Helping Young Writers Master the Craft: Strategy Instruction and Self-Regulation in the Writing Process (Cognitive Strategy Training Series)

This book has two distinctive features that make it very different from many books on writing. First, it describes writing strategies for poor writers who have difficulty organizing their thoughts and producing text. The strategies provide a structure for students to use writing prose. The authors' research indicates that many children need specific strategies to help them write. The strategies presented in this book, developed by teachers and shown to be effective in the authors' research, describe specific steps with a mnemonic to help the student remember the sequence of steps. The process of writing is more easily understood by the student who uses the sequence of steps to compose and write. These strategies can be used as a writing program or embedded as part of the writing portion within a whole language program.
The second distinctive feature is the authors' contention that students become autonomous writers when they can regulate or manage the elements in their writing themselves. The authors' program for developing autonomous writers integrates teaching writing strategies concurrently with self regulating techniques. They provide verbatim accounts of teachers' use of the program with students, and examples of students' writing before and after the program.
Chapters on how to evaluate the effectiveness of the classroom writing program, and 'The Trick of It' - tips for implementing the writing strategy teaching programs conclude the book.