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WRITING LESSON PLANSAs a veteran student of a million writing courses and a zillion writing workshops, as a graduate of two writing-related (lit) programs and a certificate to teach college composition program, and as an instructor of a few years, I appreciate the fresh approach writing lesson plans. There seemed over the years nothing more antithetical to learning how to write decent essays than the writing lesson plans that involved argumentative modes focused on abortion, euthanasia, and gun control. Likewise, there seemed nothing more delightful than the teacher who assigned a writing project wherein students were to create their own religion or emulate an author or re-write/modernize a fairy tale or poem.
Granted, the teacher designing, developing, and administering the writing lesson plans has one of the hardest jobs on the planet—as far as I’m concerned. He or she must use a balance of models, introduce new skill-tasks, must be reflexive (reminding learners of the past lessons in connection with and building on the new lessons), must meet the rigors of educational standards and regulations, and must, as always, do all of the above in a way that engages, keeps engaged, and ensures academic evolution. Some of the finest teachers I know and/or work with can do all of this. They work each night and every weekend on creating and perfecting their writing lesson plans. They have impeccable organizational and balancing skills. And they bring a creativity to their tasks that would rival the latest, best-selling authors’ works.
However…there is help. Thanks to the generosity of fellow instructors and the accessibility made possible by the worldwide web, online are writing lesson plans for kindergarten classes, grade-school, high school and college-level courses--designed, written, and submitted by fellow instructors. These writing lesson plans, as you likely know or are probably seeking offer fresh approaches, lend themselves to professional development, and (again, obviously) contribute to the enhancement of classroom (or virtual classroom) learning of concepts, strategies, methodologies, and skills.
1. Online teacher communities, such as proteacher.net, teachers.net, and even the more topic-specific tolerance.org feature writing lesson plans, activities, inter-activities, job boards, regulation guides, teacher chat forums, job and classified bulletin boards, and much more.
2. Online teacher databases feature writing lesson plans and writing resources, too: for instance, my favorites, offering everything from major writing curriculum projects to writing assignments and samples are the premier sites such as Carla Beard’s extensive Web English Teacher (which has writing, reading, and writing about reading, for instance, everything from Chaucer and Shakespeare to Morrison and Michener) and S.C.O.R.E.’s equally superb Language Arts CyberGuides (which compose comprehensive, interactive k-12 general and specific writing lesson plans and other lesson plans in the English curriculum.
3. Erica Cassel, Dr. Jerry Adams, and others provide such elements for writing lesson plans as handouts, bibliographies, and kits, at, respectively, mrscassel.com and awesomelibrary.org—while many more writing lesson plans, tools, sources, and resources are replete with helpful guides, lists, databases, and more at such sites as OWL, Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab; Dawn Hogue’s Just for Teachers; ReadWriteThink.org; TeachersFirst.com, TeachNet.com; Microsoft Educational lesson plans; UsingEnglish.com; and Virtual Seminars for Teaching Literature, by the University of Oxford.
Good luck, have fun, and enjoy the above leads to writing lesson plans…which will hopefully enhance and bring joy to your classrooms.
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