The Art of Teaching Writing

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Lucy McCormick Calkins', The Art of Teaching Writing is an essential read to teachers of writing in any grade, but especially for the primary and middle levels. This book is also helpful for new teachers as well as veterans. Teaching writing to the primary and middle school grades can be a challenge, but the instruction she gives and the creativity of her ideas create an exciting guide for any teacher. As someone who plans to teach at the middle school level, I found many of Calkins' suggestions to be very useful.

Throughout the book, Calkins shows the need for meaning in writing and living our lives as writers, and demonstrating this to our students. Her ideas for the Writer's Notebook will allow the students a creative way of noticing the world around them as only a writer can. By giving the students an outlet to get out everything they want to say, they will begin to live the lives of writers.

Calkins stresses that students need to feel like authors to truly take ownership and be excited about their writing; she emphasizes the need for specific writing environments made to inspire and evoke emotion in the writer. These environments consist of cardboard desk separators decorated to each writer's own unique taste. Personal items and quotations may be used to cure any student of the dreaded writer's block.

Allowing the students to become the teachers is just another inventive way Calkins explains in order to allow them to flourish and grow as writers. She puts great importance on seeing and respecting every idea a students have. She realizes that teachers are students as well, and any idea, whether it comes from the teacher or the pupil, can be immensely inspiring.

These are just a few of her techniques, though she offers many more throughout the book. Genre studies, poetry, creative nonfiction, Mini-Lessons and conferences are just a few more ideas she touches upon in great depth.

By instructing teachers on how we can improve the writing environment for our young, impressionable students and explaining various methods in which to do so, Calkins' book is truly ground-breaking for anyone who wants to truly inspire their students to love writing. Any new or seasoned teacher of writing needs to read this book and even veteran teachers can take something away from the fresh look she gives us on the topic. It will open your eyes to all the possibilities there are in teaching writing!

Lucy McCormick Calkins' text "The Art of Teaching Writing" is very useful for prospective elementary school teachers or elementary school teachers looking for alternate ways to teach their lessons. Each chapter offers some new information for teachers to take into their own classrooms. Calkins makes sure to address important issues such as incorporating writing workshops into the classroom, and incorporating the importance of mini-lessons.

Calkins starts off chapter three, which is titled "Rehearsal, Living the Writerly Life," by saying that, "My hope is that in our writing workshops all of us - teachers and children alike - will be able to take the small threads and small stones of experience and of thought, declare them significant, and make something of them" (21). Calkins does an exemplary job making her text easy to follow and understand. Anyone could read this text and get a lot of great, useful information from it.

Calkins also states the many various reasons why mini-lessons are extremely helpful to students. Calkins notes that "The mini-lesson can serve as a forum for planning the day's work, as a time to call writers together (like the huddle at the start of a football game), or as a time for demonstrating a new method" (193). I thought it was very insightful that the author started off the chapter which was titled, "Don't Be Afraid to Teach: Tools to Help Us Create Mini-Lessons", by saying that mini-lessons can serve in the three above manners mentioned.

Calkins' text is a great source for prospective elementary school teachers as well as elementary school teachers that are looking for a new / different way to go about their lessons in a more effective manner. Calkins' lessons can also be helpful for middle school and high school teachers. I would highly recommend this text for prospective school teachers wanting to learn great teaching methods.

Lucy McCormick Calkins' "The Art of Teaching Writing" is a very useful text. This book caters to teachers of elementary school students and how they can appropriately teach important lessons to their class. Calkins addresses many important issues such as how to encourage children to write and how to further their writing. Each chapter provides new ideas and is especially helpful for soon-to-be or new teachers.


The beginning of Calkins' book gives background information along with her personal experience in the classroom. As the book continues, however, Calkins thoroughly explains the importance of writing and how to get students to write. In chapter three Calkins talks about the importance of students writing often, and to help this process she suggests students have writer's notebooks. These notebooks will include students' thoughts, and will help them jumpstart their writing. She explains that hopefully these notebooks will form "small threads and small stones" which the students can "declare them significant, and make something of them" which will really help the students as well as the teachers (21). By using Calkins' idea of a writer's notebook, students will have ideas in front of them before they start to write. This is also very helpful for teachers because they can look at what their students have been writing, and help them to come up with ideas and stories.


Throughout Calkins' book she stresses the importance of students writing constantly, revising their work, and piecing words and thoughts together to form a finished product. One of the chapters that I found the most helpful was chapter eleven, entitled "Establish a Predictable Workshop Environment." This chapter discusses how important it is for students to have a predictable schedule, because their work is "unpredictable and complex," which I agree with (183). Calkins further explains the importance of this by saying, if students have a set time to write then they can "anticipate and plan for their own writing" (185). I think this is a very important idea because if students know when they will be writing, then they will be more productive and produce better work.


In addition I found chapter 22, called "Genre Studies," to be very interesting. This chapter discusses the importance of having students write in several genres. This was not something I would have immediately thought of as being necessary. After reading the chapter, however, I really agree with Calkins and I think it would help students quite a bit to write in many genres. This way students can learn which genres they like the best and explore all different sides of their personality.


Overall, Calkins' "The Art of Teaching Writing" is a great instructional tool. This book gives great ideas for new teachers, as well as examples of how to present these concepts to the class. This is definitely a book that I will use in my future of teaching elementary school, and a great book for everyone interested in education.