Hidden Gems: Naming and Teaching from the Brilliance in Every Student's Writing, 1st edition

"Open Katherine Bomer’s staggeringly beautiful, generous book–you may realize that you have never before see your students’ writing at all." 
–Lucy Calkins, Author of Units of Study for Teaching Writing

Hidden Gems will transform the way we read student work. 
–Thomas Newkirk, Author of Holding On to Good Ideas in a Time of Bad Ones

You don’t get true, fire-in-the-belly energy for writing because you fear getting a bad grade, but because you have something to say and your own way of saying it. 
–Katherine Bomer

If you’re like Katherine Bomer, you’ve grown weary of searching for what’s wrong in student writing, and you want better ways to the respond to pieces whose beauty and intelligence doesn’t shine on the first read. Now she shares how she learned instead to search–sometimes near the surface, sometimes deep beneath–to find, celebrate, and teach from writers’ Hidden Gems.

"My hope is that as teachers we can respond to all students’ writing with astonished, appreciative, awe-struck eyes," writes Katherine. Through protocols, sample assessments, and demonstrations with actual student work, she shows how to bring the brilliant facets of your writers to the surface as you:

• spot hidden stylistic gems in writing that is unconventional or vernacular
• uncover content and organizational gems even when you don’t find the subject matter engaging or significant
• respond by naming and celebrating writers’ gems instead of hunting for mistakes
• give lasting compliments using the inspiring language of published writers that motivate students to keep writing, revising, and polishing their gems.

Accept Katherine Bomer’s invitation to read work “by young, unseasoned writers the way we would inquire our way into a poem by Nikki Giovanni, Jimmy Santiago Baca, or Naomi Shihab Nye and to notice the quirky brilliance and humor, the heartbreaking honesty, and surreal beauty in even the slightest bits of writing.” You’ll soon discover that student writers often perform remarkable feats in the craft of writing, and that you can achieve remarkable results with them when you uncover their Hidden Gems.