We’re all so familiar with clusters as prewriting tools that we’ve forgotten how they were originally intended to be used. In Dr. Gabriele Lusser Rico’s classic book, Writing the Natural Way, she says… Writers need some magic key for getting in touch with these secret reserves of imaginative power. What we lack is not ideas but a direct means of getting in touch with them. Clustering is that magic key. In fact, it is the master key to natural writing.

In previous posts, I’ve argued that clear, straightforward language in writing is best. When you have something to say, presenting it in transparent language puts the focus on the content itself, allowing it to achieve its best effect. Contrariwise (if you’ll forgive my ironic vernacular) a person who employs elevated diction to articulate his or her reflections is quite often endeavoring to camouflage a poverty of substance.

In How the Irish Saved Civilization, Thomas Cahill presents the case that while barbarians were despoiling Europe during the Dark Ages, Irish monks were preserving the fruits of Roman civilization in meticulously copied texts. As the continent began recovering from the barbarian incursions, these monks were poised to spread that knowledge, allowing civilization to recover more quickly.

Let’s face it: Language arts instruction is tough. In history class, you have people, places, events, and dates to rely on. In science, you have theories and laws and pictures of the Horse-Head Nebula. What do you have in language arts? Words, words, words. Or, to quote from Hamlet II, ii, 191-195: Polonius: What do you read, my lord? Hamlet: Words, words, words. Polonius: What is the matter, my lord? Hamlet: Between who? Polonius: I mean, the matter that you read, my lord. Hamlet: Slanders, sir.

As promised in my last post I’ve provided here a few practical strategies for connecting your writing and reading programs: Use the same terminology for writing and reading. When writing fiction, students should use the words of literary analysis: character, setting, plot, theme, and so forth. So, too, when reading nonfiction, students should use the traits of writing: ideas, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, and conventions.

Writing is essentially a solitary act wherein writers put their fingers to the keyboard or pen to paper to create something that is truly their own. But writing should also be a communal or shared activity. Most writers, in fact, do their best work when they have the support of their peers.

Education Week published an online article called “Writing to Learn” on August 27. Since I write about writing, and believe strongly in writing as a learning tool, I was interested in what the article had to say. My guess was that it would explain that writing to learn is a common strategy used in today’s classrooms—and that it is proving to be an effective learning tool for students. After all, “writing to learn” has been around a long time—at least 30 years.

Every generation has a tendency to deride the next as frivolous and lazy. Over the past decade, for example, the phrase “short attention span” has become almost cliché in reference to young people. Those of us who grew up before the Internet and cell phones remember a time when people actually read books and wrote letters to one another; now, it seems, they read only blog entries and send 140-character text messages or Twitter posts. What, oh what, is this world coming to? But wait a minute. Let’s consider a different example.

The National Writing Project (NWP) has caught my attention again. In my last blog entry, “Writing to Learn Revisited…Again,” I expressed my concern (alarm?) about an Education Week article discussing a writing-to-learn workshop for teachers in Oakland, California. As I stated, writing to learn has been around forever, and I thought it was pretty much a standard teaching strategy known about and used by most teachers.

“Don’t say the old lady screamed—bring her on and let her scream.” —Mark Twain Be more specific. Give me an example. Show, don’t tell. How often does a writing teacher write or state these words during the school year? Too many times to count, right? We’ve heard of teachers who have had special stamps made because they’ve become so tired of writing “Give me an example” on student papers.