“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)
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tasks of an ELA class, yet many teachers struggle to implement writing instruction effectively, relying instead on outdated formulas that produce uninspired compositions.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.
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.
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“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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Educator Resources – Featured Products
Storymatic Classic
Storymatic Classic includes 540 writing prompt cards, equally divided between character and situational cards. The perfect story-generating tool, Storymatic Classic is perfect for anyone who enjoys storytelling. The flexible design of Storymatic Classic ensures that any writer can adapt the cards to their own unique writing style. Excellent for gift-giving as well. Put Storymatic Classic on your wish list today!
Storymatic Synapsis
Described as a little “box of yes” Synapsis is a great tool to overcome writer’s block or challenge yourself to take your stories in unique and unexpected directions. The cards contained in this box – spark, riff, connect, and ask – provide writers with an initial narrative direction that changes as each new question is asked.
A terrific party-game as well, Synapsis is more than just “a box of yes” – it is a box of limitless creativity!