Article 7

I. Title: Naming Names: A Concrete Way to Help Students Write
II. Author: Jeff Anderson
III. Author’s Purpose: Anderson wants to share with his readers ways in
which students can add detail and voice to their writing by showing not
telling.
IV. What are the points made in the review of the literature? Do they
support the need for the study? Students need to be given specific
ways to ‘show not tell’ in their writing. Some of these methods are:
A. Showing nouns: by using concrete nouns, readers get a good idea
of what the author is trying to say
B. Fleshing out details: add detail, name names and the ideas will
stick with the reader
C. Absolutes: use a noun + -ing (participle) to show action and
description
D. Appositives: start with a simple sentence and choose a noun to
amplify
V. Author’s Inquiry Question/s? How do I get students to be more exact
and concrete in their writing and how do I help this idea to stick for
them?
VI Author’s Methodology: Anderson shared models of good writing,
writing that incorporated concrete details, absolutes, and fleshed out
sentences.
A. Who is being studied? Jeff Anderson studied students in his 6th, 7th, and 8th grade
classes.
B. Over what length of time? No specific time is given, but it seems that it was a school
year.
C. What data is being collected? Samples of student writing and how they incorporate
concrete nouns, fleshed out detail, absolutes, and appositives in their essays
D. How is it being analyzed? Anderson is studying the affect of these techniques on
students’ writing
E. Any other interesting or pertinent data: Anderson took some interesting ideas and put
them into practice. Some of these ideas come from Harry Noden and his Image
Grammar, a book that I have used in my class. This is a book that gives a lot if ideas on
helping students to put their all into an essay and how we , as teachers can model this
for them.
VII. How the author collected information? He collects samples of student writing
from class assignments
VIII. What the Author Discovered or Conclusions/Implications: The
author determined that naming names, using concrete names for
nouns, offers students a concrete way to revise their writing so
that it conveys their ideas clearly. Again, Anderson shows us that
we, as teachers, need to model for our students. We can model with
our own writing or share professional models with our students.
There are many ways to model for them, but we can’t expect
them to just do it on their own.