Leila taught high school English for several years before becoming a professor of English Education at Virginia Commonwealth University. She teaches young adult literature, the teaching of writing, teaching methods for both secondary and middle school, and instructional theory and design. Some of her publications include Making the Journey: Being and Becoming a Teacher of English Language Arts, Writing on Demand, and Both Art and Craft: Teaching Ideas that Spark Learning. She is a well-known writer and researcher in English education, past English Journal editor, and past president of the National Council of Teachers of English.
View Leila Christenbury's Resume/Vita, Publications and Workshops.
Level: 6-12
- writing
- assessment
- evaluation
- testing at the middle and secondary levels
Handbook of Adolescent Literacy Research
“The challenge for writing teachers is to support students without selling out, without abandoning best practices in favor of test preparation.”
—Anne Ruggles Gere, Education Week, February 2, 2005
Overview of Workshop
Teachers will learn strategies for following what they know to be best practices in teaching writing while still helping students prepare for writing tests. These strategies, designed to address specific features of writing on demand, can be incorporated into an existing curriculum. They adhere to the principle that test preparation and good writing instruction are not incompatible.
Workshop Topics
- Read backward from a piece of finished writing to the prompt that produced it
- Learn how processes of writing are adaptable to the testing environment
- Use rhetorical analysis to understand prompts and assignments
- Make assessment—including rubrics from writing tests—visible in the composition classroom
- Deal effectively with time constraints when writing
- Foster sentence-level attention to writing
- Practice scoring writing to understand rubrics more fully
- Analyze the contexts of writing tests
Writing Workshop Testimonials from Ann Arbor, MI
"I strongly believe in a student-centered, student-driven teaching philosophy. Thus, I came to this workshop as a concession. I hate the philosophy behind standardized tests, yet my students need to do well on them to enter college. Now I feel like I have the methods to de-mystify those tests and empower my students to decode and, hopefully, feel control over the questions imposed upon them.”
“After this workshop, testing seems less insurmountable. I’ve picked up a lot of great, practical strategies that I can give to my students. I don’t feel now like I have to pull specific class time to teach to the test.”
“I will take this approach back to my department. We are charged this year with crating a school-wide writing rubric. I plan now to urge that we create TWO rubrics—one for writing on demand and one for creative writing. I agree that to recognize writing on demand as a genre directs the attention to the students’ skills within that genre’s demands.”
“The workshop has helped me to discover that writing on demand isn’t independent from writing in general. We don’t have to learn something entirely new to prepare students to succeed when writing on demand.”
“I came here with a deliberately, if not sincerely, open mind about the role of writing tests. Through the course of the workshop, my views shifted with the winds of conversation. The final discussion about writing on demand as a genre, unique in its placement and skill set, set my mind at ease and gave me ideas for how to discus this topic more readily with a rather reticent department back home."
“This workshop reaffirmed my belief that it is possible to teaching in a variety of ways and still teach the skills students need to be successful writers—both on tests and in the “real world”."
Writing Workshop Testimonials from New York, NY
“My pedagogies on the process of writing are closely aligned with the content of the workshop. My thoughts have been reaffirmed, redefined and re-energized.”
”In addition to meeting other like-minded individuals, I appreciate the practicals. These sample exercises and mini-lessons can serve as springboards for my teachers to make this work come alive in the lives of their students.”
“The concept of writing tests as genre is very thought-provoking. I think this has possibilities, especially for students’ preparation for life beyond the classroom—the will have to face applications with savvy and effective responses for a lifetime.”