Drills in isolation don't carry over. Many teachers present short grammar or vocabulary lessons at the beginning of each class, she notes. Pamela Morgan, a teacher-consultant with the Maryland Writing Project, used to teach from a grammar book, but she found that very little of her lessons transferred to students' writing. Now she tailors her instruction so that students can apply new skills immediately in their writing. Joan Cone also lets student papers guide her teaching.
All kids benefit from that corrective stuff.
Cone also takes a proactive approach by assigning the use of sophisticated punctuation. Or she might ask students to include sentences of one, four, and seven words. An Authentic Audience One good way to motivate students to refine their writing, experts say, is to have them write for real purposes and authentic audiences. That solves a lot of problems with motivation. When students write for a real audience, they keenly want their writing to be good, he says, and they develop their own critical standards.