Empowering Writers A Balanced and Proven Approach to the
Transcription
Empowering Writers A Balanced and Proven Approach to the
Empowering Writers A Balanced and Proven Approach to the Teaching and Learning of Writing for Students Receiving Special Education Services Supporting Theory and Research In order to nurture students’ growth, Empowering Writers believes we must recognize that since children know more than they can articulate we must model vocabulary that empowers self-‐ expression. Finding the Middle Ground: A Brief History of Research on the Teaching and Learning of Writing Over the past four decades those interested in education, and specifically the role of writing instruction, have studied the process of learning to write and its application in the classroom. This research has caused a shift in instruction from what has become labeled as a traditional style of teaching writing focused on product (Parson, 1985), often including workbook based grammar and mechanics lessons, to a student-driven curriculum focused on process (Kamehameha Schools, 2007). Research has repeatedly shown that writing taught with a focus on process produces higher student achievement than writing taught with a focus on product (Amiran & Mann, 1982; Cotton, 1988; Hillocks, 1984, 1986; Holdzkom, et al. 1982; Keech & Thomas, 1987; Goldstein & Carr, 1996; Parson, 1985; Wesdorp, 1983). Completing an entire story is often overwhelming for many students, but particularly for students with a language disability. By focusing on one skill area within writing, the task becomes less daunting. The Empowering Writers materials focus on lessons and practice related to one skill area within writing at a time, effectively breaking the process down for teachers and their students. The focus on a particular skill and repeated recognition and modeling of that skill in conjunction with practice allows students with disabilities to gain confidence in skill application. Walk into any school and ask a teacher or student from second grade up about the process of writing and you are likely to hear something about the steps in the writing process – prewriting, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing (Cotton, 1988; Faigley, 1986; Kamehameha Schools, 2007; Tompkins, 2000). This process follows the basic activities used by authors in creating a piece of work, whether a casual letter or a dissertation (Tompkins, 2000). Recursively moving through this cycle with intermittent feedback, however, is not all there is to learning to write. This is clearly evident in the candid response of one fourth grade student at a school where students move freely through the writing process. When he was asked what writing was all about, he responded, “it is all about putting a lot of words on your paper, all your thoughts and ideas and never worrying about spelling or stuff. Then someday the teacher will call you to their table and tell you how to change what you did to make it good. You do that and she puts it up on the bulletin board with a sticker. Then you can start all over again.” The 1996 National Center for Education Statistics report on process writing states that, “The focus of process-oriented writing instruction is to stimulate students to think about their writing and reflect on their ideas” (Goldstein & Carr, 1996). Teachers and researchers alike have become aware that students must develop a cohesive set of authentic skills used by writers to stimulate them to think about their writing and reflect on their ideas. This should include techniques such as learning to visualize, plan, and think critically about what is included in their writing in addition to learning to move recursively through the process of writing (Kamehameha Schools, 2007). This realization is certainly not a return to the traditional style of teaching focused heavily on mechanics, grammar, and spelling. It is, rather, the seeking out of the middle ground – a balance of cohesively organized skills, strategies, and techniques with understanding and practice of the writing process. Research has repeatedly shown that students need both organized, focused instruction on the skills, techniques, and strategies used by authors in crafting a piece of writing and a chance to openly express their own thoughts and ideas (Dudley-Marling, 1996; Dudley-Marling & Dippo, 1991; Duffy & Roehler, 1991; Freppon & Headings, 1996). Still, in many classrooms writing is often taught at the ends of the spectrum, either with a narrow focus on skills practice with no real application, typical of the traditional approach (Applebee, 1981; Holbrook, 1984), or entirely open and student driven, with students independently working through the writing process with very little feedback or cohesive skills instruction. These methods leave students and teachers either bored by writing with the first approach or constantly involved in guesswork as to what writing is all about in the second. Scripted writing curricula, following the traditional method, have been found to have limited benefit and applicability in authentic writing. This is because skills taught in a workbook style are for the most part not applied by students when they move to independent writing. The use of these methodologies often causes students to dislike writing and feel constricted in their written work. Writing workshops, following the second approach, have brought both praise and criticism. Praise for the authenticity of process and the freedom of expression. Criticism for the intensive level of classroom management required (Kates, 1977), the level of difficulty of effective implementation, the questionable content of students' freely selected work (Lensmire, 1994), the often slow growth and development of students' writing skills, the inconsistency of informal assessment, and the lack of consistency and assured writing instruction across classrooms and grade levels. The questions then are, what occurs within the process, beyond the bare mechanics? What are the specific techniques, strategies, and skills that authors utilize within the framework of the writing process? How can these elements be effectively taught in the classroom setting? Feeling the need to find answers to these questions within their own classrooms and school, author and teacher Barbara Mariconda and her co-teacher Dea Auray worked to break the craft of writing down in a way that makes authors' thinking strategies and skills organized, logical, and transparent, formulating a balanced approach to the teaching and learning of writing called Empowering Writers. By pairing a well-structured curriculum of applicable writing skills and strategies that build over time with opportunities to work in the real-world format of process writing, teachers using Empowering Writers balance skill instruction with creative expression and writing process to effectively enhance their students' writing abilities. The materials are teacher and student friendly and present a balanced approach to writing instruction that has solid support in research and theory on writing development, language attainment, and learning. In one of the most comprehensive studies on methodologies of teaching writing, Hillocks (1984, 1986) boiled down twenty years of research on the teaching of writing and identified three distinct “instructional modes,” which he termed the presentational mode, the natural process mode, and the environmental mode. Briefly, the presentational mode consists of lecture and teacher-led discussion of objective focused writing concepts to be learned, followed by the study of models illustrating the concepts, specific student assignments for practicing these patterns and rules, and finally teacher feedback. This mode of teaching writing is equated with the “traditional” style writing instruction earlier. Though it was found by Hillocks to be the least effective form of writing instruction, it is the most commonly used in the classroom (Cotton, 1988, Hillocks 1984, 1986). The natural process mode consists of free writing on student selected topics with only very general guiding objectives for an audience of peers who provide feedback, followed by opportunities for student revision. This mode can be equated with teaching methodologies such as writers workshop. The natural process mode was found to be fifty percent more effective than the presentational mode. Finally, the environmental mode is characterized by clear and specific teaching and learning objectives aligned with activities and topics selected to engage students in the specific processes important to the particular aspect of writing (Hillocks 1986, p 122). The Empowering Writers curriculum and methods of instruction and learning fall within the environmental mode. This mode was found to be more than four times as effective as the presentational mode and three times as effective as the natural process mode. Because it emphasizes the importance of clear objectives, calls for guided and independent practice of skills and concepts, and requires giving students practice tasks that match and illustrate the concept taught, the environmental mode is consistent with other research on effective instruction and aligns with growing standards of instruction in leading states (Cotton, 1988). Teachers and administrators who have consistently implemented the use of Empowering Writers in their classrooms and schools attest to the significant growth in their students' writing abilities. Standardized test results reveal gains in the percentages of students passing assessments at schools using Empowering Writers, in some cases as much as 45 percentage points over five years. Passing rates on one assessment reached 98.5% after only three years of implementation. Not only did passing rates increase, but the percentage of students receiving the highest marks also significantly increased. Meanwhile, average exemplary scores for other schools in the testing area dropped (Empowering Writers, 2004). Data such as these highlight the success of Empowering Writers methods in helping high achieving students write more proficiently, while also increasing the ability of students who struggle with writing. ______________________________________________________________________________ Empowering Students receiving Special Education Services Many students with learning disabilities find writing a daunting task that evokes anxiety, stress and sometimes even tears. The idea of writing a story or piece of writing can be so overwhelming to some students that they begin to shut down and may even refuse to write. Difficulties accessing language and forming ideas into cohesive, language-rich sentences can be extremely challenging for students with special needs. Steve Graham, a Professor of Literacy at Vanderbilt University and senior editor of What Works for Special Needs Learners, suggests that teachers be very organized in their instruction. "Be systematic and explicit. Give a model. Talk about it, show it, and do it." The Empowering Writers curriculum supports consistent, assured writing experiences, built upon one another in a logical, sequential fashion. Graham and Dolores Perin, researcher and Professor of Psychology and Education at Teacher's College, Columbia University, endorse multiple writing interventions to help struggling students. Teaching effective writing strategies, summarization, writing for content learning, specific product goals, sentence combining, and inquiry activities are some of the writing interventions that Graham and Perin support that are embedded in Empowering Writers methodology, strategies and lesson plans. ______________________________________________________________________________ Teaching Effective Writing Strategies through Empowering Writers Methodology: Recognition, Modeling, Practice Successful writing programs, such as Empowering Writers, provide appropriate instructional strategies that address concrete writing needs and the teacher student interaction necessary to meet them (Amiran & Mann, 1982). The Empowering Writers methodology is based on a powerful teaching sequence introducing students to the particular writing strategy or skill through the use of age-appropriate texts, modeling the application of that same skill through teacher-led collaborative writing where the teacher thinks out loud as an author and calls for student input, followed by focused guided practice of the skill (Fountas & Pinnell, 1996). * These focused segments of writing are frequently revised, edited, and published by students. After learning to functionally apply a number of strategies and skills in this manner, the class or a small group then takes a full piece of writing through the writing process from prewriting to publishing. This allows the teacher to focus feedback and assessment of full process pieces on the application of the skills, strategies and structures that have been taught. Empowering Writers encourages the introduction and teaching of specific writing skills following an organized curricular path, scaffolding students' learning, while ensuring that all students develop comprehensive writing ability. This type of direct instruction on writing skills and strategies is important for all students, especially those who are struggling as writers (Dudley-Marling, 1996; Freppon & Headings, 1996). *View Appendix 1 for sample lessons on detailed generating questions ____________________________________________________________________________ Teaching Summarization Techniques by Using a Reading and Prewriting Framework At Empowering Writers, we believe that every reading experience should also be a prewriting experience. Teaching students how to use our summarizing frameworks every time they read to summarize what's been read, emphasizes the organizational strategy that shapes writing. Summarizing also helps students identify genre and author's purpose. Graham and Perin state, "Summarization involves explicitly and systematically teaching students how to summarize texts." * Students also improve their reading comprehension skills when they have a focus for reading. Empowering Writers gives teachers the tools and lesson plans to instruct students how to summarize text into simple, yet organized frameworks. In Writing to Read: A Meta-Analysis of the impact of Writing and Writing Instruction of Reading, by Steve Graham and Michael Hebert, evidence supports that writing about material read and teaching students how to write improves their reading comprehension, reading fluency, and word reading." Empowering Writers explicitly teaches the underlying structure and framework on which good writing is built, and into which creativity is poured. *View Appendix 2 for sample lessons on summarizing texts and structure of texts ______________________________________________________________________________ The Effectiveness of Writing as a Means to Improve Reading Writing is a powerful tool for reflecting on, clarifying, reviewing, reiterating, and assimilating information and experience. Writing about content material helps students comprehend and learn it. * Graham and Perin recommend teachers use writing as a tool for learning content matter. The very act of writing is one that requires the author to sort, organize, and sequence information in logical ways. * While science topics can be interesting vehicles for writing activities, the process of writing itself can enhance comprehension, understanding, and the grasp of the scientific concepts, content, and processes. Students' educational success depends on their abilities to read and critically analyze information presented in textbooks and other classroom materials (Berman, 2009; Klein, 1999). Empowering Writers endorses writing across content areas to: • supply students with opportunities to reflect on what they know • encourage students to wonder about what they still need to know provide a framework to organize, categorize, and make meaning of information • apply science vocabulary in a meaningful context help students assimilate and clarify what they know by articulating their knowledge to others • reveal where gaps in understanding might be • increase strategic reading skills and reinforce writing skills • • *View Appendix 3 for sample lessons on writing across content areas and sorting information _______________________________________________________________ Empowering Writers Focuses on Specific Product Goals Through Building of Writers’ Skills, Strategies, and Techniques Specific product goals involve assigning students specific, reachable goals for the writing they are to complete (Graham & Perin, 2007). The Empowering Writers curriculum supports students in the attainment strategies and skills that include all facets of writing ranging from wide in scope, such as formulation of an idea or topic and selection of the structure, form, and audience of an entire piece, to narrow focus on elements such as sentence structure and punctuation. * For example, Empowering Writers provides teachers with specific inquiry activity lessons like missing the main idea, and pick/list/choose. In addition, other strategies like combining sentences and flip the sentence help students recognize redundant sentences. The Empowering Writers sequence of instruction is based on creating the elemental sections that are the essential building blocks of a particular genre of writing. For example, when teaching narrative writing, instruction flows from study of overall narrative structure through each of the building blocks – beginnings, elaboration, suspense, main events, and endings. Each of the building blocks is the focus of the instructional methodology sequence for multiple cycles as students begin to master the strategies related to the craft. Great attention is given to building student understanding and use of clear text structures that align with the particular genre –in narrative writing this form is a diamond shape representing the typical flow and emphasis on main event of a narrative story; in expository and persuasive writing this form is a pillar with main expository ideas or supporting persuasive arguments as the shaft. As students learn how to effectively structure their writing they are able to produce more cohesive and well thought-out written works. As Amiran and Mann write in their report Written Composition, "writing is essentially an act of structuring experience" (1982, p.46). Empowering Writers gives students the support and structure to be able to effectively and fluently move their thoughts and experiences into written form. *View Appendix 4 for sample lessons on developing main idea, elaboration, and using sentence starters References on Writing Development and Instruction for Students Receiving Special Education Services Berman, I. (2009, February 25). Supporting adolescent literacy achievement. Issue Brief, 1-15. Graham, S. and Hebert, M. (2011). Writing to Read: A Meta-Analysis of the Impact of Writing and Writing Instruction on Reading. Harvard Educational Review, v81 n4 p710-744. Graham, S., & Perin, D. (2007). Writing next: Effective strategies to improve writing of adolescents in middle and high schools (Carnegie Corporation Report). Washington, DC: Alliance for Excellent Education. Graham, S. & Perin, D. (2007). A meta-analysis of writing instruction for adolescent students. Journal of Educational Psychology, 99 (3), 445-476. Klein, P. (1999). Reopening inquiry into cognitive processes in writing-to-learn. Educational Psychology Review, 11 (3), 203-270.