NNWP
College of Education
Mailstop 288
Univ. of Nevada-Reno
Reno, Nevada 89557

Phone: 775-784-1161
Fax: 775-784-4758

Carol Gebhardt is our Northern Nevada Writing Project's Research Initiative Coordinator.  She took the NNWP Summer Institute in 2005, and returned to work as a mentor the very next year.  Carol's classroom work has been published in our "Going Deep with the Six Writing Traits" Guide.  Carol taught at Drake Elementary for 10 years before becoming a differentiated instruction trainer in 2006 at the Northwest Regional Professional Development Program.

In 2007, Carol took the reigns as the Northern Nevada Writing Project's Co-Director.

16-hour inservice classes: In 2008, we will offer our first inservice classes for teachers that has them use and apply the research discussed in the new Going Deep with Comparison & Contrast Thinking Guide.

PLC Support: The Going Deep with Comparison and Contrast Thinking Guide is designed to be used as a discussion tool among professional learning communities of teachers. The guide contains questions that will inspire rich discussions about classroom practices.

2- and 3-hour trait workshops: Thanks to our strong partnership with Nevada's Northwest Regional Professional Development Program, we will be able to offer on-site comparison/contrast workshops during early release days for schools starting in 2008 .

Our new guide and writing across the curriculum
resource for 2008
The Going Deep with Compare & Contrast Thinking Guide

The NNWP's Going Deep with Comparison/Contrast Guide will be available for purchase at our Publications page.

Why a Research Initiative? The Northern Nevada Writing Project asks its Teacher Consultants to balance innovative writing lessons with current research that backs up their effectiveness.  Many researchers, we've discovered, are worth looking at.  Currently, we're looking deeply at the work of Robert Marzano.

Robert Marzano’s book Classroom Instruction that Works provides teachers with nine techniques to promote learning that have been researched and found to be the most effective on our students.  Marzano writes, “…the ‘art’ of teaching is rapidly becoming the ‘science’ of teaching.”   As writing teachers, we recognize the necessary balance of art and science in our instruction. Though Marzano’s techniques and examples are not specifically for writing instruction, we plan to apply these techniques to our lessons on writing.  We plan to study whether or not these techniques improve writing instruction, and we plan to study how we can use the techniques even more effectively than we have been.

Carol explains:  "My job this year is to match writing lessons to some of the most effective techniques presented by Marzano.  The instructional strategies we plan to investigate are listed below.  I have also charted my thinking around these techniques and how I think they may match to writing."  Carol's study will become a workbook that will be available in the summer of 2007.

If you are an NNWP TC interested in applying Marzano's strategies to your classroom's writing instruction, do not hesitate to contact Carol by clicking here.

Carol's on-going thinking:

Marzano Techniques:

How does this apply to writing?
(Carol's Current Thinking)

Identifying Similarities
and Differences

Writing across the curriculum comes to mind, maybe compare/contrast essays.

Summarizing and Note Taking

Again, writing across the curriculum, taking notes for research papers or doing science experiments and then writing up the report.

Nonlinguistic Representations

Since this section deals with graphic representations, graphic organizers, and mental pictures, I am thinking about how primary grade children use these components to start their ideas about writing.

Setting Objectives and
Offering Feedback

I immediately thought of the value of writing rubrics when I read this section.

Research and Theory –
Generating and Testing Hypotheses

This technique involves the application of knowledge.  Anytime we ask our students to write about something they learned we are taking them up the next level of Bloom’s Taxonomy.  This is another area where we plan to investigate how writing across the curriculum applies Marzano’s techniques.

Cues, Questions, and
Advance Organizers

Effective writing teachers know that the writing process is so important to our students' learning.  Using cues, questions and advance organizers become strategies for students during most parts of the writing process.  We can ask questions to revise our writing, and advance organizer can help us pre-write and then edit using a checklist made from the advance organizer.

Our Mini-Lesson
of the Month Club

Do you use a writers workshop in your classroom? Are you looking for some high quality mini-lessons that teach skill and writer's craft? Click here to find out how to sign up for this free service.

Our Mission

The Northern Nevada Writing Project is committed to improving student writing by promoting the teaching of writing, recognizing teacher expertise and leadership, building a foundation of research, and encouraging teachers as writers.