Literacy Now

Many parents and caregivers look at their children’s math homework and say it looks nothing like the math they learned as kids. Today, students use more strategies to solve problems and focus on conceptual understanding of math rather than just relying on memorization and tricks. But what appears to be less obvious to parents is that literacy instruction has evolved dramatically too—particularly when it comes to how we teach writing.

Integrating reading and writing

I remember, not too fondly, one writing assignment I gave my students in which I asked them to write about the most disgusting thing that happened to them. It led to giggles and students were paying attention that day. But were they learning much to support their success in school and beyond? Not really.

I also love a fourth-grade lesson in which teachers ask students to write about what makes a literal and figurative “great heart” after assigning them to read the scientific book all and other texts about Clara Barton, the nurse who founded the American Red Cross. Students learn about biology, anatomy, and an important figure in American history while developing their writing skills at the same time.

No more blank stares

This approach is very different from the writing prompts I used earlier in my career that were based only on the students’ personal experiences. Those might have included assignments like, “Write about what you did this weekend” or “Write about a memorable moment in your life.”

The truth is, when I asked those kinds of questions, I often got panicked stares. Many students would say they didn’t have anything to write about. This was especially true for students who felt their home lives weren’t as colorful or interesting as that of their peers. This raised concerns about equity and whether we were ensuring all voices were heard in the classroom.

I started to shift my instruction when Tennessee adopted new college and career standards about a decade ago. The standards showed me the value of connecting reading and writing assignments. Now, thankfully, classroom resources and practices are catching up with the standards, and we’re seeing much more robust literacy instruction across the grades in our schools.

Steps you can take

So, if you’re an educator, explore how curating rich texts around a meaningful knowledge-building topic will support all students in becoming stronger writers. Consider moving away from having students draw on their own experiences as writing topics and toward offering equitable access to shared knowledge. You will be amazed at the insightful writing your students will create.

Encourage parents to look at the assignments coming home and consider whether they look like the writing tasks of their school days. Hopefully, they’ll say they are different and better. The homework should encourage students to engage with great books and build their knowledge on important topics, all while developing strong writing skills.

Students have been through a lot this past year and a half, particularly when it comes to educational disruptions. But if we keep making progress in the English language arts classroom, I’m confident we can help young people develop the skills and knowledge to be great readers and writers. That’s something to feel thankful for as we settle into this school year—and beyond.

Educator Meg Kinlaw, a new ILA member, is a curriculum developer for Wit & Wisdom, an English language arts curriculum published by Great Minds. She previously taught middle and high school students and served as an English language arts consultant with the Tennessee Department of Education. You can follow her on Twitter at @meg0701. 

Do you struggle getting your students to enjoy writing? Lack of motivation at writing time was a dilemma I faced until I made a few small changes during my writing workshop to emphasize objective feedback and opportunities to engage students in writing that is relevant, authentic, and challenging.

Writing dilemma #1: Getting started

I tend to be a teacher of routine when it comes to how I teach writing. I teach my minilesson, which includes opportunities for scaffolded practice in the large group, with partners, and then individually. As students get back to their desks and sit down, all too often I hear “I don’t know what to write!” coming from the same student. This particular student, who I will call Max (pseudonym), is one of the most academically gifted students in my class, performing above grade level for all academic subjects. Each day, Max stresses over what to write about, which in turn leads to a brainstorming conference with me to get some writing ideas flowing. Once Max has an idea, he becomes a writing machine! I began to ask myself: How can I help this student to become more motivated to get started each day?

I realized I was missing an important step in the writing process. Perhaps students should work together with a writing partner to brainstorm writing ideas before they get started on their writing. Fien De Smedt, Steve Graham, and Hilde Van Keer stress the importance of allowing students to work in a peer writing relationship because of the positive impact it will have on writing motivation. When students are able to pair up with a writing partner and discuss topics to write about on a daily basis, they can aid each other and ignite ideas, leading to more independence from the teacher.

Writing dilemma #2: Assigning topics

Another writing dilemma that students commonly face is the fact that they are disinterested in the writing topic that is assigned by the teacher. Oftentimes students are not able to relate to a specific topic that the teacher assigns. If students cannot make a connection to the topic, then writing motivation plummets. By allowing flexibility in writing topics, students can pick a subject area that is of interest to them. Teachers can still provide a general guideline of how a writing assignment should be completed and even give a list of idea topics that could be chosen. What if a student still does not find a topic from the list the teacher provides? Allow students to move outside the writing topics if they can continue to follow the writing guidelines.

Writing dilemma #3: Choosing activities that challenge

As teachers, we are constantly differentiating in our classroom to meet the needs of our students for reading and math. Why not do the same for our writers? When students find writing activities to be challenging enough to be successful and achieve the writing goal, then they will be more motivated to write. Researchers Shui-fong Lam and Yin-kum Law state, “a task that is challenging yet achievable is motivating because it enhances students’ perceived value and expectancy of success.” When writing tasks are too easy or too difficult and not in the correct zone of learning, students will not be motivated to complete the assignment. It is our job as teachers to make sure these activities are achievable so students can feel successful. One way to do this is by adjusting the length of a writing assignment to meet the needs of individual writers. If a student struggles to write, keeping a shorter goal may be more motivating for the student.

Writing dilemma #4: Providing feedback

In my early years of teaching, I often found myself with my colored pen fixing spelling errors, punctuation, and grammar on my students’ writing assignments. I was never taught how to properly teach writing when I got my undergraduate degree. Proper training in how to teach writing is a key element to motivating writers. I soon learned that letting my students write phonetically and leaving their writing with spelling errors was part of the writing process for elementary students. Teachers must work toward a growth mind-set with their students, which will in turn lead towards motivation in writing. When giving feedback to students, it is important to find the positives in their work. Providing objective feedback on a student’s writing instead of criticizing errors will help keep students feeling positive about their progress. 

Motivating writers

By making small adjustments to your writing routine, your students will feel more motivated to write. Allowing students to choose topics of interest is one way to motivate your students. Another way is by providing tasks that are challenging yet allow them to feel successful as writers. Last, offering feedback that is objective and positive will help students develop a growth mind-set. By integrating these objectives into your writing instruction, you will motivate your students to become enthusiastic and motivated about writing.

Juliana Ekren is a graduate student at Concordia University St. Paul in Minnesota.

Organization, neatness, and structure have never come naturally to me. I will be the first to admit that I am one of the least organized people you will ever meet. My to-do list rarely gets finished; I have a desktop that is a mosaic of mismatched files and downloads; my office is cluttered with books, sticky notes, and note cards; and don’t even get me started on my closet. Perhaps my penchant for clutter, chaos, and disarray is why I have such a love for writing and teaching it.

Writing is messy

You see, real, honest, authentic writing is messy. Real writing is that early morning, just-out-of-bed look—not the “I’m ready for my close up,” pretend this is how I look at 5:00 a.m., Instagram post–worthy version. Nah. Real, authentic writing does not just emerge polished and ready to publish. Instead, it often requires practice and work. To quote Dolly Parton in Steel Magnolias, “It takes some effort to look like this!” and writing is no different. It is a unique process, complicated and non-linear. Recursive and dynamic. The writing process is organized chaos. Fragments falling. Sentence puzzles taken apart and put back together. Words omitted. Words added. There is no one right way to write. And this is why I love it.

And this is why students need to write often and for a variety of purposes: They need practice. Authentic writing is rarely formulaic, neatly contained, and boxed in. It can’t be reduced to a clever acronym where students fill in the blanks and respond, and it certainly isn’t something that we can race to complete. Because real writing looks messy, it requires deliberate planning and purpose, strategic thinking and decision making, and careful consideration and awareness of audience and purpose. Plus, writing often and for a variety of purposes not only helps students become better writers but also aids in their development as readers.

The only way that students will get better at writing is by writing. Writing engagements can be used in any content classroom, at any time, and with any audience. Regardless of a student’s reading or writing skills or level, there is some type of writing that they can do daily.

Parachute Writings

I use the term Parachute Writings (PWs) to describe quick writing opportunities that can be easily deployed in the classroom. PWs can be dropped into just about any lesson and require limited up front preparation.

Just like parachutes prevent skydivers from crashing into the ground, PWs offer an element of safety for students. They are quick, low stakes, and flexible, which provides students the opportunity to practice multiple writing skills for a variety of purposes and audiences in short bursts.

PWs can be conducted with a partner or in a group setting, which offers another level of safety. Think about real skydivers: Before they attempt a solo jump, they take part in tandem jumps as part of their learning and training. Writing is no different. Building confidence in writing often is achieved through collaborative exercises and peer engagements.

PWs can be dropped into lessons at multiple points in your teaching on a frequent, daily basis; however, you need to be mindful about when the writing should be deployed and where. Although versatile and flexible, there is a specific element of purposeful implementation when using PWs. When planning PWs and adding them into lessons, it is helpful to consider the overall objectives and goals of the lesson.

Here are some easy PWs that you might try in your own teaching.

• Drop Drafts are great PWs that can be used at any point in a lesson. Have students stop what they are doing and write for a minute or so (this can be in the form of a prompt or question posed by the teacher or other writing task). Remind students that this writing is only going to be seen by them so they will be more likely to write truthfully and freely. After the students finish their Drop Draft, have them crumble up their papers and “drop” them in the trash on the way out the door. Because this PW is not graded or read by peers, it can be used not only for clarification or understanding of content but also for sensitive, non-academic issues.
• Quick writes (QWs) are some of the easiest PWs because they can take on multiple forms with the click of a pen. In a flash, QWs can transform into a whole different writing engagement based on the context and purpose of the lesson. These quick bursts of writing are often shared with peers or extended later into more developed pieces of writing. Plus, quick writes offer students the ability to read and respond to a variety of texts using any number of activator questions or thinking prompts.
  
  Easy QWs might involve a small excerpt of text such as song lyrics, a short passage from a novel, or a poem. You might ask students to write about what the piece reminds them of, have them borrow a line from the writing, or pick out words they like. You can also use images, movie clips, and objects for QWs. For example, one summer I used slices of watermelon as a descriptive writing QW for my students. QWs are great not only for daily writing but also for extension opportunities. If students connect with a particular QW, they can choose to extend it to a more developed piece later.
• Hear This is a strategy that works extremely well with listening and speaking lessons, highly descriptive texts, or concepts that require students to visualize material. An easy way to incorporate this type of writing is in tandem with highly descriptive material. As the text is read aloud to the students, they draw what they hear, thus creating a physical visual of the material. After students have created this visual accompaniment to the read-aloud text, have them add words from the text on sticky address labels or sticky notes and affix them to the drawing. This is a great way to teach not only listening comprehension and visualization but also textual evidence.

Regardless of the subject area or grade level, offering students multiple opportunities to write helps them grow into strong, confident writers. Try deploying one of these Parachute Writing activities into your lessons and watch your students soar.

Interested in reading about more high-interest, engaging ways to get students to write? Pick up a copy of Write Now and Write On: 37 Strategies for Authentic Daily Writing in Every Content Area to learn more about easy-to-implement writing ideas for students.

ILA member Rebecca G. Harper is an associate professor of literacy at Augusta University, Georgia. She serves as an invited speaker and keynote presenter for a variety of literacy conferences and delivers literacy professional development sessions across the United States. Her research interests include sociocultural theory, critical literacy, and content and disciplinary literacy. She resides in Aiken, SC, with her husband, Will, and children, Amelia, Macy Belle, and Vin. You can follow her on Twitter and on Instagram.

Instructional practices are all about how we teach students. Recently, while perusing the pages of the International Literacy Association’s Instructional Practices online resource, I was struck by the expansiveness of the listed methods: project based learning, student engagement through classroom libraries, collaborations between schools and the communities, and many others. To these powerful “big picture” practices, however, I would add a number of small, hour-by-hour instructional techniques educators can use to produce greater gains in student learning, especially for those who struggle to read, write, and spell. Here are three.

Wait time (think time)

Wait time is a technique that engages students, promotes language use, builds background knowledge, and increases comprehension. When students are given time to think before answering, their brains have time to more deeply and completely process questions and directions, recall facts and figures, and synthesize information.

At its core, the technique involves asking a question or requesting an action and then requiring students to think silently for a period of time before raising their hands to answer or before turning to talk to a partner. Three seconds of wait time is appropriate for the short attention spans of pre-K and kindergarten students. Increase the time to five seconds for 1st and 2nd graders. For older students, give six or seven seconds. The general behavior of different groups may call for more or less think time. Also, vary the amount of time depending upon the task. Students will need more time when a question calls for a more complex answer.

Direct and explicit instruction

When presenting critical literacy elements, from phonic patterns and vocabulary word definitions to comprehension strategies, be direct and explicit in your teaching. In other words, take the shortest paths possible to learning. For example, when I first present information on letter sounds, spelling patterns, and vocabulary words, I do my best to avoid asking students questions such as “Who knows what sound this letter makes?” and “Does anyone know what this word means?” Likewise, I steer clear of doing a discovery activity. Instead, the first thing I do is directly and explicitly tell students what I want them to know, see, or do. Why? Because it doesn’t harm anyone, and it greatly helps students who are at risk of reading difficulties.

Researchers and clinicians have been pointing out the power of direct and explicit instruction for years. The technique—which is easy to use, time efficient, and highly effective in getting kids to initially learn basic information—often involves specifically telling students what you want them to learn, explicitly modeling actions, and having students immediately repeat the information and actions with you and then to you.

This is not to say exploration, construction, and discovery should be tossed in the dumpster. The human mind is built for exploring and constructing, and so having students discover spelling patterns and make inferences based on text clues are instructionally valuable things to do. Nonetheless, I typically begin with direct and explicit instruction. Why?  First, to be as efficient as possible. Second, to minimize the possibility that incorrect learning will occur. And third, to support students who need it. Later, once my at-risk learners have developed some foundational knowledge, I bring in differentiated exploration and discovery activities.

Repetition and distributed practice

It pays to assume that some students will need many exposures to master skills and remember information. This is especially true for children who have or may have a reading difficulty such as dyslexia. As Dr. Richard Gentry writes, one way to easily support children with dyslexia is to “embrace repetition” in their instruction “because the brain ‘loves’ repetition for developing automaticity in almost every skill.”

Effectively using repetition means more than repeating words and sentences over and over again. Rather, it is giving learners multiple chances to actively practice skills in multiple ways. To program for the number of exposures some students need, think in terms of differentiation, gradual release, and multi-modal presentations.

It helps to think of repetition as something other than mindless drills. Rather, consider it a discipline that leads to competence and freedom.  As a musician, I know my repeated practicing of scales and rhythms lets me to have fun later on at a gig, where I can then improvise during a jazz tune or effortlessly read a musical score. In the realm of writing, students benefit from repeatedly practicing skills, including word spellings, grammatical rules, and text organization, all of which lay the foundation for crafting pieces that engage, inform, and entertain readers. Meanwhile, in the area of reading, skill repetition leads to reading fluency (accuracy, rate, and prosody), which in turn leads to greater comprehension.

Repeated practice should never be mindless and doesn’t have to be boring. For example, make skill practice more engaging by distributing it in small amounts over the course of the day rather than in monolithic blocks. Likewise, make the repetition of spelling-phonic patterns more interesting by presenting them in a variety of ways: in flip books that can be read, in word ladders that can be written on white boards, and on tiles that can be physically manipulated to make words.

Conclusion

When used hour-by-hour and day-after-day, small but powerful instructional practices (teaching techniques) can complement large-scale ones. The end goal of all effective practices is the same: increased student achievement and happiness.

Learn more from Mark Weakland by registering the on-demand recording of his ILA Webinar “Preventing and Overcoming Reading Difficulties, Pre-K–3,” sponsored by Corwin.

Mark's book How to Prevent Reading Difficulties is available to buy now from Corwin. Use coupon code ILA2021 during checkout for 25% off and free shipping on this book when you purchase at Corwin.com by October 1, 2021.

ILA member Mark Weakland is an author, consultant, teacher, and musician. He is the creator of teacher resource books, award-winning music projects, and almost 80 books for children. Follow Mark on Twitter at @MarkWeakland.

I started sharing lunch outside on the playground with my students when we returned to in-person learning last spring. We had the best conversations. It was an unexpected gift of the pandemic. One day one of my second graders asked me to share some important words. “You know, big ones, like esophagus or large intestine,” he said.

“Hmm,” I wondered loudly, making a point to show I was really thinking. “Like maybe bolus or villi?” I answered, smiling.

“Yeah, but like ones we don’t know,” he replied grinning.

Practicing Academic Vocabulary and Building Knowledge

The reason esophagus and large intestine came up in our lunch conversation was because of a unit in our English language arts curriculum focused on the driving question, “How does food nourish us?” Students began their study of food by building knowledge about digestion.

The student who asked me to introduce some big words over lunch is learning multiple languages and was acquiring some seriously scientific language and background knowledge through our texts and writing tasks. These are words that students don’t use daily: esophagus, nutrients, digestive system. By the end of this unit, I wanted every student, including the multilingual students who needed extra support with academic vocabulary, to feel successful in their understanding of the digestive system and in reading complex texts.

It’s a challenging task for students who may not already know a lot about the digestive system. And it is even more challenging for students learning English and acquiring the vocabulary to accurately describe what happens in the digestion process, a process they cannot actually see.

Education researcher Susan B. Neuman wrote in her article “Comprehension in Disguise: The Role of Knowledge in Children’s Learning“ that comprehension of a text requires that students bring what they already know, or background knowledge, to what they want to learn.

As a classroom teacher, I wanted to provide a hands-on experience to my students to help solidify the knowledge they were building in class.

Hands-on Learning through a room transformation

The solution I came up with was to transform the classroom for a day and allow students to experience the inside of the digestive system to deepen their understanding of how it works. I collaborated with my grade-level team to create four stations that students could visit: the mouth, the esophagus, the stomach, and the small intestine. I loved that it provided all learners an opportunity to apply new and more technical vocabulary(esophagus,digest) with words they already knew (mouth, stomach).

At each station, students learned essential vocabulary, such as system, digest, absorb, and saliva. They would need to know these words for conversations at each station and for their writing. Then, students used specialized topic-specific words—like the word bolus at the esophagus station and villi at the stomach—necessary to complete the different tasks and activities at each station.

At the esophagus station, for example, students labeled the parts of the digestive system on a diagram. After students created food in the first station, they delivered their food to the esophagus station. Here students took the food and rolled it into a bolus or a ball that would fit down the esophagus (a cardboard tube).

The third station took students to the stomach, where they experimented with a piece of bread and a plastic bag of vinegar to represent how the stomach breaks down food. The students acted as the stomach muscles to break down the bread. Finally, students used a marble run to create a physical representation of the small intestine. They designed the interlocking pieces and then ran a piece of food, represented by a marble, through the system.

On the day we transformed the room, I spent my time at the mouth and esophagus stations, helping the modeling clay food travel from one station to the next, engaging in conversations, supporting students with vocabulary when needed, but most important, listening. I discovered students used academic language during deep and meaningful discussions about the workings of each station.

As you might imagine, this hands-on learning was a lot of fun for the students. But what did it have to do with English?

Rooting it all in literacy

For one, my students had to expertly capture the steps of the digestive system’s process—both in speaking and in writing. All students ended the lesson by talking about their experiences at each station and what they would write in their final piece. All students completed the writing, and all learners were able to participate and feel successful in the experience and in their writing. They also had plenty of time to improve their reading skills at each station.

And at every step, they added to their base of knowledge. Students were not only more prepared to answer the question “How can food nourish our body?” but also able to explain the steps in a process, which set them up for success later when we studied the way certain foods travel from farms to our dining rooms.

Room transformations are a great reminder that students can have fun while building essential knowledge. Adding vocabulary practice ensured that the words and the experiences won’t soon be forgotten and are transferable to their writing.

Remember where we started, out at that picnic table? We ended up making “Lunch With Language” a regular thing, and it’s something I hope to bring back this coming school year. Mixing casual conversation with emerging vocabulary is fun for students, and that should be an important goal in its own right for every school coming out of the pandemic.

ILA member Jami Witherell is a second-grade teacher at Newton School, a public elementary school in Greenfield, MA. She is also a Massachusetts Teacher of the Year 2022 semi-finalist and a seasonal associate with Wit & Wisdom, published by Great Minds. In that role, Witherell provides professional development to teachers using the ELA curriculum. Her room transformation was brought to life with the support of DonorsChoose.org and was named one of the top 5 wackiest requests of the 2020–21 school year by the organization. Follow her on Twitter at@ms_witherell.