TEACHING ADOLESCENT
WRITERS
KELLY GALLAGHER
Laura Yaeger IU5 April 6, 2011
What Would You Do?
A)
B)
C)
D)
E)
Lying down and curling up, covering your head with
your arms
Running directly at the bulls, screaming wildly and
flailing your arms in an attempt to scare them in
another direction
Turning and running like heck in the same direction the
bulls are running (even though you know you cannot
outrun them)
Standing completely still; they will see you and run
around you
Screaming bad words at your parent(s) for insisting on
a back-to-nature vacation in Wyoming
What Would You Do?
A)
B)
C)
D)
E)
Go home, curl up on the sofa, play video games and
hope the demands of the literacy stamped go away.
Stare the Information Age in the face, screaming
wildly and flailing your arms in an attempt to make it
go away.
Elevate your reading and writing abilities to the point
that you can run with the literacy stampede.
Stand completely still. Pray that the Information Age
will avoid you.
Scream bad words at your parent(s) for conceiving
you in the shadow of a literacy stampede.
If kids don’t write more
than three times a week,
they’re dead.
-Donald Graves
1. Let Them Mess Around With Writing

Daily in-class writing activities
Quick writes
Brainstorming
2.
Write as a chance to consolidate
and review ideas and experiences

The Grocery List Theory
Exit slips
SDQR Chart
Movie Reading
3. Write to reformulate and extend
knowledge

It doesn’t always have to be about
demonstrating knowledge.
Free response
Looping
Pass-the-reflections
Conversation logs
4. On-Demand Writing
Attack the prompt
Brainstorm possible answers
Choose the order of your response
Detect errors before turning the

draft in
Kelly’s Rules for ABCD
Quarter 1-Repeated practice until students
are able to complete A, B, and C in seven
minutes or less. They haven’t yet actually
written the on-demand essay.
 Quarters 2-4-Students write an on-demand
essay every third Friday, resulting in ten ondemand essays using the ABC format by the
end of the year. D items become minilessons.

Encouraging Writing
1. Move beyond the Grecian Urn
approach.
2. Adopt a 4:1 grading policy.
3. Talk the paper out.
4. Model how to create a map before
writing.
5. Allow for choice within given topics.
First Draft Philosophy in Kelly’s Class
It is a requirement to produce a lot
of bad writing.
 Before you can get it right you have
to get it down.
 The first draft is a “sneeze.”

Modeling to Drive Better Revision
The Patti Stock mini-lesson
 Pimp My Write, make me a
Substitute
Take things out
Add
Rearrange

The Last Word
For many students, “make them better” is
interpreted as recopying neatly. I
caution them that making a paper better
is not the same as making it correct.
Right now I want them to revise the
paper and show how the second draft is
better than the first.
-Kelly Gallagher