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Patterson presents several Web sites that offer online support for many writers and teachers of writing. These include Purdu On-Line Writing Lab at www.icarus.ubetc.buffalo.edu/engcomp/writing_strategies.htm, Barry Lane's Discover Writing at www.discoverwriting.com, and National Writing Project at www.writingproject.org.

It wasn't until I went to a weeklong writing workshop for teachers that I realized I was a writer. For the first time in my life, I wrote something that didn't require an outline. And, through the process of sharing and getting feedback, revising and sharing again, I realized I was writing something good, something that made me proud.

It was, in many respects, a life-changing week. I realized for the first time that writing does not involve a linear process of prewriting, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing. I lived the recursivity of my writing process, and I realized that if my processes changed from day to day, they probably changed from piece to piece. And if my processes changed with each encounter with writing, then my students' processes probably did, too. When I realized that, I realized that I needed to set up my classroom so that it could support students as they wrestled with their own processes. I needed to respect the fact that each of them needed support and freedom, structure and independence. The following sites offer us the online support we and our students need.

Purdue On-line Writing Lab

http://icarus.ubetc.buffalo.edu/engcomp/ writing_strategies.htm

Over the years, Purdue's On-Line Writing Lab (OWL) has provided support for many writers and teachers of writing. The site is huge and has sample handouts, online help for topics, organization, and grammar and punctuation issues.

Barry Lane's Discover Writing

http://www.discoverwriting.com

Anyone who has seen Barry Lane's books on writing has been captivated by his clear understanding of the writing processes, and his ability to explain how to help students improve their writing. His Web site provides free writing lesson plans that can be adapted for multiple grade levels.

Critical Writing Strategies

http://web.nwe.ufl.edu/~sullivan/ 4456.writing.html

Developed by a professor at Northern Illinois University, the information talks about using evidence to support an idea, ways to read with thinking about revising, and the role of context, grammar, and style.

Short Story Help

http://www.orangeusd.k12.ca.us/yorba/ pre-writing_strategies1.htm

Here are a series of questions that can help students think about their emerging short stories.

National Writing Project

http://www.writingproject.org/

Teachers who have experienced a National Writing Project Summer Invitational Institute have come away with so many writing strategies to use in the classroom, and a new network of colleagues who will support them as they create classroom environments where meaningful writing takes place. Many teachers find participation in their local National Writing Project site a career-changing experience.

National Writing Project Teaching Ideas http://www. writingproject.org/Resources/classroompractices.html

This page in the NWP site is worth special mention. Here teachers have submitted writing strategies that have worked for them. Solidly grounded in theory and research, these teach er-written collections of classroom practices will give many teachers ideas for their own classrooms.

Read/Write/Think http://www.readwritethink.org/lessons/index.asp?grade=0&strand=&engagement=0

This site has been mentioned in this column before, and it is worth mentioning again. Read/Write/Think, a collaboration between NCTE, IRA, and MarcoPolo, is a collection of standards-based lessons, many of which are related to writing. The title page lists the specific lesson, a description, and the grade levels with which it can be used.

Colorado State University Writing Strategies

http://writing.colostate.edu/references/teaching/ldteach/app10.cfm

Developed to help teachers who deal with learning disabled students, this site has much to offer all middle school teachers. The writing strategy outlined here separates the task of writing into three parts: planning, translating, and reviewing. It can work with a number of different types of writing.

TeachNet http://www.teachnet.com/lesson/langarts/writing/

If you need some quick ideas on writing strategies and topics, you may find some things on this commercial site. Included here are ideas for "non-linear" writing, newspaper writing, and using pictures as prompts for writing.

Young Adult Writing Project http://www.asu.edu/clas/english/gpawp/yawp/ideas.html

The writing strategy explained on this site uses Georgia Heard's poem "Querencia," and asks students to write about a place where they feel safe.

Best Practice in Teaching Writing http://clerccenter.gallaudet.edu/Literacy/teachwriting.html

Though developed for teachers of deaf students at Gallaudet University, these pieces of advice regarding the teaching of writing are valuable for all teachers and seem to be based on Zemelman, Daniels, and Hyde's book Best Practice: New Standards for Teaching and Learning in America's Schools.

How to Become a TV Critic http://teams.lacoe.edu/documentation/classrooms/angie/media/projects/critic/critic.html

This writing strategy provides a list of questions students can think about as they work together to review a television program. The site provides examples of other student-written critiques.

Language Arts Mini-Lessons http://yn.la.ca.us/cec/cedlang/ceclang-interm.html

There are dozens of links on this page, many of which deal with writing. One involves shopping mall characters. Another takes students through an expository writing strategy that begins with something as simple as a handshake. Yet another involves a creative writing strategy that uses fairy tales.

These links can be easily accessed by going to http://faculty.gvsu.edu/patterna/voices/september03.html