The Write Genre: Classroom Activities and Mini-Lessons That Promote Writing with Clarity, Style and Flashes of Brilliance

Kim Fahner teaches English and history at Marymount Academy in Sudbury,
Ontario.

The Write Genre is a great tool for classroom teachers, as it
incorporates current pedagogical theory regarding the writing process
and practical everyday lesson plans that will succeed in the classroom.
Rog and Kropp do a fine job of highlighting key forms of writing,
including the personal memoir, the fictional narrative, the
informational report, the opinion piece, procedural writing, poetry, and
the multi-genre project. In addition, the authors include initial
chapters regarding the writing process in general, the writing workshop
concept in the classroom, and the six traits of writing.

Included at the close of each chapter is a series of reproducible
resources that will serve teachers of writing well, making ideas
presented in the book easily transferable to daily lesson structures. In
their introduction, Rog and Kropp state: “If student writing is to
purposeful and ‘authentic,’ our students must learn the structures,
formats, language and style that are most appropriate for the writing
tasks they will ultimately face. Our job is to teach them how.” This
is exactly what the authors do throughout The Write Genre. They speak to
teachers, so that educators themselves become more and more comfortable
with new techniques in explaining the writing process.

While the authors include actual writing samples from elementary
students, as a high-school teacher of English, I found this book’s
reading and writing strategies work just as well at the Grades 9–12
level of study and would unequivocally recommend it to any teacher.