Write Like This: Teaching Real-World Writing Through Modeling and Mentor Texts by Kelly Gallagher

why: This is another text I need to review for possible use with my college students at CU this fall. Also, this book has been on my list for reading for my own professional development as a teacher.

when: start 7/14, end 7/16 (started on leg one of the summer road trip and completed during leg two: Badlands, Mount Rushmore, Grand Teton National Park)

how: I read this as hard copy, in the passenger seat of the car, sticky notes in hand again making notes about how this would fit into my course syllabus.

thoughts: After the Colorado Writing Project work I did this past summer, I've been very anxious to read this because it gives more details about how to use mentor texts and modeling to teach writing authentically in the high school classroom (these are all key tenets of the writing workshop philosophy). I picked up lots of ideas for my own classroom--so I'm hopeful that my CU students will find this useful as they think about their future classrooms as well. This book is full of practical ideas for getting students to do real-world, authentic writing (not the five paragraph essay...but the kinds of writing they actually see in our world). I've been wanting to figure this out--how to get my students writing things that they will see as actually useful to their lives beyond school. School writing really need not be different from real world writing. I want my students to be able to think through complexity and struggle with words to communicate their ideas about their lives. Ideas in this book have helped me to figure that out more.

Click on the book image to get a link to information about this text.

review haiku:
write for real, students
not just for school. Life demands:
think. write. communicate.