Smuggling Writing: Strategies That Get Students to Write Every Day, in Every Content Area, Grades 3-12

Is it possible to sneak more writing into your already-jammed curriculum? Yes! With this cache of classroom-tested ideas, you have all you need to make writing-to-learn a daily habit for students that deepens their content understanding and creates learners ready to take on all of the world’s information. 

Smuggling Writing shows how to integrate writing seamlessly into your lesson plans with 32 written response activities that help students process information and ideas in short, powerful sessions. The authors invigorate time-tested tools like GIST, Herringbone, and Anticipation Guides, and organize them into sections on Vocabulary and Concept Development, Comprehension, Discussion, and Research & Inquiry so you can select and use them to maximum effect. 

Here are the success-ensuring how-to’s that accompany each strategy:

• A step-by-step process ensures students use the strategy before, during, and after reading/learning so they "own" the strategy and can track their thinking
• Engaging digital applications, including Story Impression with Bubbl.us, Reading Road Map with Prezi, Possible Solutions with Padlet, CLVG with Brain Pop
• Sample lessons showing both traditional and online formats, taking the guess work out of trying these new digital tools 
• Ideas for "smuggling" additional writing opportunities into or after the lessons, ensuring that students’ writing skills improve
• Connections to Common Core State Standards

With all the heady talk of what it’s going to take for students to read, write, and analyze across multiple sources, it’s nice to know that there is a book that shows how big gains will come from "writing small" day by day. 

Dr. Karen Wood has been training literacy specialists for over 25 years at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where she is a Professor in the Department of Reading and Elementary Education. Dr. Wood is a published author and former reading teacher, reading specialist, and K–12 instructional coordinator, and much of her writing focuses on translating research and theory into classroom practice across all subjects and grade levels. 

Bruce Taylor is an Associate Professor of Reading and Literacy Education at UNC Charlotte and Director of the Center for Adolescent Literacies. His research and teaching focus on the social and cultural aspects of literacy and learning of adolescents and, in particular, ways to meet the academic learning needs of diverse and marginalized students. He is author and co-author of numerous books, book chapters and articles that focus on literacy across subject areas, digital literacy and community-based support for struggling readers. Bruce can be contacted at bruce.taylor@uncc.edu. 

Katie Kelly is a Professor of Education and Coordinator of the Literacy Graduate Program at Furman University in Greenville, SC. As a former teacher and literacy coach, Katie’s teaching and research interests include engaging children in meaningful literacy experiences and practices to foster lifelong literacy, equity, and justice. She is widely published in several peer-reviewed journals including The Reading Teacher and Voices from the Middle. She has co-authored three other books: Reading To Make a Difference: Using Literature to Help Students Think Deeply Speak Freely and Take Action (Heinemann), From Pencils to Podcasts: Digital Tools to Transform K-12 Literacy Practices (Solution Tree) and Smuggling Writing: Strategies that Get Students to Write Every Day, in Every Content Area (3-12) (Corwin). She can be contacted on Twitter @ktkelly14 and by email katie.kelly@furman.edu.