Teaching Secondary Students to Write Effectively

Recommendation 3 

(continued)

E X A M P L E   3.5.

Teacher teams in the same grade collaborating to analyze student work

83 

During a faculty meeting, the English language arts teachers from a school review the National 

Writing Project’s Using Sources Tool. After teaching one unit on argument writing, each teacher 

selects samples of non-fiction, source-based arguments from a dozen students who represent 

the range of writing abilities in their classes. All the teachers work in pairs to evaluate each piece 

of student writing and summarize their evaluations. Toward the end of the meeting, they iden-

tify where students are doing well overall (e.g., writing debatable and defensible claims) and 

where they need to improve (e.g., connecting evidence to claims). The faculty agrees on one or 

two focus areas and collaboratively develops a teaching unit or series of instructional strategies 

to help students improve.