Sometimes big ideas are best taught simply. In Micro Lessons in Writing Jim Vopat makes the complex concepts of writing instruction easier for you and your students: one little lesson per page, one big idea. Micro Lessons may be small, but they’re big on practicality, providing your instruction with grounding, direction, and flexibility. Try a few. You’ll find these small lessons will enhance your thinking about teaching writing in big ways.
Each of Vopat’s seventy-five Micro Lessons introduces an important concept in writing and helps you give your students the space and opportunity to work with an idea, take risks, and examine the outcome with a discerning eye. These succinct, understandable lessons offer a rationale for teaching, clear instructions for seeing it through, and key questions and reflection points for joining with students to assess their work. The Micro Lessons are broken into three booklets:
- Big Ideas for Getting Started helps you and your students create a classroom atmosphere that encourages writing, risk taking, and community.
- Big Ideas for Revision focuses on specific conferencing and revision strategies that engage writers in improving their work.
- Big Ideas for Editing and Publishing offers lessons in proofreading and finalizing written pieces—including ways to celebrate writing through publication.
The best writing contains equal elements allure, grace, and mystery. The best teaching of writing conveys the allure and grace but demystifies the process so that students can discover their own competence alongside a love of both process and product. With its minimal approach Micro Lessons in Writing will help you and your writers grapple with important concepts and practice vital techniques without losing sight of what makes writing a craft, an art, a passion, and a skill. Sometimes, less is more.
