Teaching Adolescent Writers

I attended one of Kelly Gallagher's lectures last summer and was instantly hooked on his honesty, humor, and principles. I purchased Teaching Adolescent Writers and have used it almost daily. Gallagher's ideas and techniques make so much sense and what's even better is that everything he suggests are exactly what we teachers of writing need. I tried the "find the fib" idea and hooked my students immediately. I moved to "the myth of the boring topic" and had lots of fun exchanging questions with the class. Everything I've brought to the classroom has engaged my reluctant teenages who have no interest in school let alone writing. I try to read sections of his book in the morning before school starts because he just makes so much sense and his ideas are so much fun, I often go to work excited.

As a new teacher, I found this book packed with practical guides on everything from motivating students to assessing student work. This book provides not only the reasons why we teach writing, but most importantly HOW to teach writing.

As an 8th grade language arts teacher, I have found _Deeper Reading_ and _Reading Reasons_, Gallagher's other teaching titles, to be positively indispensible, so I expected nothing less from his latest work. Once again, Gallagher delivers! This is a straightforward, practical, and yes, funny, book for effective writing instruction in secondary classrooms. Gallagher's fresh, ready-to-use strategies are based upon what he calls the "six pillars of writing success," which are:

-students need a lot more writing practice;
-students need teachers who model good writing;
-students need the opportunity to read and study other writers;
-students need choice when it comes to writing topics;
-students need to write for authentic purposes and to authentic audiences, and;
-students need meaningful feedback from both the teacher and their peers.

Gallagher offers ideas for daily in-class writing opportunities, activities to help generate high-interest topics, strategies for "attacking" on-demand writing, mini-lessons to guide students through deeper revision, alternatives to peer editing (which he says doesn't work), and suggestions for more effective grading. His lessons are geared to teach students the real-world writing skills they will need not just for success in the English classroom but for the long haul.

This is a must-have for veteran and novice teachers alike. I, too, have had the opportunity to attend one of Gallagher's workshops, and in my view, the man is simply genius. Through it all, Gallagher reminds us that we are not superhuman. In view of the mounting pressure so many of us feel to raise the all-mighty test scores, I found the following quote most reassuring: "With the wide range of ability and overwhelming class sizes, it is unrealistic to think I am going to make every one of my 165 students a strong writer. It *is* realistic, however, to begin each year with the goal that every student of mine, regardless of ability, is going to get better." Armed with Gallagher's book, I feel a renewed sense of confidence that my teaching is going to get better, too. Two thumbs way up!

Kelly Gallagher manages to include important information about best practices in a way that is immediately useful for the classroom teacher. An excellent book for high school English teachers or professional developers working with high school teachers!!!

I had the pleasure of going to a conference and hearing Kelly Gallagher speak. He's a down-to-earth, realistic guy and so is his approach to teaching writing. He outlines ways to get students interested in writing and it's very adaptable to my classroom. His chapter on combatting how to keep up with grading was the most useful for me.