Week 5- Best Practices by Steve Graham, Charles A.

MacArthur, and Michael Herbert, Chapter

5; and The Writing Thief by Ruth Culham, Chapter 5

Chapter 5 of Best Practices is all about writing from a source material. It talks about the

importance of writing with source material, the benefits, how to select/reframe information from

source text, and just general information about writing from a source text (usually

informational). Chapter 5 of The Writing Thief is about argument writing. It talks about mentor

texts, opinion pieces, getting started, and the nudge to begin.

I always like reading The Writing Thief a bit better than Best Practices because of the

way they are both written. I really enjoyed this week’s chapter of The Writing Thief . Funnily

enough, argumentative pieces were my favorite to write as a student! I will definitely use the

group activity where the students get together and discuss opinions on a book/movie they all

read/saw. I love the idea of counting every time the students make a valid point. I also will

definitely use the idea of using hot topics to get students thinking and excited about writing

argumentative pieces. I think that will definitely work and be a great starter. In Best Practices I

really loved the section on taking notes. I love taking notes myself and even take pride in the

way they look! It definitely helps me remember information and learn. I loved the idea brought

up in this chapter of concept mapping. Since I love to take my notes in non-traditional ways, this

method would really work for me and I would definitely enjoy teaching my students this method.

We could even make them decorative or colorful to make things more fun.

I thought that both Best Practices and The Writing Thief had great chapters this week that

taught me a lot. I had never even learned anything about writing from source material or how to

teach it (or even what to do with it…or that it existed!). So the Best Practices chapter was really
insightful. The Writing Thief felt nostalgic for me because I love that style of writing and my

eyes were opened as to how I could teach it.