Letters to the Next President

This unit plan, developed for students 3 - 5, offers ideas and approaches that would work well with older students if adapted. The approach is to engage students in examining persuasive communication all around them, discerning rhetorical strategies that seem effective to them as readers and viewers. Having students see how ubiquitous persuasive communication is helps take this writing assignment out of the realm of 'school only' writing. The associated materials are clearly developed for younger students, but suggest approaches to materials that could be used more broadly. While on the site, run a search to find other content of interest.

To better support its faculty who might want to write opinion pieces for the popular press, the University of Virginia has published this set of great tips for writing Op Ed and similar pieces in general. These tips would serve any writer preparing a piece for Writing Our Future as well.

Whether Writing Our Future is technically a blog or not doesn't matter. This set of tips are for anyone who needs to grab a readers attention in the first first lines of a piece by crafting a strong lead. Since Writing Our Future hosts large amounts of content and readers move quickly through the content, writers cannot wait till the middle of the piece to gain a viewers attention. This set of tips can be shared directly with your writers.

Ask.com has lots of well-focused advice for writers and most of it would be appropriate for young writers preparing pieces for Writing Our Future. This page, with advice for writing preparing Op Ed pieces and other forms of commentary applies particularly well.

NOW, the public affairs program on PBS, has created a large body of excellent content based on its programs for teachers and students. This collection of lessons and links supports students creating opinion pieces based on research through the NOW archives and related news links. This is an excellent introduction for students for to opinion-writing and to news sources.

The ASNE High School Journalism initiative has built an excellent site to support excellence in scholastic journalism. It features a range of lesson plans and tips that are applicable to Writing Our Future, particularly those that focus on writing editorials. This unit, for example, leads students to analyze editorials from newspapers in order to derive tips for their own writing. As a result, students begin to see how much of the writing around them can serve as a model for their own work.

ASME provides hosting for a large number of high school newspapers (and some for younger students). This 'national addition' features content drawn from those newspapers and is a great place to find current examples of strong student writing.

The editorial board of any newspaper needs to identify issues of significance to plan their editorial publishing. In this ASNE High School Journalism lesson, a class works to identify the core issues that might be the topic of their editorial board work. Similar processes could help teachers surface issues that young writers might want to advocate for in Writing Our Future.

This link takes you to a different kind of student model: models for your students themselves. The Diversity Institute, which has the goal of recruiting for and diversifying news staffs, has prepared a video about careers in journalism aimed at high school students. This is especially useful for showing students of diverse backgrounds that they can become professional writers. Whether your students are aimed in this direction or not, the film shows that a career as a writer is possible for them and that diversity is important in the field of journalism.

For many high school students, the best student models may come from college students! This link will take you to a listing of college newspapers by state that are online and available to your and your students.

The American Press Institute maintains an excellent collection of links and tools to improve writing and reporting. Many will assist younger writers as well. Use the search functions to find links to sites that will help identify misinformation on the web (and help students avoid recirculating it in their writing) or to advice on copyediting with skill and precision.

The Writers' Toolbox, a production of the writing center at the University of British Columbia, has lots of information on effective persuasive writing. Created for university students, the site can provide information that teachers could adapt or that some young writers could use directly. In particular, the site focuses on evaluating claims and making effective logical arguments.

As always, Carla Beard of the Web English Teacher gathers an extensive set of resource links for the busy teacher. This link to the general search section for writing offers many options for resources.

Wiretap Magazine, the online magazine that trains and supports young journalists for cover progressive social issues, has produced a guide for young voters with news and information that might be of interest to writers for Writing Our Future. Some of the writing, by college students and 20-somethings, might serve as models.

This lesson on persuasive writing has students writing letters to the editor related to the election and could provide some starting points for teachers or mentors browsing for ideas. The lesson includes rubrics and other tools that might be useful to teachers working on Writing Our Future.

For over 25 years, Public Agenda has been developing its unique approach to public affairs. By maintaining a well-researched and nonpartisan stance toward the issues that public policy addresses, they have become a trusted sources of information and analysis. Their issue guides will provide good initial background for Writing Our Future writers.

InfoPlease is a massive source of statistics and other forms of basic information. On the home page, select Almanacs from the pull down menu, type in an area, and see what information comes up (typically from governmental or other similar sources). There's a lot here to distract a researcher into dead ends, but it is great for the finding the single useful factoid.

Guidance for writers about reporting, writing, interviewing, editing, grammar, and ethics can be found in the resource section of WireTap magazine. Follow the link to navigate to topical resources in the right hand column.

Project Zero's rubric covers many of the same items as other rubrics, but uses more pointed and descriptive language that students might be able to use in their own self-assessments. The goal is to have a rubric that supports students' assessment of their own work.

Project Zero's rubric covers many of the same items as other rubrics, but uses more pointed and descriptive language that students might be able to use in their own self-assessments. The goal is to have a rubric that supports students' assessment of their own work.