Mark's Text Terminal

If you are a relatively regular reader of this blog, then you know that I’ve been talking about developing materials to use with Judith C. Hochman and Natalie Wexler’s framework for writing instruction, The Writing Revolution (San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 2017). Last summer (2024) and into this fall (2025), I finally finished developing the templates and other planning documents for units and lesson using The Writing Revolution as their basis.

As I hope this blog shows, I not only spend a lot of time thinking about good writing and how to teach it, but also, I hope, producing some middling quality prose to drive this blog. I have also, over the years (35 of them as a teacher in various capacities) read a plethora of grammar and style manuals for my own edification, but also to help me plan writing instruction.

As far as scripted curricula go, I expect this blog demonstrates abundantly my skepticism towards them and their authors. The Writing Revolution is different for a couple of reasons: it actually calls upon students to understand certain concepts (i.e. subordinating conjunctions to form complex sentences, etc.) in grammar while applying those concepts in the service of composing good prose.

The Writing Revolution also calls upon students to practice, practice, practice writing. Its scope and sequence contains a fair amount of repetition. I know it’s fashionable to call such work “drill and kill,” but it’s also facile and, I would argue, ignorant. There are certain things in this world–say breathing and masturbation–that one need not practice at. But writing? Writers write. And writing well, like playing a musical instrument or perfecting a curve ball, takes practice. Hence my enthusiasm for The Writing Revolution.

For the next five weeks (actually seven, as there will be no Weekly Texts on December 19 or 26th in observance of the holidays), I’ll post all the templates I created based on the framework of The Writing Revolution. 

Let’s begin with three of my own creation, to with, this unit plan template, this lesson plan template, and this worksheet template.

And that is it for this week. Stay tuned, as there is plenty more to come.

If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.