Rhonda Fox July 5, 2001

OWP '01

Book Report #4

Reviser's Toolbox

By

Barry Lane

During this last month, I've read several writing books by Barry Lane. I have thoroughly enjoyed all of his books and I wait in anticipation to use all of his books in my classroom; more than likely, I will pull and piece together golden nuggets from each text.

I am currently gleaning through Reviser's Toolbox. It is a larger book with a bright yellow cover that has a blue toolbox handle sitting on top of its title. I noticed that the contents of this book are very similar or the same as the contents in some of his other books. The main difference with this book is that it provides blackline masters for many of the writing activities and it also provides some wonderful writing ideas that would work well as posters hung on the wall for all the students to observe.

There is a wonderful rubric included in this book that was designed by a teacher/author. This rubric is for the student to use in assessing his/her writing. It covers Idea Development, Organization, Voice, Word Choice, Sentence Fluency and Conventions. It is written in kid language, which makes this rubric a vital part of the writing process. I'm definitely going to use this student writing assessment for now on!