River Brown

Thomas Newkirk said it

In his recent book, Minds Made for Stories:  How We Really Read and Write Informational and Persuasive Texts, Thomas Newkirk articulates clearly what has been maddening about the Common Core Standards for Writing.  The authors of the CCS ignored the accepted common literary terms, such as genre (for text types) and did not pare it down to the basic two modes in which we write:  narrative or essay.

But a deeper problem is pictured here in my slides:  a category error.  All credit to Thomas Newkirk.  Writing presentations in slides is my mode of exploring how to teach teachers.

By the bye, Newkirk’s book does much, much more than address this problem with CCS.  If you want inspiration for your creative nonfiction, or if you are tired of the “hamburger” essay, it’s a great read.