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To all teachers of writing, grades 9-12:
There are no shortcuts to raising student writing achievement within your classrooms.
How do we raise student writing achievement levels? How do we help students break through the barriers imposed by their limited entry-level language skills? How do we develop student enthusiasm for learning to write with clarity, precision and expressive power?
Daily oral language mini-lessons will not do it. Journal writing will not do it. Exploring writing genres, or teaching the five part essay will not do it. Neither will writing across the curriculum fulfill this expectation.
Assigning more writing is not the same as teaching students to become better writers. The study of rubrics and/or group-editing tasks do not teach students how to write more varied and more precise sentences. Before students can write to learn, they must first learn to write.
What students need is a systematic, single-focus writing curriculum that develops sentence fluency and descriptive power at the same time that it creates enthusiasm for word choice and clarity of expression.
Students need a sequence of writing activities that meets them where they are...and then lifts them upward to higher word choice and sentence construction skills.
Huge breakthroughs in student writing achievement require teachers to transform student awareness of language possibilities, and to equip them with the tools they need to move beyond self-limiting, entry-level language patterns.
These breakthroughs can best be achieved by a writing program that is lively, engaging, and that combines systematic, intensive skill development with short, high interest assignments that are designed for successful closure and quick turnaround. A program where students put in the effort, master a technique, and then instantly see their sentence construction skills grow.
The Topschools Writing Curriculum is the product of over thirty years of teaching reading, writing and thinking at the secondary level. My constant goal: building student enthusiasm for thinking about, and valuing written expression. Standardized test score results for my student writers are available here.
This is what high energy English classrooms should be about:
Student enthusiasm for exploring the beauty and precision of language...
Student "ah-ha!" moments as they learn to create increasingly complex and effective sentence patterns...
Strengthening student ability to generate richer, more varied sentences that naturally compel writers to provide higher levels of evidence and supporting detail...
...And the satisfaction of seeing one's writing skills grow on a daily basis.
Why shouldn't a writing class be the most exciting class in the entire school?
Imagine a selection of sentences written by your 9th-12th graders as part of a short (two paragraph) creative writing assignment entitled "Still Life: An Old Work Shoe":
•"...A slothful bootlace curls, loops and winds dronishly through the rusty, metal holes, creating a clustered, knotted look..."
•"...Its worn, brass eyelets rusting, the dreary shoe tugs toothlessly at a besmirched, spurious lace..."
•"...Descending and submerging, a criss-cross patterned sole sinks into the damp, boggy soil..."
•"...A seam, ravelling and slipping, arches around the worn and dusty surface...a mucky, sweat-blemished shoe tongue cowers between two mountains of uplifting leather..."
•"...A silver, dulled hook, its metal oxidizing, holds out its ends to clasp on to ancient, threadbare laces..."
These sentences were crafted by my own regular English class students (grades 9-12) who were half-way through a 9-36 week curriculum that developed voice and fluency at the same time that it developed sentence construction skills.
As "regular" (not HONORS) students, they were as reluctant to write and as under-skilled as the majority of our public school students are nowadays.
Sentences like these are emblematic of a dramatically heightened student awareness of the precision and descriptive power of language. And this awareness and skill can be developed in ALL your students; even those who come to class with the most elementary writing skills.
Using the same step-by-step, mastery learning approach that I have used with over 5,000 students, you will guide your classes through a seamless series of concrete, teachable lessons that lead to sentence construction proficiency. No textbooks are required; no handouts are distributed.
Regardless of background or preparation, teachers now have the opportunity to guide students beyond the limited entry level language patterns that they brought with them when they entered the classroom. I invite all teachers of writing--whether novices or experts--to join me on this instructional journey.
Topschools Writing Curriculum:
A 9-36 week writing curriculum that develops high performance writing, reading and thinking skills for all student participants, grades 9-12. The curriculum comes to you as a teacher manual on a CD which you can load onto your hard drive and print out as necessary.
Impact for Teachers:
Dramatically upgrade your skills as a teacher of writing. Topschools Writing Curriculum guides teachers & students step-by-step through an exciting sequence of short, high interest writing activities that develop voice, fluency, analytical power and sentence construction skills. The curriculum begins with simple concepts and moves both teacher and students forward to increasingly sophisticated sentence proficiencies. Because it uses a mastery learning approach, skills are broken into concrete, specific tasks that are easily demonstrated by students before they move to next steps.
Activities are focused, have clear targets, and provide for frequent closure and student demonstration.
Oral sharing of student work is a built into the curriculum by design. Such sharing develops confidence, pride in new learning, and jump starts student conversation about what quality writing looks like. Lessons are designed to be taught effectively, whether the teacher is a veteran or a newcomer to composition and sentence construction.
I provide one year of unlimited email support in order to guarantee teacher success. Whenever a teacher has questions about the curriculum, about instructional strategies, about next steps, please write and I will respond within 24 hours or less. I also welcome samples of student work so that together we can assess their progress. This curriculum addresses and challenges the full spectrum of student abilities--from those below grade level to those in Honors or Advanced Placement courses.
Impact for Students:
Weak word choice and sentence construction skills can impose limits on the depth and quality of student thinking. In this curriculum, students learn to design, write and read sentences that force higher order language, translation and thinking skills. Skills like these help students succeed on standardized tests that measure student thinking, writing and reading.
Overview of Topschools Writing Program:
Q: How do students learn?
A: Students learn by receiving clear instructions about what is expected, clear
examples of what is expected, and numerous in-class opportunities to
practice and to share their mastery of learning targets.
Q: How do students internalize this learning?
A: Repetition and reinforcement are the keys: Clear tactics for sentence
construction are presented, and students are obligated to reproduce and
share these during class in short, targeted, descriptive writing assignments.
Q: How can students buy into this curriculum and its activities?
A: Short, very specific, high interest descriptive writing activities create clear
targets, and provide quick closure, success and reinforcement.
Students can clearly see their writing skills grow on a daily basis.
Opportunities for group collaboration create shared discovery and
enthusiasm for learning in the classroom.
Q: Is this another grammar program? I already have a room full of grammar texts.
A: We all do. And we have all tried to use them, or their workbook derivatives at one time or another in order to teach writing skills. The Topschools program has a strong grammatical and sentence construction emphasis, absolutely. Because it is about the English language and its use, the contents of the program, when read as a list of topics, look very much like the contents of a grammar book: verbals, appositives, introductory participial phrases and so on.
But here the similarity ends. The Topschools Writing Curriculum is a method; a way of teaching, a way of practicing, a way of engaging students, and a way of sequencing specific learning activities so that each builds upon what has come before as students journey toward mastery. This mastery learning approach is what has been missing from our instructional practice; and this absence has made writing instruction such a dreary task for so many--especially for students.
Q: Can I teach my students these effective writing skills in fewer than 9 weeks? I am feeling pressure from my Principal to create results--and soon!
A: The curriculum is set up to provide a systematic, cumulative learning sequence that leads to student writing mastery. My recommendation for first time users is to devote a minimum of thirty minutes per day to the curriculum, and to set a 12-18 week time frame for completion. Once a teacher has taught the full curriculum, he/she may choose, in future years, to implement selected lessons in order to achieve dramatic, short-term writing results.
Q: Does this curriculum require any specialized grammatical knowledge on the part of the teacher?
A: Topschools Writing Curriculum is designed to coach both students AND teachers toward writing skill development. A teacher who knows little about sentence structure can teach this program very effectively by staying several lessons ahead of his/her students.
Because any great curriculum requires teacher participation, each teacher must become an active participant in the discoveries that students make during class; and each teacher must play a collaborative role in guiding, developing and arbitrating student decisions about what good writing looks like. The one-year's free email support provides personal guidance for teachers who feel they are on shaky ground when it comes to teaching word choice and sentence structure. Q: What does "one year email support" mean for me as a teacher?
A: I am committed to your success as an educator. Purchasers of this program have one year unlimited email support. I will collegially respond to your questions about the curriculum, about sentence structure, about grammar, and about instructional strategies within 24 hours of receipt of your query. Brainstorm and troubleshooting questions are very welcome. Samples of your students' writing are also welcome if you would like input as to how they are doing--or whether they are doing it right. Your success as a teacher of writing is very important to me.
Topschools Writing is Not A Traditional Approach:
•Emphasis on in-class laboratory learning
•Emphasis on interaction, frequent closure, frequent feedback/formative
assessment
•De-emphasis on daily grading and collection of papers. Most student work is done in class and students know
instantly how well they have met the goals
•Emphasis on application of new learning NOW
•Emphasis on starting with simple concepts and moving to highly challenging
complexity
•Emphasis on short sentence and multiple sentence assignments that target
skills and provide quick turnaround and classroom critique
•Emphasis on “getting it," “demonstrating it” and “using it”
•Emphasis on observation & discovery
•Opportunities for group collaboration, but always an emphasis on individual
products and accountability
•Required classroom materials: One good quality thesaurus for each student. One dictionary per two students.
Sample Mastery Targets for Voice, Fluency and Precision
•Verbs and verbals applied
•Prepositional phrases & agreement issues
•Powerful word cache development
•Troubleshooting six forms of redundancy
•Pathetic fallacy for voice
•Deploying parts of speech for voice and precision
•Powerful introductory & non-essential participial phrases—applied
•Powerful appositives applied
•Verb tense mastery—applied
•Introductory adverb clauses applied for richness & complexity
•Non essential subordinate clauses applied
•Sentence marking activities: keep it simple
•Comma rules applied based on word function and
sentence structure
•Simple, compound & complex sentences—applied and constructed
"I would definitely recommend it to another teacher!!! I believe it incorporates the essential elements for teaching writing which are giving the students the framework for evaluating their own work, and then it is designed to make them practice what they learn. I especially like how it is designed to make them think about writing in a whole new way. 'Evocative' is our new mantra."
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"What I liked about this curriculum was it created a systematic, organized approach to writing. I liked how the writing was broken down into specific building blocks that we could practice together."
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"At the very beginning of the school year I took one day and had the students write two pages about anything they wanted. I saved these papers and pulled them out after completing the 'shoe' assignment. I asked them to evaluate their own paper and come up with at least eight problems...I was VERY EXCITED as I listened to the students evaluate their own work. They were all disgusted and described their writing as 'kindergarten.' Several students noticed right off that they hadn't used a single adjective or adverb! Other students noticed redundancy in their word choices and sentence structure...So when I think about specific gains that my students have made, the biggest stride is that they are starting to evaluate their own work and they have a framework for evaluating their work."
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"[My students] have a new awareness of what makes an interesting sentence...I think it is a huge benefit that I can say to the students, 'use a past participle in this sentence' and they know what I mean. it is also helpful that I can point out to them, when they have written a failed 'its variation', "where is your subject?" Where is your verb, and they can go back and study the sentence and fix the problem."
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"Hi Bruce, thought I would check in again. We just finished up the first comma rules. I really enjoyed teaching these because the kids were able to write some interesting sentences. I had them write three sentences, all on the same topic, one with an IPP, an NEPP, and an 'its variation.' We spent a whole day on these, then I had the students present them orally, then I graded them, handed them back and had the students improve them. I was so pleased to see the improvement through the whole process. I think the students actually enjoyed the process as well because they were 'lighting' up when I talked with them individually about tone, consistency between word choices, adding additional adverbs and adjectives for interest, etc. It was really fun."
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"I wish I had time to compose a more detailed email concerning my use of the course. I've followed it carefully and learned a great deal. I'm currently grading their Messy Square Foot assignments and previously, students used a vintage backpack for the old boot assignment. Recently we took a short break and used what we've learned to redo a bulletin board in my room to create a Creative Writing center. Students interviewed each other and created a microbiography, a single sentence which followed all the "rules" we've learned so far, contained an Items in a Series, an IPP or NEPP, an appositive and revealed the most salient characteristics of the classmate they interviewed. Each student then brought in a picture of themselves "in action" and we read our microbiographies aloud in class and then mounted them on nice card stock and posted them on the creative writing bulletin board with their pictures. It's quite nice. I'll have to send you an example or two and a picture of the finished bulletin board."
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Topschools 9-36 week Writing Curriculum CD: Teacher guide to a seamless series of learning activities that develop proficiency in sentence construction and language use. (Please enable cookies to use Paypal)
Single Teacher License & CD w/ one year unlimited email support: $199
School Site License & CD w/ one year unlimited email support: $279
Note: A single-teacher license is for the exclusive use of one teacher only. The teacher owns the curriculum, and may take it to any future teaching position. A site license is for the exclusive use of all teachers within a department or building. The curriculum may not be transferred to other programs or departments in other schools.
30 Day Return Policy: If the curriculum is in any way defective or not as described on this web page, I will gladly issue a refund through Paypal. Please read the description of the curriculum and its aims carefully. Every great curriculum requires teacher participation. Teachers who purchase this curriculum are expected to become active participants in the discoveries that students make during class; and each teacher is also expected to play a collaborative role in guiding, developing and arbitrating student decisions about what good writing looks like. The one-year's free email support is there for any question you might have, whether it is about implementation of a lesson or a technical question about sentence construction. Because of the incremental nature of this curriculum, teachers who have little experience in teaching sentence structure become experts right alongside their students--and the email support is there as a backup for you. This program produces terrific results, and it requires commitment, effort and energy from both students and teachers.
*This personal note from Bellevue's superintendent followed a classroom visitation, 9/10/96. Bellevue International School and Lake Washington International Community School (both developed by Bruce Saari & colleagues) have been consistently ranked by Newsweek & USA Today in the top tier of schools nationwide. The test scores section of this website covers Bellevue International's achievement history all the way back to 1993.
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