Teaching Students to Write Comparison/Contrast Essays

"These books will support teachers in their understanding of designing process-based instruction and give them both useful lesson plans and a process for designing instruction on their own that follows the design principles."

-Peter Smagorinsky, Larry Johannessen, Elizabeth Kahn, and Thomas McCann

The Dynamics of Writing Instruction series helps middle and high school teachers teach writing using a structured process approach. Teachers may spread these books throughout a multiyear English language arts program, use all six books to constitute a yearlong writing course, or repeat modified sequences from one book at sequential grade levels so students deal with that particular genre at increasing degrees of complexity.

Each book in the series includes classroom-tested activities, detailed lesson sequences, and supporting handouts. The instruction is detailed enough to use as a daily plan but general enough that teachers can modify it to accommodate their own curriculum and the specific needs of their students.

The instructional activities in each book are tailored to a specific kind of writing: argument, essays that define, comparison/contrast essays, personal narratives, research reports, and fictional narratives. This six book series will show teachers how to:

• introduce issues, dilemmas, and scenarios that capture students' interest and invoke the critical and creative thinking necessary to write powerfully and effectively
• design and orchestrate activities within an interactive and collaborative environment
• move students through increasingly challenging activities designed to help them become independent writers.

Peter Smagorinsky is the coauthor of The Dynamics of Writing Instruction (2010) and author of Teaching English by Design (2007). Peter taught high school English from 1976 to 1990 in public schools outside Chicago and now teaches in the program in English Education at The University of Georgia. In 2007 he was presented with the UGA Graduate School Outstanding Mentoring Award in Humanities and Fine and Applied Arts. Peter is the author or coauthor of numerous books and articles, including the Heinemann title Reflective Teaching, Reflective Learning, which he coedited in 2006.

Thomas M. McCann, Larry R. Johannessen, Elizabeth Kahn, Peter Smagorinsky, and Michael W. Smith were all graduate students of George Hillocks, Jr. at the University of Chicago. They have explored ways to engage critical readers, writers, and speakers in more than 30 books, in over 300 articles, and in hundreds of presentations all over the world. Together, they have over eighty years experience as secondary English teachers, and as university faculty they have taught hundreds of preservice and practicing teachers. They've been friends and collaborators for years.