Writing for Understanding : Using Backward Design to Help All Students Write Effectively

How can we help students - all students - write effectively?

Writing for Understanding provides a practical, proven approach to teaching writing that targets insufficient student understanding of content information and of the writer's craft as key reasons for poor quality student writing. Through Writing for Understanding, teachers learn to help students:

1) Build and process working content knowledge and understanding of the writer's craft
2) Identify a central idea for their writing, then focus it through a question, and
3) Transfer their developing writing abilities independently to new situations.

With models of effective teaching, samples of student writing, and practical tools for classroom use, Writing for Understanding offers an inspiring and useful tool for developing effective, independent student writers.

The teachers of the Vermont Writing Collaborative have devoted a combined 130 plus teacher-years to teaching and studying student writing. They have worked from pre-K through grade 12 in rural and urban schools, as teachers, administrators, and consultants.

Joey Hawkins has taught in Minnesota and Vermont for over thirty years, mostly at the middle school level. Currently, she works with school districts throughout Vermont, helping teachers with writing instruction at all grade levels.

Eloise Ginty has been a classroom teacher for twelve years. She is a principal at a pre-K through fifth-grade school in Vermont.

Karen LeClaire Kurzman has been a classroom teacher for twenty-two years, teaching all grades from pre-K through grade 12. She now provides professional development full time through her company, Abecedarian, and is a K-12 principal in Rhode Island.

Diana Leddy has taught for twenty-seven years in grades K-6 and is the Vermont Teacher of the Year for 2009. In addition to teaching in a multi-age classroom, Diana works as a consultant, helping schools and districts design and implement standards-based programs.

Jane Miller has taught at the elementary level for thirty-six years. Currently she works as a literacy teacher in Burlington, VT, and as a consultant helping teachers with reading and writing instruction.

Grant Wiggins, author of the foreword, is an internationally renowned expert in curriculum and assessment, best known as the co-author of Understanding by Design. He is a consultant, researcher, and author who works with schools and districts throughout the country and around the world, through his company, Authentic Education.