Week 1

The Writing Theif

By: Ruth Culham
Prologue, Chapters 1 & 2

The reading was mainly about rethinking the way teachers should be teaching writing. It
talks about how important writing is and how to teach it to your students better. Also how
important mentor texts and examples are to use in the classroom when teaching writing,this let’s
them explore types of writing on their own. She also talks about the different writing traits and
the key qualities for teaching those traits.
This text is related to the ideas of elementary writing in many different ways. The author
goes into detail on the scores that students get on standardized tests, and it is shocking to see
how kids are doing in the writing sections. The author would also write about the issues going
on in classrooms, and what is going wrong. But, instead of just saying what needs to change,
she gives solutions and recommends ways that she has personally seen to be very effective. It
is very important to be consistent with language between the different grades so that students
can continue growing their writing abilities, instead of starting over every year. I learned that
students learn best from other authors' texts, or even just from writing that they see in the real
world. This text increased my understanding of Best Practices in writing instruction by talking
about the author's real examples and solutions to actual problems. I think that is a big thing for
learning about education. Everyone talks about how so many things are going wrong in the
teaching world, but no one tells you how to fix them.
The first example of something I would use from this material to teach writing is on page
15 of the book. It is a table called “Dumb Things Versus Sensible Things in Writing Instruction”,
and I think it could be extremely helpful. It tells you things that are dumb, and not effective in
student growth, and then it has better ideas of what else you can do. My second example
comes from page 17. It talks about how to develop energized and enthusiastic writers, and it
says you can “inspire students’ curiosity by looking at examples”. I will definitely use this in my
classroom because examples help me so much as a learner. If I am completely stuck they
always give me an idea of where to start. My last example is that I will make sure to use
consistent language when teaching writing, and be sure to communicate with the teachers from
grades above and below mine to make sure that we are all on the same page. I think this is so
important because I remember always thinking, when I was in school, that I was starting over
every year and I thought it was so annoying.

Culham, Ruth. The Writing Thief, Stenhouse Publishers.