Teaching Phonics and Word Study in the Intermediate Grades: A Complete SourceBook (Scholastic Teaching Strategies) Book

Bauer is a professor at William & Mary, which is a rigorous school (my little brother went there!), but she notes that increasing numbers of her students are abysmal writers. In looking into why, Bauer unpacks the component skills required for good writing, and considers the best way to build those pieces in a way that will not frustrate the child. She notes that prematurely asking kids to combine handwriting, sentence structure, analysis, and composition organization is not a good idea, because except in the case of the (few) naturally gifted writers out there, this approach will only create kids who hate writing, or kids who think they know how to write but who are actually terrible at it or have no sense of style.

Rather, Bauer's study led her to conclude that the classical and Charlotte Mason approaches of emphasizing narration, dictation, and copywork in the early elementary years, then moving into deep understanding of sentence composition and connecting style and thought in compositions in upper elementary and middle school, and finally working on building style in high school work best.

{Read my full review here}