My Quick Writes: For Inside Writing

Part writer's notebook and part sourcebook, My Quick Writes includes more than sixty of Donald Graves' favorite and most effective prompts for practicing and reflecting on your own writing processes. Graves and Penny Kittle walk you through how to do Quick Writes and the role they play in their own writing and teaching. Then they offer you ample personal space for doing them yourself. You'll try out new ideas, techniques, and genres, such as:

• thinking and writing from different points of view
• writing poems
• putting together personal narratives
• turning favorite or poignant letters into essays
• creating fiction.

In addition, Graves and Kittle present seventeen prompts to try with your students. With these prompts, you'll connect the experience of doing Quick Writes on your own to your students' experiences with them, while at the same time helping children prepare for timed writing tests without giving over your writing workshop to test prep.

My Quick Writes is the hands-on way to practice and reflect on your writing process as you implement the apprenticeship model for teaching writing described in Inside Writing. Even if you don't consider yourself a writer, join Donald Graves and Penny Kittle and learn more about your writing and that of your students with My Quick Writes.

Donald H. Graves was involved in writing research for decades. His books Writing: Teachers & Children at Work (Heinemann, 1983) and A Fresh Look at Writing (Heinemann, 1994) are bestsellers throughout the English-speaking world and have revolutionized the way writing is taught in schools. Don was a teacher, school principal, and language supervisor, education director, and a director of language in bilingual, ESL, and special programs. He was also the codirector of an undergraduate urban teacher preparation program and a professor of an early childhood program. He was Professor Emeritus at the University of New Hampshire. Donald H. Graves 9.11.1930 - 9.28.2010 Heinemann is deeply saddened by the news that Donald Graves has passed away. We, and the entire field, have lost a giant and one of our greatest friends. Our thoughts and prayers are with his widow, Betty, their family, and the many friends he made in his long career. We are honored to have been Don's publishing partner for more than three decades and over more than a dozen books-to have watched his research and vision become not only a classroom reality but the core of our publishing philosophy. His influence is so vast that we will meet him again and again on the pages of every book and resource we publish. His spirit pervades each of our books-in the conviction that children want to write and read if given the chance; in the flourishing of the workshop model of instruction that he pioneered; and in his abiding faith in teachers' ability to make sound instructional decisions. Don touched so many teachers' lives with his smile, his unflagging encouragement, and his generosity of spirit. We hope you will take a brief moment to remember how he touched your life. Watch a recent interview with Don » Remembering how Don touched your life » The Donald Graves memorial fund » Eight Children Teach Donald Graves Nine pencils break the surface of awareness, jutting into the air, slanted back like yellow, orange-tipped shark fins, entering chartless white, exploring hazy depths. Nine voices search a scent, suddenly lurch, lose the line, pause, pick it up again, and move from cloudy, roiling waters of new thought through warm currents of reception, straits of questioning, and tidal imbalances on to a clear, precise sea of meaning. - Tom Romano (Language Arts, 62,2 (Feb.) 1985: 142

Penny Kittle teaches freshman composition at Plymouth State University in New Hampshire. She was a teacher and literacy coach in public schools for 34 years, 21 of those spent at Kennett High School in North Conway. She is the co-author of 180 Days with Kelly Gallagher, and is the author of Book Love, and Write Beside Them, which won the James Britton award. She also co-authored two books with her mentor, Don Graves, and co-edited (with Tom Newkirk) a collection of Graves' work, Children Want to Write. She is the president of the Book Love Foundation and was given the Exemplary Leader Award from NCTE's Conference on English Leadership. In the summer Penny teaches graduate students at the University of New Hampshire Literacy Institutes. Throughout the year, she travels across the U.S. and Canada (and once in awhile quite a bit farther) speaking to teachers about empowering students through independence in literacy. She believes in curiosity, engagement, and deep thinking in schools for both students and their teachers. Penny stands on the shoulders of her mentors, the Dons (Murray & Graves), and the Toms (Newkirk & Romano), in her belief that intentional teaching in a reading and writing workshop brings the greatest student investment and learning in a classroom. Learn more about Penny Kittle on her websites, pennykittle.net and booklovefoundation.org, or follow her on twitter. Penny's students make a statement about how student choice in reading has affected them.