Teaching Essay Strategies is a comprehensive curriculum designed to help teachers teach the essay components of the Common Core Writing Standards. This step-by-step program provides all of the resources for upper elementary, middle school, and high school teachers to teach both the writing process essays and the accompanying writing strategies.
Eight Writing Process Essays
The Teaching Essay Strategies program includes the writing prompts, resource texts, graphic organizers, response, revision, and editing resources to teach eight Writing Process Essays. The first four essays are in the informative/explanatory genre (Common Core Writing Standard 2.0). The last four essays are in the argumentative/persuasive writing genre (Common Core Writing Standard 1.0). Accompanying resource texts include both literary and informational forms, as prescribed by the Common Core Reading Standards.
Diagnostic Assessment and Differentiated Instruction
This essay curriculum is built upon comprehensive assessment. Each of the eight Writing Process Essays begins with an on-demand diagnostic assessment. Teachers grade this writing task according to relative strengths and weaknesses on an analytical rubric.
Teachers differentiate writing instruction according to this diagnostic data with mini-lessons and targeted worksheets. Remedial resources include lessons in subject-predicate, sentence structure, sentence fragments and run-ons, essay structure, paragraph organization, types of evidence, transitions, essay genre, writing direction words, proofreading, introduction strategies, and conclusion strategies. Advanced resources include lessons in fallacious reasoning, logic, coherence, unity, sentence variety, parallelism, grammatical sentence openers, and writing style.
Formative and Summative Assessment with Essay e-Comments
Teaching Essay Strategies provides the tools for interactive formative assessment. This program includes a downloadable essay e-comments bank of 438 comprehensive and prescriptive writing comments. Teachers who have their students submit their essays electronically can insert these comments into a student�s essay with a click of the mouse. The essay e-comments cut writing response and grading time in half and give students all the tools they need to revise and edit effectively.
Comments cover writing evidence, coherence, essay organization, sentence structure, writing style, grammar, usage, mechanics, and spellingâ��all with concise definitions and examples. Teachers can also add in content links and their own personalized comments with text or audio files. Students revise and edit with Microsoft Word�® â��Track Changes,â�� then re-submit revisions and edits for peer and/or teacher review. Just like professional writers do with their editors! Teachers enter the results of their formative and summative assessments on the analytical rubric.
Essay Strategy Worksheets
To master the essay strategies detailed in Common Core Writing Standards 4.0, 5.0, and 6.0, students complete 42 Essay Strategy Worksheets. Students move from simple three-word paragraphs to complex multi-paragraph Common Core Writing Standard 1.0 and 2.0 essays, using a time-tested numerical hierarchy for essay organization. This �coding� takes the mystery out of how to organize and compose coherent and unified essays. Students learn and apply the essay writing rules, essay structure, introduction strategies, evidence and argument, conclusion strategies, and all of the common grammatical sentence models in the context of authentic writing practice.
Writing Openers and Quick Writes
Teaching Essay Strategies includes a full year of Sentence Revision (sentence combining, sentence manipulation, and grammatical sentence models), Writing Style Openers, and Rhetorical Stance Quick Writes to help students practice writing dexterity and writing fluency (Common Core Writing Standard 10.0). These 10-minute �openers� require no advance preparation and no teacher correction.
How much class time does it take per week?
The complete program takes 90 minutes per week of class time. The resources in this book are user-friendly. External links to wall posters of the key essay writing terms and instructional strategies used in the program are also provided. Absolutely no prep time is required to teach this curriculum.
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The Teaching Essay Strategies curriculum pairs with Teaching Grammar and Mechanics, by the same author, to form a seamless writing program. No other writing curriculum matches the comprehensive resources of Teaching Essay Strategies. 397 pages plus extensive online resources
I ordered this product and but it downloaded Teaching Grammar and Mechanics instead. I am hoping to get the Teaching Essay Strategies. What should I do?
Tom Bisson
tbisson55@gmail.com 802-388-2527
August 4, 2011
A thoroughly comprehensive format to teach writing. Just what I needed. Thanks
June 25, 2009
Help
Mark-how would you incorporate this into a high school RTI English class? How much time would you spend on this book?
July 8, 2011
One hour, per week... including three five-minute openers and three fifteen-minute writing worksheet/mini-conference settings. The latter suspended when you are working on any of the eight Common Core State Standard process essays.
This is perfect RTI, as it allows students to work at their own pace, and differentiates instruction via remedial worksheets from level to level, as needed.
And... don't forget, you get the very useful Essay e-Comments download with your Teaching Essay Strategies purchase.
July 9, 2011
Mark - I looked through the samples pages to see if this is something I could use - can you show/send me the "How to Use this Guide" page(s)? I think that would help my decision knowing how to use the guide and more of what the sample pages "mean"
January 29, 2010
Surely. Email me at mark@penningtonpublishing.com and I will send it out to you.
January 29, 2010
Mark has twenty four years of teaching experience in the elementary middle school, high school, and community college settings. He currently serves as a middle school English-language arts teacher and reading specialist in Elk Grove Unified School District, outside of Sacramento.
