In his books Teaching Adolescent Writers and Write Like This, author Kelly Gallagher suggests growing adolescent writers by providing them with real-world writing practice. If we want to work to develop our students as authentic, lifelong writers, we should help them to see that there is value in writing and that there are types of writing that we do for various purposes outside of school. 

This professional development was shared with middle school teachers to show how to turn 1 topic into 18 topics using Gallagher's 1 Topic = 18 Topics template. Specifically, we looked at writing to inform or explain in this training. 

I would recommend pairing this information with the books Teaching Adolescent Writers and Write Like This by Kelly Gallagher through a staff book study.