Perhaps your experience differs from mine, but a lot of personal narrative I've witnessed students write has been either too formulaic or too pointless in its wanderings. How can we help students write personal narratives that are detailed yet focused in purpose? 

If you're like me, you've read tons of student essays where you've found it hard to follow the train of thought, due to the fact that it's already derailed in the student's own mind. So the the question is, "How can we improve the flow of ideas in student writing?"

In a recent post at my Teach with Picture Books blog, I mentioned the success my sixth graders had experienced with short story writing using a selected picture book as a mentor text. The fact is, our students can learn an awful lot about improving their writing by studying how the "real writers" (that is, the published writers) get the job done. So my students never cease to be amazed when real writers break the rules of writing!

A lesson which features a focused initial activity is more likely to produce active participation, focused learning, and intended learning outcomes. The lesson openers, or anticipatory sets, that follow are designed to immediately engage the student in the learning process.

So often student writing efforts are what I call "bare bones." Student writing lacks muscle and flesh and features, due to a paucity of specific verbs, adverbs, and adjectives, as well as a lack of complex sentence structure. Students often haven't received instruction in showing versus telling.

This review of the upcoming Don't Know Much About Literature by Kenneth C. Davis and Jenny Davis (Summer 2009, Harper Collins) is somewhat biased. First of all, I was a huge fan of Kenneth C. Davis' Don't Know Much About History . I found that book to be equal parts entertainment and enlightenment.

No typo on that title. It's not "Why Students Don't Read Novels," it's "Why Students Can't Read Novels." The answer? Large blocks of uninterrupted text. 

Assessment isn't what happens after instruction; assessment is instead what guides instruction and moves it forward. Formative assessment, the ongoing "pinging" of student progress, is a key part of instruction and not an afterthought. Wiliam (2013) stated it this way: "It is only through assessment that we can discover whether the instructional activities in which we engaged our students resulted in the intended learning."