Week 11- Best Practices by Steve Graham, Charles A.

MacArthur, and Michael Hebert, chapters

16, and The Writing Thief by Ruth Culham, epilogue

Chapter 16 was about instruction for English learners. It talks about the demographic of

these students, background information, how to support them, and literacy development

(including spelling and reading words, language based supports, academic vocabulary, and

content area knowledge). It went into detail about each of these things and highlighted four core

principles for this type of instruction. The epilogue of The Writing Thief was clearly wrapping up

Culham’s book. It talked about the importance again of mentor texts, and heavily emphasized the

connection between reading and writing. It said what students can learn about writing from

reading, gave questions to help nudge students when writing, discusses why we need mentor

texts, and provides some insight on the author herself.

In chapter 16, I had many takeaways. One thing I will definitely use in my future

classroom was the knowledge about the importance of vocabulary. It was interesting to read that

students who have a high vocabulary knowledge excel faster in literary studies. I can see how

this would be difficult for ELL students, because like the book says, to really know what a word

means and how to use it requires lots of exposure, and ELL students may not have had that

exposure before school. Because of this factor, I will definitely be using rich texts that are short

and interesting to help teach vocabulary to ELL students. Finding a story that is both engaging

and interesting is the key to this. Another thing I will use in my future classroom is the idea of

making English language learning more comprehensible for ELL students. I love the idea of not

adjusting the difficulty of the question, but the instruction and how you deliver it. This can make

ELL students feel like they are advancing and still being a part of the class, but in a way that is

accessible to them. As for The Writing Thief, I really loved the epilogue. Aside from the
takeaways for education I had, I thought it was a fun read and inspiring. The thing I will use the

most from this is the list of nudging questions for writing students. I thought those were super

unique and helpful, and I loved that she included those. I sometimes struggle to come up with my

own questions so it is nice to see a list I could refer back to. I really enjoyed it.

These two readings were almost nothing alike this week, but I found many things to pull

out from both of them. So, they have at least one thing in common! Now that Best Practices is

finished I can definitely say I learned so much from that book and I will keep it as a reference

book for all of my teaching career. I look forward to reading more from The Writing Thief! These

two readings this week taught me a lot.

 Works Cited

Culham, Ruth. “Epilogue.” The Writing Thief: Using Mentor Texts to Teach the Craft of Writing,

Stenhouse Publishers, Portland, ME, 2014.

Graham, Steve, et al. “Chapter 16.” Best Practices in Writing Instruction, Guilford Press,

New York, 2019. Kindle Edition.