Building Better Writers offers ELA/ELAR teachers an insight into the unique needs of emergent bilingual writers and provides practical strategies to address these needs.

Natalia Heckman presents a resource built on the combination of her classroom experience and research in ESL and ELA fields. The resource has four distinct parts: instruction at the sentence level, instruction at the paragraph level, instruction at the composition level, and finally a collection of 60 activities!

Created with emergent bilinguals in mind, Building Better Writers aims to offer an asset-based perspective on writing instruction for newcomers in a self-contained ESL/ELD classroom and long-term ELs enrolled in mainstream ELA courses. Many parts of this resource, especially the chapter on composition, address specific skills that students will need to shine on the mandatory state end-of-course examinations.