By Andy Sammons
The Right to Write: English (Lit & Lang)
Have you heard of The Writing Revolution?
This seminal work by Judith C. Hochman and Natalie Wexler is a comprehensive guide aimed at transforming the way writing is taught. Learners cannot become confident writers in a vacuum. It’s impossible. The Writing Revolution (TWR) is about giving teachers and learners the tools they need in order to think, plan and write confidently in every possible context.
TWR transforms writing instruction by giving teachers and learners a clear playbook for explicit thinking and writing instruction. Using a consistent framework, this limits cognitive load.
The guiding principles:
- Learners need explicit instruction on how to write successfully in all subjects.
- Sentences are the building blocks of writing.
- Writing instruction is supercharged when it’s aligned with the subject content.
- Robust knowledge drives the quality of the writing activities.
- Grammar is best explicitly taught in the context of writing in your discipline: not as a bolt on.
- Planning and reviewing sentences is essential.
The Right to Write: English (Lit & Lang):
With these principles in mind, we’ve put together a ‘quick start guide’ to help The Writing Revolution get underway in your English classroom.
This simple download provides English teachers with practical strategies that they can use in their English classrooms. Focusing on sentence-level instruction and progressing to compositions, these strategies encourage learners to think more deeply about the concepts and content that they are learning, helping to improve their writing skills and in turn enhancing their overall academic performance.