PAcree

Craft Lessons (pages 79-92) continues with examples of what to teach and how to teach writing to the upper elementary student. The authors have focused on topics which will create improved writing by students. Subjects such as finding a focus, manipulating time in a story, "pruning", selecting a lead, using descriptions, creating interesting characters and making them come alive, using recurring lines, and writing "low on the food chain" are suggested as necessary topics which will teach students to engage readers. The authors suggest that teaching these topics requires a great deal of interaction with good literature and models of writing created by the teacher. Students need to experience good and poor writing to compare and revise. The authors link writing heavily with reading and give examples of literature to use to cover writing topics.

The list of topics covered by the authors are the very things that we wish our students would use in their writing. For example, frequently, students have a difficult time finding a focus  and creating the details that support that focus.  Pruning writing to get rid of any unnecessary parts could be part of the revision process. Teaching students to write "low on the food chain" helps them to make their writings detail specific and more appealing to readers (described by the authors as the bottom feeders).