Interested in teaching fiction and non-fiction writing in English? Check out these new additions to the OISE Library Curriculum Resources collection!

Empowering young writers: The “writers matter” approach – Deborah S. Yost, Robert Vogel, and Kimberly E. Lewinski

Help students find their voice through writing! This book was designed to integrate students’ personal expression and perspectives into existing English curricula. The “writers matter” program focuses on developing students’ critical writing skills through self-empowerment, free expression, and using personal experience as writing inspiration. By writing and sharing these stories, students are able to use writing as an emotional outlet, and connect with their peers in a way that inspires tolerance and appreciation for diversity. This book is a great guide for elementary, middle, and early high school English teachers who want to focus on critical thinking and social development both in and outside the classroom.

Write out of the classroom: How to use the “real” world to inspire and create amazing writing – Colin Macfarlane.

This guide provides teachers and creative writing tutors with exciting ways to use real world settings that are outside of the classroom as writing motivation and inspiration. Based on his extensive experience in developing and leading out-of-classroom intelligent observation and writing workshops, Colin Macfarlane examines how evocative spaces beyond the classroom walls can generate participant involvement and effective learning. With an emphasis on poetry writing, this book provides advice on how to choose writing locations, how to lead “locational brainstorming” (Macfarlane, 2014 p. 42) with students, and how to teach effective observation outside the classroom.

Nonfiction writing power: Teaching information writing with intent and purpose – Adrienne Gear

In this book, Adrienne Gear helps teachers develop a writing program that focuses on different forms of non-fiction, while utilizing modern platforms of non-fiction typically found outside the classroom, like tweets, texts, and blogs. Through the development of such programs, students will learn about the six distinct forms of nonfiction writing styles (the “writing powers”) throughout the grades: descriptive writing, instructional writing, persuasive writing, comparison writing, explanation writing, and nonfiction narrative writing. Based on these writing forms, this book includes scripted sequential lessons (from Kindergarten to Grade 8), samples of student work, assessment rubrics, and a list of suggested anchor books.

The power of scriptwriting!: Teaching essential writing skills through podcasts, graphic novels, movies, and more – Peter Gutiérrez

If you are interested in how scriptwriting can be incorporated into existing writing curricula, this is the book for you. In this guide, Peter Gutiérrez provides curricular connections to, and lessons and projects for, scriptwriting that will help teachers to motivate students and support literacy skills across the disciplines. This book can help teachers motivate students to write by showing them how scriptwriting can be an integral step in the creation of media that they love – like podcasts, graphic novels, and movies. Each chapter covers a different medium and the required writing skills to inspire all students, including English learners and below-level students.

These and other new books are available on the New Acquisitions shelf on the ground floor of the library.