Fun-Size Academic Writing for Serious Learning : 101 Lessons & Mentor Texts--Narrative, Opinion/Argument, & Informative/Explanatory, Grades 4-9

Gretchen Bernabei and Judi Reimer present 95 craft lessons based on real student essays.

Sometimes a student’s best teacher is another student

Just as the pressure for students to perform well on state assessments escalates ever higher, and the call to raise students’ achievement in narrative, opinion/argument , and informative/explanatory writing grows louder, Gretchen Bernabei and Judi Reimer publish Fun-Size Academic Writing for Serious Learning. If ever there were a book to answer every need, this is it.

You see, Gretchen and Judi have been concerned about adolescents’ writing for years, and they have had amazing success using mentor texts by students to teach the ins and outs of writing in any genre. So with this book, they "hand over their file drawers" and provide you with 101 essays  written by students with one-page companion lessons that address text structure, imagery, dialogue, rhetorical devices, grammatical structures, textual blends--all the different tools that writers use.

Organized into three major sections that align with the Common Core, STAAR, and other major state assessments, Fun-Size Academic Writing delivers succinct, powerhouse instruction on topics such as: 

        • How to choose a structure for argument, informational, or narrative writing
        • How to read a piece and extract thesis statement and main points
        • How to layer a wide range of details to support points
        • How to use rhetorical devices and grammatical constructions for effect 
        • How to write from the point of view of a fictional character

The essays—also available in reproducible form on the companion website--demonstrate something striking, something imitable, something concrete. They give students a bank of choices to call upon as they write. The lessons are short, practical, and full of variety. Collectively, these essays and lessons have the potential to move the needle on American students’ writing achievement once and for all. They show what has been done by students—and they reveal to you how your own students can do it, too.