One student on writing instruction

As a high school student myself, I was intrigued by Peg Tyre's article about a Staten Island school's turnaround. Tyre shows the importance of writing skills to academic and professional success. She looks specifically at the new and improved curriculum at New Dorp High School, which emphasizes analysis over self-expression. 
On a basic level, the idea works just fine. To perform well on tests and slap together personal statements, students need to be able to string words into sentences and sentences into paragraphs. The grammar and paragraph structure learned in English class are also handy in most jobs when schooling ends and students are tossed headfirst into the "real world." An astrophysicist must be able to describe her data, and a business executive needs to be able to write clear memos. But should schools solely focus on the mechanical facets of writing? (Haley Lee at The Atlantic)

Code matters

The computer world is based on using APIs. Zynga uses the Facebook APIs to embed its games on FaceBook. Any iPhone or iPad app uses the iOS API to let you move stuff by swiping the screen. WordPress is built on a series of APIs that lets just about anybody build a web site in minutes.
However, even the best of these APIs are hard to use because the documentation, supposedly written in English, is terrible. Most engineers can't write a single coherent sentence, never mind string together a paragraph. (Bernard Meisler at The Atlantic)

Writing about things

"What is a concrete noun?" a student might ask.
"It's something you can drop on your foot," I always answer. "It's that simple."
"So if I am writing about markets, productivity and wealth, I am going to...."
"Yes indeed -- you are going to write about things you can drop on your foot, and people, too. Green peppers, ears of corn, windshield wipers, or a grimy mechanic changing your car's oil. No matter how abstract your topic, how intangible, your first step is to find things you can drop on your foot."
From a teacher's perspective, the lovely thing about this technique of writing with things you can drop on your foot is that both the skilled and the unskilled can do it. Both kinds of students find the assignment intriguing. Students led into writing this way at the start of a course--writing about abstract ideas in terms of concrete objects--find it strange at first, but they are pleased that the task is actually doable. They start to write with good examples, though they don't think of them as examples, but as objects.(John Maguire at The Atlantic)

The discussion continues at 'The Atlantic'

The New Common Core standards, a set of reforms that will soon be adopted by most states, talk about nonfiction reading, but that category seems to include more memos, short speeches, brochures, and technical articles than anything like a complete history book. The standards also mention something about nonfiction writing, but all of the examples in the appendix seem to be only more two-page efforts that will far from challenge the capability of our students in academic writing. (William Fitzhugh at the Atlantic)

'The Atlantic' tackles writing instruction

In "The Writing Revolution," Peg Tyre traces the problems at one troubled New York high school to a simple fact: The students couldn't write coherent sentences. In 2009 New Dorp High made a radical change. Instead of trying to engage students through memoir exercises and creative assignments, the school required them to write expository essays and diagram sentences. Within two years, the school's pass rates for the English Regents test and the global-history exam were soaring. The school's drop-out rate — 40 percent in 2006 — has fallen to 20 percent.
The experiment suggests that the trend toward teaching creative writing was hurting American students. In a debate about Tyre's story, we asked a range of experts, from policymakers to Freedom Writers founder Erin Gruwell, to share their thoughts on Tyre's story. (from The Atlantic)