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The Minnesota Writing Project aims to improve K-college literacy in Minnesota. Housed within the Center for Writing at the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities, MWP is the local site of the National Writing Project, an authorized provider of No Child Left Behind.

An excellent article on the challenges we all face in become better at thinking critically and writing well. I have found that most students do better presenting arguments in written form when they have engaged in in-depth discussion, as then questioning and peer responses can prompt deeper thinking and make real the need to both cite and explain evidence. The Shared Inquiry method used in Great Books programs provides a focus on open, interpretive questions that require students to make an defend claims about the meaning of complex texts. The model lessons suggest a sequence of activities that supports multiple close readings, collaborative discussions, and writing throughout the process.

Understanding and applying technologies to the teaching of writing - as well as understanding concepts associated with them such as copyright and fair use - has become the professionally responsible way to teach writing . Professional organizations such as NCTE NWP IRA ISTE the Center for Media Literacy and others have moved quickly and clearly in the past few years to show that integrating technology across content areas, including the teaching of writing, is critical for creating students who are literate in a variety of ways.

Writer's role in soliciting feedback during peer edit. Suggestions for modeling and training.

"This is a simple, elegant writing site for a collaborative writing. Users don't writing in real-time like so other sites, but exchange versions which clearly show the changes made. The other users can accept or decline the changes. It is useful for groups to draft their writing and for teachers correcting pupils work. Each version is archived in case the team changes their mind about the accepted changes."

"Writing is vital to most examples of learning. It is how civilisation conveys information from generation to generation, it is how parents often communicate their needs and fears for their children as notes to the teacher, and it is how little Johnny/Jane tells you about what their cat and/or dog did at the weekend. Some people love writing, while others struggle with it, but everyone has to write to some degree in their daily lives, and all of this stems from their experiences in the classroom."

"As Thomas Newkirk says in Critical Thinking and Writing: Reclaiming the Essay, "When essays become formulaic, they hinder rather than foster critical thinking." - read some aspects of writing that will provide more balance in approaching the writing process and critical thinking with students.

Asked to assess their students' performance on nine specific writing skills, teachers tended to rate their students "good" or "fair" as opposed to "excellent" or "very good." Students received the best ratings on their ability to "effectively organize and structure writing assignments" and their ability to "understand and consider multiple viewpoints on a particular topic or issue." Teachers gave students the lowest ratings when it comes to "navigating issues of fair use and copyright in composition" and "reading and digesting long or complicated texts."

"Poetica is a neat new service for collaborative editing of documents. The best feature of Poetica is its similarity to writing on a paper document. While reading a document you can click on any word or space between words to insert a line drawn to the margin where you write your comment. Clicking on a word or space also allows you to simply insert a suggested word above the line. If you want to suggest a change for an entire sentence you can highlight it and insert a drawn line to the margins where you can write your suggestions. Your suggestions are written in blue while your corrections are written in red." Supports imports of .docs, .pdfs, .rtf files.- definitely want to use this as a tool with Chromebooks

This article reports on a qualitative action research project which looked at the possibility that giving students an opportunity to explore their relationship with their essays through a range of creative writing techniques might enhance creativity in university writing. The project comprised a series of practical and experiential workshops, with questionnaires and follow-up interviews. The workshops are described, and themes arising from the different strands of the project discussed, using case study material from individual students. Drawing on a range of theoretical perspectives from psychoanalysis, literary theory and academic literacies, the discussion covers notions of genre, writer identity, creativity and play. We argue that approaches introduced in these workshops have implications for mainstream practice in ways that could enable students to feel freer, more empowered and more present in their university writing.

Boom Writer blends creative writing and social media technology to provide a competitive writing platform that is integrated into the national education curriculum. The goal is to give schools a platform for a more engaging creative writing process, give teachers a tool that focuses their students on creative writing techniques and all the students have fun in the process. With a slick and easy to use interface, Boom Writer is a worth while tool for writing in the classroom.

Welcome to the Purdue OWL. We offer over 200 free resources including: Writing and Teaching Writing Research Grammar and Mechanics Style Guides ESL (English as a Second Language) Job Search and Professional Writing

Although this is focuses on writing dissertations, it's excellent advice for writing up any research paper--whether at the high school or college level.

inklewriter is a free tool designed to allow anyone to write and publish interactive stories. It's perfect for writers who want to try out interactivity, but also for teachers and students looking to mix computer skills and creative writing.

"Inklewriter is a free tool designed to allow anyone to write and publish interactive stories. It's perfect for writers who want to try out interactivity, but also for teachers and students looking to mix computer skills and creative writing."

Site for sharing writing. Become a member of a writing community. 

Read, write, vote, read, write, vote again. Students compete with their writing.