I’m glad to see Steve Graham cited here.

And as for The Writing Revolution, I keep drafting posts about why it’s a terrible book… and then I let them sit. They Say, I Say came out at least a decade before with the guts of it. The improvement from TWR likely comes from some instruction plus writing more. (Sort of like an obese person chasing an ice cream truck—some exercise is better than nothing.) But the key weakness from TWR comes from form without fluency. There’s simply no daily writing component.

And frankly, seeing all the praise makes me gag. So many better books exist. It’s all first impression bias because most haven’t read a shred of literature in composition. But now I’m just being a petty jerk and I’ll admit as much. (I write this Note as I dabble in the earliest pages of my own book.)

Anyways, this spring I was reading Graham’s “Evidence-based recommendations for teaching writing” and flirting with a post about it, but just haven’t gotten around to it yet. I’ll give a link. He’s got interesting points: files.eric.ed.gov/fullt….