“Readers will not only gain ideas for instruction, they will also better understand the underlying cognitive processes associated with written communications.”
— Jay McTighe, consultant and coauthor of Assessing Student Learning by Design
“This book lets us as teachers and learners think about writing as an action drama on the stage of the mind—in a brain at work.”
— Linda Flower, professor emerita, Carnegie Mellon University
“Writing, Thinking, and the Brain is a valuable resource for teachers in all content areas. I wore out my highlighter reading it.”
— Kelly Gallagher, former co-director, South Basin Writing Project, California State University, Long Beach, and author of Teaching Adolescent Writers and Write Like This
“As a middle school instructional coach with a background in English education, I’ve long championed the need for explicit writing instruction rooted in evidence and designed to meet the complex needs of today’s learners. Writing, Thinking, and the Brain is the book I’ve been waiting for. The ThinkWrite model doesn’t just repackage what we already know about writing instruction—it revolutionizes it. Grounded in cutting-edge neuroscience, this framework demystifies the invisible processes behind writing and gives teachers the tools to coach thinking, not just editing. By mapping writing onto cognitive development, Tokuhama-Espinosa and her co-authors make a compelling case: writing is thinking made visible, and we must teach it accordingly.
This book invites educators to move beyond rigid product-driven models and embrace a process that is fluid, metacognitive, and tailored to the brain’s natural ways of learning. The emphasis on “toggling” between cognitive stages mirrors what every great teacher knows instinctively, and now has the science to back up. For years, many educators followed workshop models that, while rich in voice and choice, sometimes left students adrift when it came to the actual mechanics and cognitive demands of writing. This book doesn’t dismiss those models—it builds on what they got right, while correcting course with the clarity that neuroscience affords. What excites me most is the hope this book brings. It is a hopeful, empowering call to reimagine writing instruction not as a mystery or an innate talent, but as a teachable, adaptable, brain-based process that every student can access. It’s already transforming the way I support teachers—and, more importantly, how students see themselves as writers.”
— Sarah Harger, Middle School Instructional Coach and English Teacher, United World College of South East Asia (East Campus)