ABSTRACT
I first encountered RAFTing when I had the opportunity to be a fellow in a National Writing Project summer institute. I dived into the assigned reading on writing to learn and pored over pages trying to find just the right topic for my inquiry piece. I wanted to find a style of writing that would shake up traditional classroom writing assignments. Like Karin and her PassionQuest students, I wished to find a writing topic about which I could be passionate. I wanted to feel inspired. I wanted to do something different from the five-paragraph essay. Don't get me wrong … while the five-paragraph essay is a useful approach for beginning writers, one I taught extensively in my own classes, I believe it is meant to be a springboard to other styles of writing. Once students got a basic idea of how writing should be structured, couldn't they begin exploring a style of writing that is a marriage of structure and creativity? Or would that be too much to ask? Nanci suggested the RAFT approach, which she had been using with her content area pre-service teachers. As soon as I read the description of RAFT, I knew I had found my answer.
