Engaging writers in effective writing practices requires a knowledgeable and strategic teacher. Effective instruction that leads to improved student outcomes in writing requires direct instruction, relevant writing tasks, feedback, and student self-regulation. These 4 instructional moves that, when implemented strategically, can support student engagement and achievement in writing.
1. Direct Instruction
Direct instruction refers to the approaches and strategies the teacher considers when providing instruction.
Clear Vision: What is the goal of the lesson? What are you teaching that students will apply in their own work? What do students need to know and be able to try at the end of the lesson? This goal should be clear and actionable. This means teaching one skill at a time to ensure students have been taught what you are asking them to do.
Communicate: Communicate the goal to students in student-friendly terms. When you finish your lesson, what will students attempt independently and/or with peers? Clearly communicate the learning goals and success criteria.
Explain: Explain to students the skill you are teaching that supports the goal. For example, if students are working on elaboration, you might teach them how to add supporting details in an informational piece, or add character traits to a narrative piece. Explain why the skill is important to their writing, how a published author did it (using a mentor text), and how they can do it in their writing.
Model: Model how students will achieve the goal in their independent writing. This means integrating a strategy that students can implement in their own writing to achieve the goal. Modeling shows students how to do the work we are asking them to do. You can model your thinking and writing and you can model with shared writing to integrate students' ideas.
Question, Think, Respond: Ask questions that require students to develop their own ideas. Give them time to think. Offer sentence starters and sentence frames to support how students will think and respond. Then, allow them to respond to questions with answers. In order to allow everyone an opportunity to respond, provide opportunities for students to turn and talk to a partner.
2. Learning Goals and Tasks
Learning goals refers to what teachers think and do when deciding on learning goals for writers. Learning tasks refers to what teachers think and do related to the writing tasks students will do independently.
Matched Goals: The goal of each student should be specifically matched to what the student can do and what they need next. Students should understand their individual goals and how to work towards them. Matched goal-setting happens in 1:1 writing conferences.
Matched Tasks: Learning tasks should be matched to the needs of each writer. To accomplish this, consider what the student will need in order to be successful in accomplishing their goal. This could be extended writing opportunities for advanced writers, or it could be scaffolded tasks to support the development of skills for struggling writers.
Relevance and Autonomy: Learning tasks should be purposeful and relevant. When assigning learning tasks, consider how you might differentiate the content, process, or product to ensure students are able to relate to the writing you are asking them to do. If a student has never been on a summer vacation, then writing about a favorite summer vacation is both irrelevant and impossible. Autonomy is allowing choice in writing. This can be what they write about and even how they publish their work.
3. Responding to Writers
Responding to writers refers to what teachers say and how they move students forward in the writing process. Responding to writers refers to how teachers give feedback to move students forward in their writing.
Affirm with Positivity: Affirm the work students are doing with positive feedback. Be respectful of their efforts and growth by starting with something positive. For example, "I noticed you added a transitional phrase in this paragraph. This shows you can organize your thoughts and it helps me, the reader, understand how your writing is moving from part to part." What about that student who copied, verbatim, your modeled example without applying any original thoughts or ideas? You might say, "I noticed you copied the modeled example exactly! You attended to punctuation, capitalization, and even indenting as you worked on writing. This shows you can attend to formatting and details when writing independently." What have you learned from this student? Developmentally, this student is able to transfer, but may not be able to develop all of the elements independently. This student may need support in planning ideas, so you might start there. Affirm what they are approximating and be positive to support the agency and self-efficacy of each writer.
Actionable Feedback: Actionable feedback is offering students one thing to try after you give them positive feedback. You will teach one skill you want them to try, offer a strategy to support the skill, and let them try it independently. Writing is progressive, so allow students to develop ideas before focusing on spelling and mechanics.
4. Self-Regulation
Self-regulation refers to the actions of teachers that support the development of writers' sense of ownership and responsibility. Self-regulation refers to how teachers support the development of students so they can be independent learners.
Opportunities to Practice: Students need to be given opportunities to practice writing independently and/or in collaboration with other students. Steve Graham affirms that, "To get better at writing, students need opportunities to practice writing."
Self-Selected Topics: Offer students the opportunity to engage in writing self-selecting topics. If you are teaching informative writing, students can choose what topic they write about. Offering topic lists will support brainstorming and choosing topics within a genre. Self-selecting topics also supports student autonomy, motivation, and engagement.
Goals: Help students select goals, teach them the skills they need to apply to reach their goals, and give them feedback about how they are moving towards their goals. Monitor their growth and movement toward their goals to keep them moving forward.
Collaboration: Provide students opportunities to collaborate with other students. Collaboration can happen in any stage of the writing process: brainstorming, writing, revising, editing, and publishing. Collaboration encourages a supportive writing community. Collaboration also allows students to share their strengths as they support others.
Writing Is For Everyone
When planning writing instruction and teaching students, always think first of the students you are teaching. Teach grade-level standards to the whole group and then individualize goals and feedback to students in writing conferences. With effective direct instruction, relevant writing tasks, feedback, and self-regulation, students can be confident and empowered writers.
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