on many of his earlier approaches, examining portfolios, record keeping, methods for teaching conventions, spelling, and a rich range of genre including fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. He demonstrates how to bring writing into your own life and experience the joys of the craft along with the students.

"Actions," glossed objectives appearing throughout the book, provide new ways to understand yourself and reach your students. With them, Graves helps you profit from your own history as learner, listen to children more effectively, discover their potential, yet expect more from them.

A Fresh Look at Writing is a true resource for professionals who want the latest ideas on the teaching of writing, as well as for preservice teachers about to step into the classroom for the first time.

The accompanying Professional's Guide assists those who want to build a writing or language arts course around the text. It features a detailed, week-by-week description of fourteen sessions, including guidelines for background preparation in writing; reading and working with children; classroom demonstration; and journal reflection. In addition, the guide shows how A Fresh Look at Writing can be used as a supplement to reading courses, research studies, summer courses, and workshops.

To learn more about Donald Graves, visit www.donaldgraves.org.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0435088246
• ISBN13: 9780435088248
• Release Date: October 1994
• Publisher: Heinemann Educational Books
• Length: 432 Pages
• Weight: 1.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 7.5" x 9.3"
• Age Range: 15 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 10

Customer Reviews

A fresh perspective

A Fresh Look at Writing is an informative and thoroughly useful guide at how teachers can implement worthy strategies in the classroom in order to help children strenghthen their writing skills. Graves explains how strategies such as the author's chair and portfolios can help children practice and take pride in their writing. This book focuses on kinder through sixth grade, but its methods can be modified to fit any grade level.

Life Change for Resistent Writing Teachers

This book truly gives one a "fresh look" at what they believe writing is about. Don begins the book by having the reader reflect on his own life to recognize why he teaches the way he does. It is easy to understand after the first two actions in his book why teaching writing seems so difficult. I found it most beneficial to read over a period of time so I could implement the actions he writes about. This book totally changed my attitude as a writing teacher. Now, instead of feeling frustrated about writing, Don has helped me find the writer within myself which is helping me become a great writing teacher.