Chapter 4 - Raise Your Expectations

Highlights from Chapter 4

Raised expectations mean that students learn what it means to explore writing in depth. p. 54

Competence leads to confidence, which leads to wanting to write. p. 54

It is well documented that minority students as a group experience a curriculum of lowered expectations and less rigor. p. 54

Disadvantaged students just need more instruction: more demonstrations, more shared experiences, and more guided practice in order to become successful independent learners. p. 56

Students achieve faster, more easily and on a higher level when they find the lessons and materials interesting, relevant and challenging. p. 56

Worksheets foster mediocrity. p. 57

Establish school wide expectations for quality. p. 59

If you're reading everything your students write, they're not writing enough. p.65

If we expect it, explain why it is important, demonstrate how to achieve it, and provide time for it, students almost always meet our expectations. p. 68

Students will only feel the "need" to learn something if they see the task as significant. p. 70

Shared demonstration is underused as a powerful teaching context for students of all grades. p. 71

Guided writing is not parallel to guided reading. p. 72

Just as it is necessary to do a great deal of independent reading to become s competent reader, so too is it with writing. p.73

If they are to become excellent writers they have to spend most of a writing lesson composing continuous text, not participating in lessons and activities about writing. p.75

We will rely on shared experiences (such as shared writing) only if we value their worth. Otherwise, we fill our classroom time with other activities. p. 76

Until the student thinks of himself as a writer, no real improvement is possible. p. 80

We can only reach a child when that child senses our genuine caring, respect, and belief in his abilities. p. 81

Listen with your heart as well as your mind, and you will know what to say and do. p. 81

What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail? p. 82