I don't believe "sit and get" type professional development sessions are effective; research shows that less than 10% of what one learns during that type of lecture-based workshop ever makes its way back to the actual classroom. I strive to make my workshops more about "make and take," and one of the most important things we make during our time together is personal goals. Robert Marzano's research convinced me years ago of the importance of having learners set personal goals as they learn to take responsibility for their own learning. My students set goals daily in my writing classroom, and my teacher-participants set goals right at the beginning of my workshop--and then throughout the session!

Long before my Seven Elements workshop begins, I ask my participants to fill out this pre-assessment, which provides me with some data on how well participants are already incorporating the seven strategies we'll be working with, and to what degree. This information helps me tailor my workshop for my specific audience, which is an element of the differentiated philosophy that I share throughout my workshop. I can't tell you how many famous experts I've seen present the exact same workshop on more than one occasion. When the audience changes, shouldn't the materials? I wish more professional development providers tailored their workshops for their differing audiences.

One of the first activities we do when we're all seated together in the same room is to discuss initial impressions and biases we have of the Seven Elements the workshop will be focusing on. We discuss both what we know and what we think we know in small, safe groups, eventually circling numbers from the cover of my workshop packet based on past experiences and contextual knowledge. This sets the stage for us to be able to create individualized goals for the workshop and beyond.

I need to stress something about my workshop before you consider hiring me over someone who can provide a shorter workshop than the two days I require for mine. Here it is: Improving one's ability to teach writing to all students is a long-term professional development goal; sticking with it requires diligence, and it requires having a more specific goal than "I want to improve writing." The very first thing we do in our workshop is overview my "seven elements of a differentiated writing lesson," and then work to set a manageable goal for each participant. Throughout the workshop as we learn more, participants are invited to shift or revise the goals they have set, but having that individualized goal is a very important piece of the training. The goals are prompted with the following statement and question: "Trying to get better at all seven elements at once doesn't work; focusing on two or three for a year of study does work. Which two or three of the seven elements makes the most sense to you right now as you prepare to be a better writing teacher next year?"

Click here to access the PowerPoint I use during the goal-setting portion of my workshop. The graphs near the end of the PowerPoint show how much progress a school can make with all seven elements in one short year when they diligently work on them. I particularly like how the graphs show growth, but there is clearly room for additional growth. If a school worked diligently on the seven elements as a long-term goal --like three years, as I push for--teachers would be integrating all the strategies at the 4.5 or 5-level, which is what I learned to do when I was becoming the best writing teacher I could be.

On a personal note, I have been using my workshop's goal-setting frame to guide my own professional growth for three years now. I find when I commit to really studying and developing new techniques around two or three elements each year, it's easy to stay focused on them, and I am always amazed how much smarter I became when that year is through. The trick is you have to be self-motivated to keep coming back to study them (which I am), or you have to have a study team in place to encourage you (which this workshop sets up for the teacher participants).

This first element, I believe, is at the true heart of improving writing instruction. In ninety-five percent of classrooms, I hear writing assigned as a product: essays, reports, acrostic poems, constructed responses, hamburger paragraphs, friendly letters, diamante poems, etc. The problem with focusing students on a product--instead of the writing process--is that the majority of the instructional time is spent teaching students to adhere to a formula. Adhering to someone else's formula teaches the application level of Blooms at best; the goal of writing instruction absolutely should be the helping students practice the three Bloom's levels above apply: analyze, evaluate, and create. When we focus our writing instruction on the writing process and the skills one develops through said process, we have the opportunity to develop critical thinkers and writers, not simply students who can produce a formulaic application of writing.

Now don't misquote me here ! I absolutely believe students do need to learn to write some formulaic products as part of the schooling process. The problem is too many teachers never go beyond assigning products; that's clearly where their instructional abilities end. I understand why this is because college did not prepare me for anything more than assigning formulaic products either. I was lucky to have the opportunity to work alongside several teachers who were running writer's workshops in their classrooms, and the work their students did went so far beyond teaching formula. They focused their lessons more on the writing process and the skills (traits) writers can develop during the process.

The most important thing one needs to work on if they're focused on Element 1 in my workshop: developing a deeper understanding of the skills writers actually use. I depend on the language of the six writing traits for my classroom vocabulary when working on this element. If you're not a trait teacher, that's fine, but you need to find a list of writing skills that you can work with.

Here's my first challenge for teachers working on this element: Can you explain the difference between all six traits? If you can, then you should be able to--here's my second challenge--list six or seven different skills a writer might work on if he/she was focused on each trait. That's right...six or seven. If you say, "We're going to work on the organization trait this month?" I say, "Perfect! Which six or seven organization skills will they be working on?" Most teachers--even working in small groups--can only name two or three different skills they associate with each trait. That has to change, if you're really going to improve your ability to create skill-based lessons; you have to know the skills, and you have to be able to spot them in published writing you're reading with your students.

Here are seven skills I can easily list for the organization trait. Organization is: 1) using a strong lead or hook, 2) using a variety of transition words correctly, 3) paragraphing correctly, 4) pacing the writing, 5) sequencing events/ideas logically, 6) concluding the writing in a satisfying way, 7) titling the writing interestingly and so that the title stands for the whole idea. Over the years, I have developed or found and adapted mini-lessons that have students practice these skills during my "Organization Month."

Because I have this list memorized, I am more apt to spot these skills in the reading my kids and I are working on. With a skill in mind and the ability to find that skill in what we're reading, I am on my way to be able design a lesson that has students practice the skills of organization. Ultimately, my students my create a product that I can assess, but the heart of my instruction is focused on teaching them to recognize and use these skills.

The best writing lessons, in my opinion, focus right up front on the skill(s) the lesson focuses on. During my "Seven Elements of a Differentiated Writing Lesson," the lesson we explore as a great example of a skill-focused lesson is the Floating Down the River lesson at WritingFix, which is inspired by the mentor text Daisy Comes Home by Jan Brett.

Now, let's talk differentiation: When you design a lesson that's differentiated, you choose one skill that you expect all students to be working on and improving their ability to critically think about as they take a piece of writing through the process. Some of your students may require more one-on-one time as they practice the skill, or they may need tools that help scaffold their learning more. At the same time, you will have students who can handle multiple skills at the same time, and it's the wise teacher who has chosen and prepared for additional skills for challenging the average and above-average writers in the class. Look again at the first page of the Floating Down a River lesson; the skills are identified as the focus skill and the support skill, which is very smart lesson planning.

I am so amazed how much I continue to learn about mentor texts twenty years into my career. One nice thing about having my own Seven Elements Framework for Professional Development memorized, is that I can use it myself, setting professional and personal goals every September for my own learning. And I do. Ask me anytime you see me, "What elements are you working on this school year, Corbett Harrison?" and I'll list two or three for you without hesitating. Don't be surprised if one of those elements is mentor texts! I'd like to pretend I know everything there is to know about them already, but I don't; I've proved that time and time again by spending another year focused on them. I've already been caught bragging about a new mentor text project I'm working on in the 2011-12 school year.

In 2010, I launched a Mentor Text Resource Page here at my website, because this topic has become such a big piece of learning to me. It deserved its own webpage. Feel free to visit it by clicking here so you may learn more about this element, which a lot of teachers commit to working on after my 7 Elements Workshop. I've discovered you have to work on mentor texts with another of the seven elements though; mentor texts alone are too easy.

I'll cite my favorite mentor text-inspired lesson here, which I show off during the 7 Elements Workshop. It's my Start with What Isn't There lesson, and its inspired by the two-page introduction to Stephen Kramer's non-fiction picture book, Caves; I talk about it more lower on this page with Element 5: student models. Years after creating and posting this lesson, I still believe it to be the best skill-based lesson I've ever created. Why? Because I spotted a great voice-inspired writing skill in a mentor text, and I designed a skill-based lesson that had students practice that skill themselves. Learning the writing process this way from me, my students rarely find anything but pleasure in this assignment. In my workshop, I challenge teachers to create lessons that they love to teach as much as I love to teach this one!

Here are three other mentor text lessons I make reference to in my 7 Elements of a Differentiated Writing Lesson workshop. Each lesson makes a very different use of the mentor text it cites.

An IDEA mentor text lesson:	A STRUCTURE mentor text lesson:	A CRAFT mentor text lesson:
inspiration from a whole picture book, Diary of a Worm by Doreen Cronin My lesson based on this book's idea: Unlikely Diary Keepers Why it's an idea mentor text: I love this little book. It presents the idea "What if animals could keep daily journals or diaries?" The worm who writes down his daily thoughts not only presents real facts about worms and their importance to the environment but it also mixes in a great use of humor. Asking students to create daily journals from the perspective of other animals or even inanimate objects is a great way to borrow this book's idea. Great for fun and great for research!	inspiration from a single paragraph, A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens My lesson based on this book's idea: Antonyms and Comma Splices Why it's a structure mentor text: Now don't dismiss this lesson because you don't teach this book, or because you didn't enjoy it in high school or college! I wasn't fond of this book either, but this is truly one of my favorite lessons. It focuses only on the famous introduction: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, etc," which is an interesting structure that students can borrow from to write about other topics, be they fiction or non-fiction. My lesson goes further; it teaches students to fix the comma splices that Dickens used recklessly!	inspiration from a single chapter, Marshfield Dreams by Ralph Fletcher My lesson based on this book's structure: Bizarre Foods & Mr. Fletcher Why it's a craft mentor text: During a narrative writing unit, I honestly don't believe you can find a better mentor text, especially because it comes with a companion book--Fletcher's How to Write Your Life Story--that explains the author's craft techniques and writing process in his own words. This particular lesson is based on Marshfield's chapter called Eating the World, and it challenges students to analyze the author's word choice & voice skills: specifically his use of verbs, subtle alliteration, and dialogue.

Here's a generalization that's almost 100% true: Every time I've offered my 7 Elements workshop and sent out the pre-assessment, most teachers rank themselves very high in their self-perceived ability to use graphic organizers well during writing instruction. Every time this happens, I purposely begin the workshop by showing the participants some amazing, skill-based graphic organizers created by teachers I've worked with at lesson-design workshops. I then say, "Now according to your pre-assessments, graphic organizers was the topic you wanted me to spend the least amount of time on during this workshop." Every time...Every time, mind you, someone says, "Can we change our mind about that before you go on?"

I always bring plenty of graphic organizer information, even when the pre-assessments tell me otherwise. When you start studying what skill-based writing instruction (Element #1) looks like, your whole concept of graphic organizers changes. No longer is a cluster (a circle in the middle with six circles coming off of it) even close to enough to helping our students succeed with writing skills.

If you want to hear my take on graphic organizers in detail, you're going to have to hire me to come to present to you. If you can't do that, then I'll throw you a challenge that was thrown once at me, and completing the challenge helped me become a smarter designer of graphic organizers. The challenge came in two parts: 1) learn how to use tables and text boxes in Microsoft Word; 2) for practice, design a graphic organizer that would help students be successfully with the following trait-based skills:

1. Using subtle alliteration to strengthen descriptions (word choice + idea development)
2. Putting researched ideas into one's own words (idea development + voice)
3. Using a variety of sentence lengths in drafting and revision (sentence fluency)
4. Teaching students to equally pace the smaller parts of a story/essay (organization)

At right, you can access a two-page graphic organizer that teaches students--with very explicit instructions--how to organize ideas so that they will be able to pace their stories (# 4 from above). Note the use of Microsoft Word tables. Note the explicit, skill-based language around the boxes.

When I design a new lesson anymore, the first thing I ask myself is, "What writing skill(s) do I want them to learn to use in their writing?" The second thing I ask myself is, "What would a graphic organizer look like that helped them practice that skill before they drafted their stories/essays?"

I am not going to say much about student choice here except that it's a cornerstone of differentiating instruction. Now there's free choice in the real world, which we adults practice regularly, but in the classroom we have to call it choice within parameters or the illusion of choice. Whether it's true choice or an illusion, when students feel they have some control over certain elements of your assignments, they are so much more likely to be invested in the learning.

When teaching writing, I have taught myself to always work some element of choice into the process for my students because I absolutely see the value of them being more dedicated to the writing I am asking them to do. In a world with too much standardized testing, it's hard for my administrator to share my enthusiasm for my helping my students like what they're writing, but I see the difference. I came from classrooms where many of my teachers gave me little choice, and very few reasons to like what I wrote for their classes; their book reports and five-paragraph essay assignments did not give me confidence when it came time for the state writing test. It was Mr. Borilla's regular creative writing block (fourth grade), Mrs. Pearson's list of social studies writing options (8th grade), and Mrs. Manning's build-your-own-portfolio program (9th grade) that gave me confidence as a writer.

What I see in my own students' eyes--because we operate in an environment of choice--is both confidence and the desire to do more writing when I suggest that's what we work on. Student choice improves the learning environment I am building--simple as that.

Here's an example of how choice can make you want to learn and to write. Let's say we're studying the three elements of plot, and I want them to create story-ideas in their notebooks or journals inspired by plot but fueled by their own choices. In their notebooks, they will need to write four different summaries for stories with plot elements, then on writer's workshop day, they will be invited to take their best summary and develop it into a full-fledged story. To inspire even more choice in this process, I have the following interactive plot element generator (which can be replicated with three coffee cans and index cards) to help my students feel in control of their options:

Pressing those buttons is fun...admit it! Now...there is no choice in that fact that a) all students are learning about the three plot elements, b) summarizing in writer's notebooks, and c) developing a longer story. But the fact that they can choose their own elements to summarize fuels their willingness to learn and write.

I believe in student choice. I know it works. In my 7 Elements Workshop, we explore ways to bring more choice to our writing lessons. The above example is but one idea we explore.

Teacher modeling of writing is missing in most of the classrooms I observe. I'm out to personally change that. I learned the amazing power of sharing your own writing process with students many years ago, and I haven't looked back since.

In the fall of 1996, I returned to my classroom a changed teacher. I had a brand new car with both lots of horsepower and an electric sunroof--a personal dream fulfilled! I had been given two really cool new elective classes by my department head: mythology and poetry. And most importantly, I had a new outlook. I had spent five weeks that summer enrolled in an institute sponsored by the Northern Nevada Writing Project, and it had changed everything I knew about teaching students to write. For the first time ever, I wanted to teach writing. The institute had given me the motivation and several new "tricks," shared with me by seasoned teachers.

The most important trick learned was this: be a writer too. During my first five years of teaching, I had assigned a lot of writing but never once had I written something I intended to show my students.

I have to tell you it was amazingly hard, but I did it. I wrote my first something to show them, and it almost gave me an ulcer to really show it to them. But the task became easier with each successive attempt. And it's so easy today that I hardly even think about it anymore.

As teachers, we're funny; we model reading strategies, and that's not hard for us. We model mathematical problem solving, and that's not hard for (most of) us either. But ask us to show a piece of writing we're working on, and suddenly we close ourselves off from our students. It can't be that way, and that was the lesson I had to learn.

At right, you will find the first piece of writing that I shared with my new poetry elective class that Fall. To this day, I don't think it's that great a poem, but it did two things well: 1) it captured a moment in time about me and my connection to the world; and 2) it made my kids want to talk about the personal purpose of poetry. I started a real community of writers that day, which I had always intended to do when I taught, but this felt different. Way different.

That summer institute I took back in 1996 actually started my path to my Master's Degree. The evening classes I was taking required me to write papers, and I started sharing those assignments with my students. I learned the value of showing all steps of my process to my writers, not just final drafts. My own college papers became valuable mini-lessons. I welcomed my students' constructive criticism, and the critiques they later gave each other were better and more helpful because they'd practiced on me.

For that mythology elective, I had my best experience with sharing writing I was doing for my Master's Program. I wanted to show my students how ancient mythological concepts can still be intelligently applied to modern times, and I wanted them to write about that idea. I asked them to connect with a myth we'd studied that they could apply to something real in their own lives. When I saw many of them struggling with this sophisticated idea, I decided to go through the task myself with an upcoming writing assignment I had been given for a graduate class. So I applied the myth of Hercules and his 13 "impossible labors" to an educational concept I was researching for an essay. I began and ended that college paper with a reference to that myth, and my students actually helped me shape those two pieces of my essay. I held an extra-credit contest for the student who designed for me an illustrated cover page for my essay. When my mythology students read my final draft a few days before I turned it in, I heard many of them say, "I helped with that part!" It became the most authentic experience I've ever had as a teacher, and those kids were so excited when "we" earned an 'A' on that paper; to this day, I am convinced many of those kids (who wouldn't have) decided to actually give college a try because I showed them they could help me to think (and write) in ways that are respected at the university level.

There's such simple power in sharing your own writing with your students. For me, it began the process of truly teaching my students to go through the writing process and to value it as an experience.

Student models must be used too, but they must be discussed at deep cognitive levels.

During the 2007-2008 school year, I assigned myself an action research project. We had been busily adding student samples to the lessons at the WritingFix website, and I kept asking myself, "If I was teaching this lesson, when would I show this sample? Before they wrote a draft? While they wrote? Before they revised?" I was convinced that discussing student samples would improve the quality of the lesson being taught, but I wanted to know where it would have the most power, during pre-writing or during revision. I discovered that adding discussions about student samples in both places improved the writing tremendously, and it engaged the students more deeply with the writing process.

As part of my teacher workshop on the writing process, we investigate multiple uses of student samples. One of my favorite techniques involves having student compare and contrast finished pieces of writing. During both pre-writing and and revision, this push for deeper student thinking both educates and inspires your students.

The handout seen here (at right), which contains two published student samples, is based on one of my favorite personal lessons that I've posted at WritingFix: Start With What Isn't There, which is inspired by the opening two pages of Stephen Kramer's Caves. The lesson teaches students how to add mood to a piece of writing, which is a skill from the voice trait.

The handout has student writers analyze two fifth graders' published writing with a compare and contrast Venn diagram. The students aren't allowed to compare and contrast just anything they discover; they have to specifically look for voice techniques used by one writer or by both. There is a "mini script" on the handout, right next to the Venn, reminding students of specific skills that build voice in writing; this keeps the conversations focused on the lesson's focus trait.

After comparing and contrasting with a partner, I have student writers switch partners to compare and contrast answers again; the conversations that occur around this handout are rich and delightful to listen to. I've used this technique during the pre-writing portion of the lesson, and I've also used it during the revision portion of the lesson. Once, I even used it during both portions because the conversation truly was rich and inspiring.

I have come to believe that having students compare and contrast more while explicitly teaching pre-writing and revision is an amazing technique for getting them to think about writing at a deeper level of Bloom's taxonomy. When good conversations about good writing happen, students launch better pre-writes for and add better revisions to their own drafts.

One of the goals I ask teachers to set after my training is to find new ways to push students to analyze and evaluate as they learn to write.

A lot of my "Seven Elements" participants want to jump to immediately improving their ability to teach revision, which I find commendable. Revision is hard, and most teachers recognize it as an area of deficiency; the truth is, a lot of really great writing teachers I know still freely admit that revision is where they struggle the most.

My time with whole staffs for one- or two-year focus work has recently taught me something pretty important about revision: mainly, revision shouldn't be the first of the seven elements to work on, if you still struggle with most of the steps of the writing process; if that's the case, it should be saved for later. In order to teach revision well, you have to be in a place where most of your students are writing rough drafts that they're really enthused about. You can't effectively teach revision when the majority of your students have bad rough drafts or they have rough drafts they don't care about. When students like what they've written in rough draft form, they're ready to move to revision. My other six elements aim at helping students increase their pre-writing time so they both like and see more potential in their rough drafts. Instead of jumping straight for revision, I often encourage my participants to use the other six elements to increase their pre-writing strategies for this reason. I also encourage them to explore my Pre-Writing Resource Page, which is very supportive in helping students like their rough drafts.

That said, if you still feel revision is where you want to focus your time, then you need to make sure you have strategies that push students deep into Bloom's taxonomy. Revision must absolutely be taught at the analysis and evaluation levels. It takes diligence, time, and lots of modeling to maintain that level of thinking about revision with a whole class. Learning to teach revision well took me the longest time personally, but it was such a great place to get my students to when we indeed arrived.

I used to throw my kids into writing response groups way too fast. They weren't ready to provide critical thought for one another. I shouldn't have been surprised at all when they said to each other, "I like your paper, so don't change a thing." To really teaching revision skills to my writers, I needed to develop tools that helped them self-evaluate their own writing. Until they could show me they had the ability to think critically about their own drafts, they weren't ready to be in response groups. I wanted my students to be in functioning response groups some time between Halloween and Thanksgiving, and that meant we did a lot of self-evaluation every fall.

During my teacher workshop on the writing process, we practice with tools like the Revision Sprint (at right), which I designed to push students to use analysis and evaluation skills as they looked at their own drafts. I also designed this tool to be similar to a 5-point rubric, which is the type of rubric used on our state's writing exam. I believe the more tools that you can introduce to your students that will eventually help them to be able to read and understand a rubric, the better. But you can't just throw a rubric at your kids too early on; you have to ease them into being able to make sense of teacher tools like that.

By far, the best success I've ever had while teaching revision was the one I experienced with the revision Post-its I created for my students. Using the trait language embedded on these Post-its, like in the three examples below, students learn to self-evaluate their own writing skills by ranking them against each other. Rank is an important verb to understand when you use these Post-its. When ranking the skills (unlike simply rating them), students can only use each number once. They had to determine which was their "5 skill," which was their "4 skill," etc. Once they'd created the ranking, it was fairly easy to have them make a skill-specific revision plan. I never made them revise for their "1 skill" simply because it was the lowest; I had my students make the choice to revise for any of the lower numbers.

I also use variations of these Post-its during my Critical Thinking Using the Writing Traits Workshop.

Just of Few of the Trait-Specific Post-its I've Designed for Students' Self-Evaluation of their Writing

Collaborative work at my workshop: I didn't learn to become a better writing teacher by working alone. I was inspired by fellow teachers, and the best work I did--once I had motivation in my pocket--was the work that I created alongside my fellow teachers.

I believe in the power of collaboration and study teams, especially when working on hard topics like improving writing instruction and using differentiated instruction strategies. Professional development research clearly cites the study team model as the most effective way to have learners not only understand new ideas but also implement them enough times so they become regular tools in a teacher's classroom.

During the second half of this two- or three-day workshop, teachers work with study teams and--together--plan the beginnings of a lesson that they can show the rest of the participants. To do this, I ask the study teams to draft, then publish three posters that explain three of the elements a teacher should be thinking about early on when planning a new writing lesson: 1) the mentor text; 2) the lesson's skill focus; and 3) the graphic organizer. Below, find three examples created by study teams during past workshops. I use them as models/exemplars when I set the study teams off to work.

After each group presents, we discuss how much more work on the lessons would need before they could be taught to students, and we talk about ways we will continue to motivate each other so they lesson both gets planned and eventually taught. I ask the study teams to pledge a working commitment to each other, now that they have been motivated to create some lessons that are differentiated.

Finalizing Personal Goals. At this point of the workshop, most of the participants have revised the personal goals they originally set a number of times. If they want to focus on more than two of the seven elements as a goal, I strongly encourage them to choose two elements that really complement each other, so they're not working on three completely different things. It's pretty easy to combine two elements into one goal; if you decide to classify your mentor texts based on the trait skills shown by the authors, you've combined to elements into one goal. Or if you design learning style-friendly graphic organizers that allow students to make choices about pre-writing, you've combined two elements as well.

Some collaborative study teams choose to all set goals around the same elements; some teams purposely select different elements to work on even though they're in the same study group. Both of these options have different strengths through possibilities. The important thing that must happen is that each individual participant must feel part of a team that will be there to motivate them to continue bettering oneself at using these elements and strategies to differentiate.

I remind the participants of my personal experience: five years of mediocre teaching, followed by one motivational experience, then three years of hard work; that's how I finally arrived at a place where I skillfully could teach writing to all my students. The years that followed my learning experience have been--bar none--the best years of my teaching career. My students learn to appreciate the act of writing, and they see it as a valuable life-skill. I learned to love teaching it, and I can design instruction that impacted every student. My administrators value the work I do because my students are passing their tests, but they are also doing so much more than that; they are thinking critically about everything we talk about in class because they are constantly in search of the next topic they are going to write about.

I hope this write-up outlining my "7 Elements" of a Differentiated Writing Lesson Workshop that I've provided inspires you to set long-term goals for becoming an even better writing teacher, and I hope you stick to those goals. The hard work you'll invest will really pay off in the end.

In a perfect world, following my workshop, study teams would find time to adapt and collaboratively teach lessons from WritingFix three or four times a school year. As they adapt and prepare for the actual teaching, they would focus on the personal goals they set in the workshop, helping one another grow as they implement the elements into actual teaching. After adapting any of the already-created lessons from WritingFix, they should then be coaxed into taking the really big step: create a completely original lesson that makes use of all seven elements.

This is what I encourage participants to do. To help them continue to have "7 Element"-inspired conversations, I created these follow-up tools.

If you cannot attend my seven elements workshop, you can now purchase my
Seven Elements of a Differentiated Writing Lesson Presentation Materials
Price: $15.00

Becoming a great writing teacher is a challenging task; personally, it took me five years of slow and steady diligence to become a writing teacher who knew I was doing something right. And I'm not done yet; each year, I continue to build new ideas, thanks to the "Seven Elements" Framework I first started toying with back in 2006.

What's is this "Seven Elements" Framework and Training? It's designed to be a manageable, goal-setting workshop and training for teachers who admit they have the desire to be even better writing teachers but aren't sure exactly where one begins.

I had been presenting smaller workshops on these seven topics for writing teachers, but I began envisioning this original content as a solid two-day workshop in 2008. Over the summer of 2010, I hired myself out to three outside-of-Nevada school districts, and they saw the training in its new two-day format. I will humbly report that this is the best workshop I've ever created. It's both thorough and thoughtful, it's solidly research-based, and it's totally differentiated, which makes it teacher-friendly no matter what teaching strategies participants attending the workshop already have in place.

As I prepared for the new two-day version of this training over the summers of 2008 and 2009, I was determined to create a for-purchase companion resource that would honor and explain my original materials in such a way that anyone--even those not attending my face-to-face workshop--would learn from them and be motivated to set professional goals using them.

I now offer for sale a package of nine electronic documents: Eight PowerPoints (one introductory slideshow, and one slideshow for each of the seven elements) and a PDF version of the 92-page packet my participants receive at the two-day workshop. All for one low price!

Please remember, I teach all day long, so you may not receive your purchase(s) immediately. If you do not receive the download link from me in thirty-six hours, please contact me at corbett@corbettharrison.com.

I currently can only accept payments from PayPal to purchase these resources. PayPal remains a safe and easy-to-use Internet service that allows you to send money to anyone, even without signing up for an account. Click the button above. Paypal will have you securely enter your credit card information, and the payment will be sent to me.

Important...Please read carefully before ordering: Once I have been notified by PayPal that the money has arrived in my account (which can take anywhere between 2-12 hours), I will send downloading instructions for acquiring my 92-page packet as a PDF file, which requires the free program Adobe Reader to open and print, and the 8 PowerPoint slideshow presentations I use during the training. I do not send any materials through the U.S. mail; you will download and print the materials yourself.

If you have questions about this specific product, please feel free to contact me at Corbett@CorbettHarrison.com.