ED422343 TM028890
Title: In the Middle: New Understandings about Writing, Reading, and
Learning. Second Edition.
Author(s): Atwell, Nancie
Pages: 546
Publication Date: 1998
ISBN: 0-86709-374-9
Available from: Document Not Available from EDRS.
Availability: Boynton/Cook Publishers, Inc., A Subsidiary of Reed
Elsevier Inc., 361 Hanover Street, Portsmouth, NH 03801-3912 ($32.50).
Language: English
Document Type: Book (010); Guides--Non-classroom (055)
Geographic Source: U.S.; New Hampshire
Journal Announcement: RIEJAN1999
Target Audience: Practitioners; Teachers
The first
edition of this book in 1987 examined how teachers teach and how
learners learn in the context of reading and writing workshops for
middle school students. This revised edition still stresses the
workshop approach to writing and English instruction, but it calls
for a more activist approach by the teacher, encouraging more direction
and suggestions to help students with their writing. More than 70%
of the material is new, with 6 new chapters on genres, evaluation,
and the teacher as writer. There are minilessons and scripts and
examples for teaching them, with expectations and rules for writing
and reading workshops. Ideas are presented for teaching writing
conventions, and suggestions are made for record keeping and the
assessment of individual student skills. The following chapters
are included: (1) "Learning How To Teach Writing"; (2)
"Learning How To Teach Reading"; (3) "Making the
Best of Adolescence"; (4) "Getting Ready"; (5) "Getting
Started"; (6) "Minilessons"; (7) "Responding
to Writers and Writing"; (8) "Responding to Readers and
Reading"; (9) "Valuing and Evaluating"; (10) "Taking
Off the Top of My Head"; (11) "Call Home the Child: Memoir";
(12) "Hanging with Big Sis: Fiction"; (13) "Finding
Poetry Everywhere"; and (14) "Taking Care of Business."
Seventeen appendixes present sample teaching and evaluation materials
and collections of poetry and literature for adolescents. (Contains
21 figures and 87 references.) (SLD)
Descriptors: *Childrens Writing; *English; Evaluation Methods; Intermediate
Grades; Junior High Schools; *Middle Schools; *Student Evaluation;
Student Writing Models; Teaching Methods; Writing (Composition);
Writing Evaluation; *Writing Instruction; Writing Workshops
Identifiers: *Middle School Students
