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Writing Next: A Call to Action

by Carol Seibert

As an educator, you know that reading and writing instruction go hand in hand. This month, we’ll take a look at the importance of writing instruction and a NEW writing intervention framework. We'll  incorporate the eleven key elements for effective writing instruction from the “Writing Next Report”, including writing strategies, summarization, goal-setting and collaborative writing. We're offering a FREE Writing Assignment, including an overview, lesson plan and off-computer lesson.

Let’s work together to quickly and effectively use good information, creative instruction and quality technology to improve the reading, thinking and writing skills of struggling learners.

What the Experts Say

“American students today are not meeting even basic writing standards, and their teachers are often at a loss for how to help them.” 

Writing Next ReportAccording to Steven Graham and Dolores Perin in their report to the Carnegie Corporation, Writing Next (2007),  “…if today’s youngsters cannot read with understanding, think about and analyze what they’ve read, and then write clearly and effectively about what they’ve learned and what they think, then they may never be able to do justice to their talents and their potential.”

Low-Achieving Writers: A Crisis in the Making?

“Writing is sometimes seen as the “flip side” of reading. It is often assumed that adolescents who are proficient readers must be proficient writers, too. If this were the case, then helping students learn to read better would naturally lead to the same students writing well.” The truth, however, is that “Many adolescents are able to handle average reading demands but have severe difficulties with writing.”

“Moreover, the nature of the relationship between reading and writing skills changes over time (Fitzgerald & Shanahan, 2000). Researchers know that reading and writing often draw from the same pool of background knowledge… however, writing differs from reading. While readers form a mental representation of thoughts written by someone else, writers formulate their own thoughts, organize them, and create a written record of them using the conventions of spelling and grammar.”

Writing Proficiently:
Organizing Information Into Knowledge

Educators and business professionals are lamenting the lack of writing proficiency displayed by young people.  In response, Drs. Steven Graham and Dolores Perin—in their comprehensive meta-analysis of scientific writing research, Writing Next (2007)—have recommended these 11 key research-supported elements to help you improve students’ writing skills. 

Eleven Key Elements of Effective Adolescent Writing Instruction

 

  • Writing Strategies
  • Summarization
  • Collaborative Writing
  • Specific Product Goals
  • Word Processing
  • Sentence Combining
  • Prewriting
  • Inquiry Activities
  • Process Writing Approach
  • Study of Models
  • Writing for Content Learning

 

Top 5 Ways To Build-in Writing Proficiency

An increasing number of educational publishers, school/district curriculum teams and educational service organizations are working hard to integrate these best practices into their product, curriculum and lesson designs.

You can “flexibly” combine these elements to meet the needs of each learner or writing task. Keep in mind that writing in the classroom is often done in response to reading, as well as to other information resources such as videos, interviews, web searches and the like. 

How to build in writing proficiency
  1. Offer a wide range of reading, thinking, organizing, analyzing and communication tools and strategies. See Solo Literacy Suite
  2. Use a variety of media, including technology, to gather information, construct meaning and communicate ideas.
  3. Select research-proven learning strategies and tools.
  4. Provide instruction appropriate to learning ability level.
  5. Allocate time to combine reading and writing instruction together.

Related resources:

Reading Next (2004)
Reading in the 21st Century (2003)
Interventions for Adolescent Struggling Readers (2007)

SOLO Writing CoachDon Johnston Incorporated is committed to providing technology and learning tools that use these research-proven strategies to support your literacy efforts. SOLO Writing Coach is our latest intervention that incorporates the key elements of excellent writing instruction and paired with the SOLO Literacy Suite will show results in as little as 6 weeks!

Go to Part II and get your FREE SOLO Writing Coach Lesson today!

View these tried and true reading, writing and thinking programs to support your struggling learners:  Read:OutLoud, Draft:Builder, Write:OutLoud, Co:Writer, Start-to-Finish Library, Start-to-Finish Core Content, and Incite Learning Series film sets.


Download MORE FREE lessons (many with Start-to-Finish audio and text files), templates and Co:Writer Topic Dictionaries at /downloads/.