Grades 6-12: Strategies! Strategies! Strategies! Significantly Increase Students' Writing Skills

This online course is organized around video clips of a seminar by experienced English teacher and national presenter Mary Ellen Ledbetter. You'll see Mary Ellen present and demonstrate practical, time-efficient strategies for improving the writing of middle and high school students across a range of genres. You'll find a wealth of techniques guaranteed to engage even the most reluctant writers and increase the quality of their written work. Also included are sample lesson plans integrating all ELA skills complete with mini-lessons and notes to teachers suggesting ways to use the print resources in their own classrooms.

Do you sometimes feel like you're spending more time reading and grading your students' writing than they do before submitting their assignments? Do you spend hours planning creative ways to fit in all the skills now required? If so, this is the course for you! You'll learn how to strategically take your students to the next level of writing with daily, easy-to-use techniques that maximize instructional time and minimize a classroom teacher’s paper load. You'll find dozens of practical and doable strategies to strengthen your writing instruction and achieve powerful results.

You will learn how to:

• Enhance students' writing across a range of genres using exemplary student models and guided analysis
• Incorporate literature assignments that help students use writing to make connections with the text
• Improve students' grammar and language mechanics – and see the results in their writing
• Inspire and challenge students to write daily using short, highly-engaging activities
• Address common grammar and usage-related errors often found in students’ writing
• Conference with students in ways that enhance their writing, decrease off-task behavior and greatly reduce your workload

Watch an excerpt from this course: