Projects

Our Approach
At the center of every project, is a set of principles that guides the work we do. Writing Project fellows are field experts. The Writing Project provides the support for fellows to integrate their field knowledge with research and the opportunity to begin thinking like researchers themselves. However, it is the first hand knowledge of children and classrooms that makes teachers the best teachers of teachers. Writing Project fellows know, in the way only someone in the classroom can know, that student writing can improve when the teaching of writing is fine. Writing Project fellows know that fine teaching comes from engaging in the struggle, joy, drudgery sometimes, and satisfaction of writing alongside students. We know that much of the knowledge about how to help students solve the problem of a weak opening or stilted structure comes out of our own battles with writing.

Invitational Institutes
The Invitational Institutes are the centerpiece of the UCLA Writing project. Teachers who have taught three years or more are invited to apply for the Summer Invitational, the Year-Round Invitational, or the Spanish Invitational. We accept only twenty K-University teachers in each institute and the participants receive a fellowship stipend from the Writing Project. Upon completion, fellows become teacher consultants. Click here for upcoming Events.

Contracted Professional Development
All California Subject Matter Projects offer professional development designed to meet the needs of the contracting school or district. We hold these workshops on buy-back days, after school hours, during school hours, on Saturdays. We invite superintendents, principals, professional development coordinators to talk with us about designing a program, one that will continue over time, that will focus not only on the strategies and aaproaches, but on building rubrics, looking at student work, and coaching teachers as they return to their classrooms. Click here for schedule.

Special Interest Groups
Designed for Writing Project Fellows, these interest groups meet to work on needs specific to the group --- Advanced Placement, Early Literacy, Urban Issues, Second language.

Teaching Analytical Writing
The UCLA Writing project offers this institute to teachers who want to prepare their students for university writing. Teachers come in teams of 4 or 5 from a school, meet five times on a weekly or bi-weekly basis, learn and share strategies to help students with their reading and writing of the Subject A Exam. The teachers then administer a previously given exam to the class. We read the papers together on a saturday, writing letters to each student with positive comments and suggestions for improvement.

Writing Assessment Institutes
This institute begins with a week-long 20-hour series of workshops on the types of writing assessed at the fourth, seventh, and high school levels. Participants administer a writing sample to their students; together we evaluate the papers, discovering the needs of each individual student. UCLA teacher consultants visit the classrooms of the participants and work with individual students, with groups of students, or with the teacher. We ask the school or district to either pay a stipend or provide a substitute, as well as furnish a meeting place.

Retreats
Malibu Retreat - Spend Friday evening, Saturday, and Sunday morning in a lovely out-of-the-way section of malibu, close to the ocean. Teachers who attend thi s retreat value the time they get to write and the support they get from the writers who attend. Participants receive an anthology of their work after they arrive home. Cost: $275.00 (Includes room & board).

Retreat for Professional Writing - Thi snew retreat will focus on writing about the profession of teaching by the people who know the most about it -- teachers. Open to Writing Project Fellows at no cost, by application only.

For more information on the above programs, please contact Jane Hancock, Co-Director, at (310) 825-9495 or email her at hancock@gseis.ucla.edu

Young Writers
The Writing Project Retreat at Lake Arrowhead - Every year in the spring we take a group of young high school writers and teachers to the UCLA Conference Center at Lake Arrowhead. The cost is $465 per student plus $35 for the bus. Some schools use categorical funds to pay for this; others request support from local organizations. Some students pay their own way. Students and teachers who attend receive an anthology of their work. For more information, contact Bettye Scott, Program Coordinator at (310)206-3544 or email her at bscott@gseis.ucla.edu

Young Writers Summer Institutes - For three weeks in July and August young writers from 4th through 12th grade can write and improve their skills. Grades 4 through 8 meet at a local elementary school; 9 through 12 have classes at UCLA. The cost is $300. For more information, please contact at (310) 825-1390.

CAHSEE PLUS
Designed to improve student critical writing and reading skills for The California High School Exit Exam, The Secondary Perdiodic Assessment PLUS, and Competency at the California state college and university level! For more information please contact Jane Hancock (Co-Director, UCLA Writing Project; 310-825-9495; hancock@gseis.ucla.edu) OR Anne Sirota (Director, California Reading and Literature Project; 310-825-8979; sirota@gseis.ucla.edu) OR Download flyer.