Ch. 11 Build on Best Practice and Research

I feel that it is important for an entire building to make a commitment to improve the teaching of writing. I think our school could be successful at putting this into action. Reggie states that it takes minimum of three years to make a real change and five years to make a big impact. I think for so long we've wanted some kind of "writing program" because we as teachers felt overwhelmed and confused about how to organize and teach writing. I agree that teaching the skills in isolation is not the approach that we should take and after reading this book, I feel more confident about teaching writing, but I have to admit that it still feels somewhat sporatic for my comfort. I have have hopes though as I have tried to implement various ideas and concepts from this book and will continue to improve and value the teaching of writing.