My+Precis

Kittle, P. (2008). //Write beside them: risk, voice, and clarity in high school writing//. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Penny Kittle gives a detailed account of her experience in the classroom with her students. Kittle’s focus on writing with her students, gives her the opportunity to guide them to improve their writing while they are writing, not when they are finished. Kittle introduces the techniques, instruction, and results of her teaching in a step by step process for a variety of for many different genre’s, writing, and skill levels. Her book strategically groups each of her ideas into well thought out chapters highlighting the steps she takes and shows comparisons of different student interest and ability levels. She includes sample writings in the text as well as supplementary video to watch her interactions with these students. In Kittle’s demonstration of these tools she does not discount the moments when her strategies may not have worked. She recognizes that our students will not always perform to our expectations, but that gives us the opportunity to learn and make adjustments in the future. Her flexible teaching style gives opportunities to use a variety of minilessons to meet the needs of her students. Her students are her focus when planning her teaching, not the curriculum dictated by standardized tests. Her use of student’s personal experiences provides a positive classroom setting for the students and their writing. Her encouragement gives them a reason to want to continue to write. This text is a great resource for any teacher working with students to improve their writing. The tools that Kittle provides are detailed and offer flexibility in any classroom. Many of the chapters give detailed instructions and demonstrate the process for writing. She shows strategies to use to encourage our students to write, provides example handouts and even tools to assist in our evaluation of students. The guidance and experience she provides, to new teachers especially, can help set the ground work for a writing focused classroom. I enjoyed the many strategies to use with the writers notebook and especially her emphasis on modeling the process of writing, not the product. This book also offers a variety of ideas for minilesson’s that would benefit any teacher who may be struggling for ideas in their classroom. She demonstrates a community in her classroom that is a great model for teachers. It was also encouraging to learn that even as a master teacher, she still comes across students that may not respond to her methods. Often these students are our own best teachers and help us to understand that it isn’t always about the subject we are teaching, but more about the students we are teaching.

// “We set kids free when we ask them to leap. In that journey all of the skills and curriculum directives will be accomplished, along with something much more valuable: the confidence that you can write what you never believed possible.” //

// “They share this process in class and my workshop begins to feel real: writers pursing their own purposes using a process that works for them to create something extraordinary to share with others.” //