Customer Reviews

The Writing Menu: Ensuring Success for Every Student

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Ever bought a teacher resource with high hopes only to file it away on your shelf never to be used? Not this one. Melissa Forney's book "The Writing Menu: Ensuring Success for Every Student" is a "must have" for anyone who is involved in helping children learn how to write. I have used it to the point of it being dog earred. "The Writing Menu" is an excellent resource that takes a practical and straight-forward approach for teaching the writing process. The step-by-step lessons are presented in a logical and sequential way with many workable, classroom-tested suggestions and student pages. Since incorporating Mrs. Forney's ideas into my teaching, my students have shown marked improvement in their writing and are finally showing enthusiasm and confidence as they put their thoughts and ideas on paper. I strongly encourage anyone involved in teaching the writing process to purchase this book.

This book is the ONE book that every teacher needs in order to teach writing to reluctant writers and to 'emerging EA Poe' writers. It is easy to use--that is fundamental. Mrs. Forney has taken all of the work out of planning and organizing how and what to teach. It is is this resource that keeps one focused and on track to lead student's to excellence in writing.

This book should be in the hand of every teacher everywhere. Melissa Forney whets the appetite and then serves up a satisfying feast of ideas, techniques, and instructions for developing young writers. Easy to read, simple to implement, "The Writing Menu: Ensuring Success for Every Student" is more than theory. It is a book you can sink your teeth into and come away satisfied. The Writing Menu provides practical applications with an understanding of the reality that no two children are alike. As children vary, so should teaching style and method to insure each is properly nourished in the fundamentals. Melissa Forney provides a full course, from appetizers to desserts. Bon a' petite

The title of Melissa Forney's new book on teaching writing to students K-8 means what it says, The Writing Menu: Ensuring Success for Every Student. It is a menu that provides ideas and strategies for the teacher to use to help students of all abilities. It offers you ways to set up the menu program and to monitor it. Parent involvement is built into this program which includes discussion and a contract the student fills out with the help of his/her parents. Once again Melissa Forney with this book helps you as a teacher to plan a writing program that will work with students whose learning styles are different, who don't have the same interests, or ability to stay on task for the same length of time. It is also a wonderful way to help the students become responsible for the targeted writing skills for their grade level. They can see how they grow through out the school year by marking the writing skills they have mastered on their check off sheet. There is a Targeted writing skill check list for grades K-8. No matter what your teaching style or your students' learning styles, you will find something in this book to help you and your students with their writing program.

The Writing Menu: Ensuring Success for Every Student, by Melissa Forney, is an awesome resource that offers fresh ideas to increase a students love for writing. Many teachers do not receive proper training on how to teach a child to write. With this book, a teacher has a guide for making writing fun and interesting for EVERY child. Best of all, a child's desire to write increases. By using activities and examples from this book in my fourth grade class, I was able to observe a substantial difference in each child's writing abilities. Regardless of a student's writing ability or grade level, this book will help you create an amazing writing program for each young author that you are training.

Melissa Forney's love for children and teaching is evident in "The Writing Menu: Ensuring Success for Every Student". This book is a valuable tool for every teacher who wants to show students how to write and to instill in them a love for writing. By following the guidelines and ideas that Mrs. Forney has set forth, teachers will be able to make writing fun for kids. It will no longer be an assignment that they want to put off, but it will be something they will enjoy and will be eager to do. Mrs. Forney's ideas are clever and fun. Using her book in the classroom will be a treat for teachers and students and will make the writing task a very pleasant experience.

If you are looking something to encourage your intermediate and middle grade writers to be accountable, then this is the book for you. The author shows how to create very easy Writer's Menus that preserve the element of student choice during Writing Workshop, but also expands students' skills beyond "bed to bed" stories (which is what you tend to get in a typical Writer's Notebook. Melissa includes several pages of prompts that relate to many curriculum areas, so you don't have to come up with your own ideas. I introduced Writer's Menus in January, when interest in writing started to wane, and it was a real pick-me-up.

I've enjoyed other books by this author, but I didn't think this particular book had much to offer. The writing menu is a fun idea. Students choose from a variety of different, engaging prompts. I love that it features student choice, but I'm afraid the ideas are not worth the cost of the book. I would recommend instead purchasing Razzle Dazzle Writing.

This publication had many good ideas.however I am a middle school teacher and found the ideas mostly for primary and elementary age students. The concept of student choice and points awarded I thought would be very motivating to students.