By Request Examines

Writing Instruction

As educators face larger classes, fewer resources, and more complex student needs, the amount of time spent teaching students how to write has declined. According to the 2002 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), fewer than half of high school seniors receive writing assignments of three pages or more, and then only once or twice a month.

At the same time that classroom focus has shifted away from writing, industry and higher education leaders are calling for greater writing proficiency among prospective employees and postsecondary students. In addition, 18 states now require students to pass a writing test to graduate from high school, and both the SAT and ACT college admissions exams will include a writing section starting next year.

To shed light on this issue, the latest edition of By Request tackles writing across the curriculum (WAC). The publication, titled Writing To Learn, Learning To Write: Revisiting Writing Across the Curriculum in Northwest Secondary Schools, provides an overview of the theories and research on how writing affects learning. It also describes the two most common WAC strategies: writing in the disciplines and writing to learn.

According to co-authors Cori Brewster and Jennifer Klump, there is a lack of gold-standard research that definitively points to a specific curriculum. However, existing research does provide some guidelines on promising practices. Brewster and Klump offer several examples of how middle and high school educators in the Northwest are working to promote writing across the curriculum. The Montana Heritage Project and the Bridges Project in Central Washington are two of the excellent writing programs that are profiled.

By Request will be published in mid-December; to obtain a free copy, e-mail NWREL at info@nwrel.org or call Amy Steve at 503-275-9720. An online version will be available at www.nwrel.org/request/ in January.