LEARN NC

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Web Publishing & Collaboration Guide

For LEARN NC partners

1.4 Writing best practices articles

Not every good teaching idea can be written as a lesson plan or buried within one. Some ideas are more general and apply throughout a curriculum area or even across curricula. If you find yourself explaining concepts, strategies, or practices, consider writing them as one or more separate articles.

Content

We publish primarily articles that provide clear, innovative, and successful instructional strategies and educational practices. What do we mean by this?

Instructional strategies and educational practices

  • Instructional strategies are specific things you do in your classroom to facilitate student learning — for example, ways to help students develop reading comprehension skills or how to structure a kindergarten curriculum around nature study. Instructional strategies usually apply to specific grade levels and curriculum areas.
  • Educational practices are broader in scope and more integral to the way a teacher teaches. Articles about educational practices are of potential value to all teachers, regardless of grade level or curriculum area. Examples include how to organize your classroom to support your instructional goals or how to make a personal connection with at-risk students.
  • Of course, there may be some overlap! Articles about instructional strategies may include ideas that teachers could apply more broadly, and your perspective on educational practice will be determined by the grade level or subject area you teach.

Innovative and successful

  • By innovative we mean simply that the strategy or practice is not in common use. In the case of an instructional strategy, you should either have developed this way of teaching on your own or with colleagues or have made important modifications to it, and you should be able to explain it in a unique and personal way. For educational practices, the standard is a bit lower: even if half the teachers in North Carolina teach a certain way, the other half can still benefit from reading about it, and even the most experienced veterans may benefit from reading your personal perspective on it.
  • By successful we mean that you can provide some kind of evidence that your strategy or practice does what it is intended to do. We don’t expect data with mathematical analysis (although that would be fine, of course!) — anecdotes and summaries of your experience are fine. But you should be able to answer the question, “How do you know this works?”

Some things to avoid

Editorializing

We all have causes we believe in and feel strongly about — if we didn’t, we wouldn’t be good teachers. But this isn’t the place for a sermon. Don’t preach about the importance of reaching all of your students — show your readers how to do it. If you believe that teachers should do more to integrate technology, give them examples of specific tools to enrich instruction and teach them how to use them. If you do that job well, your readers won’t need the editorial.

Overly personal accounts

Your article certainly should reflect your personal experience in the classroom, but be brief about your feelings. We know you love teaching and “touching the future”! So do your readers, and true enough, sometimes they need the pep talk. But you can serve them better here by explaining your ideas and helping them to teach more effectively.

Style

Articles should be written in a clear, informal style — not academic, but not chatty, either. If you are writing about a teaching strategy you have personally developed or implemented or about a personal experience, you should write your article in the first person. In general we do not use footnotes or endnotes, but if you have used sources for research that require citation, provide the author, full title, publisher and year of publication (or URL and date accessed for Web references), and page number if applicable.

Other types of articles may be written in a style appropriate to them. Summaries of research may be written in a more formal, academic style, but should in all cases be written with an audience of practicing K–12 teachers in mind.

Instructional writing

Remember that you are teaching through your article, not just sharing experiences. Your goal is to help other teachers do what you do. Explain both what you do and why you do it in as much detail as you can. Don’t worry about saying too much — we can always edit it down later.

Treat your readers as professionals and colleagues, but don’t assume that they know everything you know — if they did, they wouldn’t need your article! Imagine a beginning teacher, perhaps even a lateral-entry teacher who has never taught before. What would that person need to know about what you do in order to try it herself or himself? At the same time, remember that experienced teachers will be reading your article as well, and will be able to learn from you — your experience will be different from theirs.

Length

Articles should be between 1500 and 2500 words. Be concise, but take the time you need to cover your topic. If people are interested in the topic, they’ll keep reading. If you can’t cover your topic in less than 2000 words, consider breaking it up into multiple articles. (LEARN NC’s editorial staff can help you decide whether and how to do this.)

Editing

We understand that teachers are not professional writers. You may feel that your writing skills are inadequate to the task. In nearly every case, though, we can work with you to bring your ideas to the Web, in your voice. We are happy to edit as much or as little as needed, and edits are subject to the author’s approval prior to publication. We can also work with you to develop your ideas and help you find the right tone in your writing.