The visiting author had his audience of writing teachers in thrall as he explained what he called "unpacking a scene." Go for detail, he urged. Don't just write about someone entering a room and slumping into a chair. Paint each movement in words so that readers can see the character framed in the doorway, watch him make his way across the room. Let readers hear the chair slide against the floorboards and squeak with the weight of the character settling in.
A veteran teacher interrupted the hum of agreement coming from his colleagues. "If one of my kids wrote that a character slumped into a chair, I'd be elated," he said. "Slumping would be a big deal."
And there it was—the challenge that writing teachers face every day. How to take students from where they are now to where they might go as writers? How to help them use all the tools at their disposal to communicate, to argue, to explain, to connect?
According to the Nation's Report Card on Writing issued by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, most students still have far to go in reaching their potential as writers. The most recent report card, released in 1999, showed that most students have met the "basic" level of writing achievement. However, only a minority of students—23 percent of fourth-graders, 27 percent of eighth-graders, and 22 percent of 12th-graders—have advanced to the "proficient" level of achievement. Only 1 percent of students performed at the highest achievement level, which NAEP defines as "advanced."
During the past decade, researchers and practitioners have focused on writing instruction as a subject deserving a closer look. Several forces have been at work: Teachers have worked hard to define what good writing looks like and how to give students useful feedback to improve their skills. The standards movement has prompted many states to define what writing instruction should accomplish and how to measure student progress toward meeting goals. The National Writing Project has emerged as a model of professional development that helps teachers become more effective writing coaches. Meanwhile, desktop publishing and the World Wide Web have created new opportunities for students to share their best work with audiences outside the classroom. And many schools routinely open their doors to professional writers, creating opportunities for them to "unpack" the tricks of their trade for the benefit of students and teachers alike.
When he was a sickly first-grader, Stephen King stayed home for most of a school year to recuperate. He read a lot of comic books and tried his hand at writing. His mother inspired him to quit copying "funnybooks" and write some stories of his own. When he did, she rewarded him with praise he still remembers. As he relates in On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft: "She said it was good enough to be in a book. Nothing anyone has said to me since has made me feel any happier."
Not every kid will grow up to write blockbusters, of course, but parents can play an important role in inspiring and encouraging their children to become writers. The National Council of Teachers of English encourages parents to "build a climate of words at home. The basis of good writing is good talk," NCTE points out in an online guide for parents (www.ncte.org/positions/how-to-help.shtml).
Similarly, the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Educational Research and Improvement offers pointers for parents:
Writers know more fully what they mean only after having written it.
Although good writing instruction cannot be reduced to a formula, certain practices are apt to be found in a classroom where students are honing their craft and becoming confident writers. In particular, research shows that young writers improve their skills when they learn that writing is a process involving review and revision. Many students also work harder at writing when they see that their work reaches an audience and serves a real purpose—something more authentic than meeting a due date.
According to NAEP, students achieve higher writing scores when their teachers:
NAEP also has found that parents can help to boost students' writing skills by discussing classroom studies with their children and making reading materials available at home. (See How Parents Can Help.)
What's the sum of these parts? Longtime researcher George Hillocks Jr. asserts that effective writing instruction encourages students to think. "In the past 30 years," he writes in his 2002 book, The Testing Trap: How State Writing Assessments Control Learning, "researchers and theorists have come to know that teaching writing entails teaching thinking." Being able to write well is a lifelong skill, but it's essential to the work of learning. As Hillocks points out, "people learn through writing. Putting the ideas on the word processor or on paper clarifies them and enables us to think through what we really mean."
I love getting up every morning and mucking around in sentences, playing with stories, trying to build my city of words.
Forty years ago, a landmark report commissioned by the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) lambasted the state of writing instruction. Authors of the 1963 Braddock Report found "...the field as a whole is laced with dreams, prejudices, and makeshift operations."
Hillocks, who conducted a meta-analysis of research on writing instruction in 1983, suggests that most teachers never learned how to teach writing. "Teachers of English in the secondary schools have little or no training in the teaching of writing. They are, after all, graduates of English departments concentrating on literature," he points out in The Testing Trap. "Elementary and middle school language arts teachers tend to have even less background in writing. They have tended to concentrate on reading."
The field of writing instruction has evolved during the decades since the Braddock Report. The 1970s and 1980s saw teachers taking a cue from how writers approach their craft. The writing process began to take hold as an effective way to teach writing. The process approach encourages students to shape their writing through a series of stages, typically including brainstorming or prewriting, drafting, revising (often with benefit of feedback from teacher or peers), editing, and publishing.
By 1988, when Kathleen Cotton of the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory took another look at research on writing instruction, she found student achievement to be higher when teachers emphasized writing as a process rather than written work as a product. In what she called "product-oriented teaching," teachers had focused on form and correctness, and "the student has to get it right the first time because the paper turned in will be the only version." In contrast, the stages of the writing process are "more in keeping with the true nature of the act of writing," Cotton concluded.
By the early 1990s, writing teachers were creating another tool to improve instruction. Giving students a single score to assess their writing reflected the old product approach to teaching. An "A" grade might make a young writer proud, but it wouldn't point out what was good about the work and what could be better. Similarly, a low grade would tell the student his work wasn't up to par, but would offer no guidance for improvement on the next draft. Working collaboratively, writing teachers began to develop analytical scoring tools for evaluating different aspects of student writing. (see the special section about the 6+1 Trait™ Writing Model).
"What is the single most important thing that we as a profession know now that we didn't know 30 years ago about the teaching and learning of writing in elementary school?"
Researcher J.M. Jensen posed that question to education experts in 1993, 30 years after the critical Braddock Report. Their responses are captured in these key points:
Two new books from NWREL illustrate that—especially during the early elementary years—reading and writing are as inseparable as two sides of the same coin. Rebecca Novick, in Many Paths to Literacy: Language, Literature, and Learning in the Primary Classroom, draws on research and evidence coming from diverse classrooms to show, "when reading and writing are taught together, the benefits are greater than when they are taught separately." Like talking and listening, she asserts, "reading and writing are inseparable processes."
Many Paths to Literacy outlines a comprehensive program to help children build bridges from home to school, from oral language to written language, from letter decoding to reading comprehension. Novick, who has written widely on early literacy, integrates research findings with the insights, strategies, and classroom examples of effective teachers.
Sharing the Wisdom of Practice: Schools That Optimize Literacy Learning for All Students adds another layer of understanding to the concepts presented in Many Paths to Literacy. Written by Novick and Amy Fisher, Sharing the Wisdom of Practice takes an indepth look at the beliefs and practices of four diverse schools in the Northwest. The authors use examples from the region to present classroom strategies for promoting literacy among culturally diverse learners.
Another recent NWREL publication, Learners, Language, and Technology: Making Connections That Support Literacy, helps teachers understand the role technology can play in early literacy. Authors Judy Van Scoter and Suzie Boss outline classroom strategies to incorporate a wide range of tools to enhance learning. Student publishing receives special attention, along with projects that use technology to extend learning far beyond the classroom.
For information about ordering any of these publications, see the NWREL Products Catalog Online, www.nwrel.org/comm/catalog or call 1-800-547-6339, ext. 519.
Write only from experience, but you must be one on whom nothing is lost.
Classrooms that generate good writing tend to be active places. Students may talk in pairs or small groups, offering peer critiques about works in progress. The teacher might be off in a corner, meeting with students for individual story conferences or offering a mini-lesson to answer a question that has just come up. And students who are actually putting words on paper might be working with pencil and paper, diagramming their ideas in story webs, or writing and editing on computers. When it's time to share writing samples, the teacher may volunteer himself as a model, reading his own work aloud and inviting students to offer feedback to guide revision.
Creating this atmosphere of a writers' workshop requires skill and flexibility on the teacher's part. It's a new role for many teachers: being a writing coach (and fellow writer), rather than the resident expert.
Cotton's research synthesis, although now more than a decade old, pointed to several practical suggestions that have stood the test of time. Among her key lessons for writing teachers:
An ERIC Digest that traces how writing instruction has evolved (Writing Instruction: Changing Views Over the Years, November 2000) also outlines several ideas to "reconceptualize teaching" in the writing classroom. Author Carl Smith summarizes research suggesting that teachers:
In many communities, teachers have taken the lead in promoting effective classroom practices. The National Writing Project (NWP), founded in 1974 at the University of California at Berkeley, has grown to include some 165 local sites—including at least one in each of the five states in the Northwest region—that help teachers improve how they teach writing. Local sites also develop programs that address particular needs in their communities, such as effective writing assessment or strategies to help students meet state writing benchmarks.
The grassroots project first engages teachers in the learning process, giving them a chance to focus on their own writing during an intensive summer institute. Then, throughout the following school year, teachers reconnect with fellow participants to continue brainstorming, problem solving, and providing peer support. Educational Leadership has called the project "arguably the most successful teacher network in the United States."
Researchers Ann Lieberman and Diane Wood share their analysis of what makes the project effective in the March 2002 issue of Educational Leadership. They write: "Because teachers engage directly in the learning process, they pay attention to the frustrations, fears, joys, and triumphs of being a learner. They can apply these insights to their teaching practices." Two key features emerge from their study of NWP sites:
Such supportive learning communities for adult learners mirror classrooms where students find time, effective instruction, and encouragement to develop into strong writers.
A recent evaluation of the National Writing Project by the Academy for Educational Development found that the project has "a profound impact" on participating teachers' beliefs and practices. NWP teachers make writing "part of everything we do." They tend to infuse writing throughout the curriculum and across subject areas, spending more time on writing instruction than non-participants. They are more likely to use exemplary instructional practices such as asking students to produce more than one draft, write in journals, choose their own topics, and use a computer to write and edit. (For more information about the National Writing Project or its local affiliates, see National Effort, Local Focus.)
The National Writing Project, based at the University of California Berkeley, provides professional development to improve the teaching of writing and improve learning in the nation's schools. Teacher knowledge, expertise, and leadership are the cornerstones of this model, which has spread to include programs in all 50 states.
Every state—including the five states of the Northwest region—has at least one NWP- affiliated program that offers summer institutes where teachers examine their classroom practice, conduct research, and develop their own writing skills. During the school year, the same teachers continue to collaborate and provide one another with ideas, support, and more formal training in the "writing-to-learn" approach. Local sites also develop programs that address particular needs in their communities, such as effective writing assessment or strategies to help students meet state writing benchmarks.
For more information about the National Writing Project, start at the Web site: www.writingproject.org. A variety of resources and publications are available, as well as information about NWP activities.
For example, NWP Interactive is a growing online community of teachers, writing project site directors, and staff members who share tools, resources, and strategies about teaching writing. A variety of other initiatives are being developed to help participants explore the intersections of technology, writing, and learning.
In the Northwest region, NWP-affiliated programs offer a variety of resources for teachers, including:
ALASKA: Alaska State Writing Consortium, which involves school districts working together to promote and improve the teaching of writing in the state. Web site: http://pec.jun.alaska.edu:16080/aswc/.
IDAHO: Northwest Inland Writing Project, based at the University of Idaho. Web site: www.uidaho.edu/ed/niwp1/.
MONTANA: Montana Writing Project, based at the University of Montana. Web site: www.umt.edu/english/mwp.htm.
OREGON: Oregon Writing Project includes programs on several colleges' sites around the state. For local contact information, visit the NWP Web site (www.writingproject.org), then select "Find a Local Site."
WASHINGTON: NWP programs include the Central Washington Writing Project (Web site: www.cwu.edu/~cwwp/) and the Puget Sound Writing Project (Web site: http://depts.washington.edu/pswpweb/).
I discovered the beauty of writing—when one can pour oneself onto a great white emptiness and fill it with emotions and thoughts and leave them there forever.
Capturing ideas on paper is hard work. Dr. Mel Levine, author of All Kinds of Minds, suggests that the process can break down for a host of reasons: memory challenges that interfere with the recall of vocabulary, content, or conventions; fine-motor challenges that make it hard for the fingers to keep up with the flow of ideas; attention deficits that can get in the way of concentration, planning, and organization of ideas.
What makes writing worth the effort? For many students, having a real audience provides motivation to overcome challenges and invest the time to shape, revise, and improve their writing. Teachers report using everything from e-mail exchanges to book publishing to connect student writers with audiences outside the classroom.
Writing To Make a Difference: Classroom Projects for Community Change (Teachers College Press, 2002) outlines the benefits of projects that connect student writers with their communities. Editor Chris Benson explains that the topics students take on through such projects vary widely from one place to another. But while topics vary, he adds, "the process doesn't. Once students select a topic that is relevant for them or for their community, they set to researching it, compiling information, and organizing data. When they have a thorough knowledge of the issues, they analyze the needs of their audience and their purposes for the writing. Then they draft and revise a document for the community."
An important step, Benson reports, "is field-testing the document on a real audience of readers. In field-testing, students gather more information about how readers actually use—and misuse—their document, and the students then use this information to improve the usability of the document through more revision."
Dixie Goswami, director of the Write to Change program at Clemson University and a faculty member of the Bread Loaf School of English, outlines key principles of projects that take students—and their writing—into local communities. In Writing To Make a Difference, she explains that such projects motivate students to:
Something else happens, as well, when students communicate their ideas. Sharing writing with an audience puts the writer to a test that may be more genuine than any other form of assessment. As Hillocks explains: "The test of it is the extent to which it stimulates the reader's thinking. [To be successful] it must re-create some of the thinking that went into it, not the twists and turns leading to dead ends, but the sets of related thinking that must underlie main ideas and messages."
When student writers—indeed, writers of any age—are successful, their words resonate with readers. "We have all encountered that kind of writing," observes Hillocks, "the kind that writes on the soul, that changes forever the way we think about issues and people."
ONLINE RESOURCES: Donald Graves, author of The Energy to Teach, offers advice about teaching writing (www.donaldgraves.org). Dr. Mel Levine shares insights on how young writers can get stuck—and unstuck (www.allkindsofminds.org/library/
articles/IgnitingTheirWriting.htm). National Council of Teachers of English provides a wealth of online resources (www.ncte.org). Information about the Nation's Report Card on Writing is available from National Center for Education Statistics (nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/writing/). 
|
This document's URL is: Home | Up & Coming | Programs & Projects: Northwest Education | People | Products & Publications | Topics © 2002 Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory Date of Last Update: 1/30/2003  |
