“. . . a top recommendation for secondary ELA teachers who want to achieve their goals in a different, more effective manner.”

— D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review


Image of "Artfulness" Book Cover

Teaching students to write well is one of the most important tasks of an ELA class, yet many teachers struggle to implement writing instruction effectively, relying instead on outdated formulas that produce uninspired compositions. Despite a desire among educators to improve writing instruction, obstacles exist that make this task difficult. 

Artfulness overcomes the two biggest challenges teachers face when seeking to improve writing instruction: time and knowledge. 

    • Artfulness saves teachers time by providing a year’s worth of effective, ready-to-use lesson plans for writing that can easily be adapted to suit any classroom environment. With unit integration suggestions, differentiation strategies, and lesson extension ideas, this book provides everything teachers need to develop writing lessons that work. 

    • Artfulness takes the struggle out of lesson planning by designing each of the twenty lesson plans in the book to specifically target core ELA skills. More than a tool to teach writing, many of the lessons in Artfulness are deliberately paired with key close reading skills, leading students to become stronger readers as well as stronger writers. 

“I never expected to come across so much success in my creative writing and I discovered the importance of attempting new writing techniques and incorporating those skills into my writing style to make me a stronger writer.”

Emma (Student Testimonial)

Through the integration of weekly creative writing explorations known as Writing Wednesdays, students discover the joy—and the artfulness—of writing in modes that feel authentic and meaningful to them. The results speak for themselves—students who engage in the Writing Wednesday lessons contained in Artfulness often write longer, more effective compositions than they did previously and express an excitement about writing that was missing before. 

Also available for purchase at Barnes & Noble


“When we contain our writing instruction primarily to literary analysis, we spend all of our energy teaching students to write in a genre that few students, if any, will actually use in their future and we teach them that writing only takes one form, serves one purpose, and is crafted in one voice. Is it any wonder that students groan the moment we introduce a writing task to them? By the time they get to high school, any joy students may have ever felt for writing has been eliminated one 5-paragraph essay at a time.

Artfulness: Formula-Free Creative Writing Explorations for Secondary ELA Classes

Author, Andrea Yarbough, shares details about her book.


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