More on Teaching Writing...

What I think makes a difference

Reflecting on and recording my thoughts about teaching writing has been interesting and worthwhile. 

Also, recently the Tai Tokerau Literacy Association held their annual 'mystery bus tour' which visited my classroom. I was able (with permission from my students)  to share some of their writing and the process involved. (See my previous posts) To chat with other teachers and share this inquiry was a very positive and affirming exercise and I received a lot of positive feedback. Unfortunately I failed to take photos on the night, but this is how my classroom looked, if you can imagine students' writing books and 'published' works out on their desks:

Also on display were a number of previous co-constructed Success Criteria charts. I like to write these on chart paper so that they can be referred to throughout the process. I've been suprised to note that when these are later displayed around the room, students sometimes take the initiative to refer to them for their own free-choice writing or in their conference group discussions about writing. The charts look like this:

Not exactly neat nor even well presented, but it is a co-constructed, student voiced criteria and a working document which is constantly referred to throughout the writing process. 

Incidentally, this one is for a piece of narrative writing about a magic ring. This topic relates to our previous shared book literature study on 'The Hobbit' by JRR Tolkien. I find that narratives work best when students are given a plot framework which stops them from 'getting lost' and writing without the end in mind. The plot outline for this piece looked like this:

I think that you can tell I'm not big on handwriting and making things look pretty. That is not my priority.

Maybe because they know "The Hobbit' really well, the students seemed very motivated to write this narrative. Here is a finished piece, photo taken prior to my marking. I think the child's self assessment demonstrates how he has focussed on the success criteria.

 The students really do seem to enjoy working this way to improve their writing.  The results have been good. (More on this later) These are the points which I think have made a difference:

• Having a co-constructed success criteria which is available and referred to throughout the process.
• Student working in mixed ability conference groups, using the success criteria to assist each other to 'grow' their work.
• Providing individualised written feed forward.
• Asking students to highlight their teacher written feed forward and record it as a future goal.
• Having students self -assess  each published piece according to the success criteria before teacher marking.
• Generally requiring students to be more reflective about their own writing.

The next step? I think as the teaching year draws to a close, before this class moves on to that big world we call High School, I will ask them to complete a short survey. Perhaps just 3 questions to gauge their own thoughts about their writing progress. I'll also take a closer look at their progress over the year and collate some data.

I'll let you know how I get on and I'll share my final thoughts for the year about my inquiry into the teaching of writing sometime soon. 

Thanks for taking the time to read my blog.

Further Thoughts About Teaching Writing 

Lately I've been thinking about the teaching and learning of writing. To be able to communicate effectively in writing is an important prerequisite for the future academic success of our learners.  So it concerns me that in my school, statistics indicate a significant group of students who are achieving below expectations in both surface features and deeper features. These results are reflected in my own class of year 8 students.

It is clear to me that the students who who sit in the below / just below cohort in writing are capable learners. After all, they started school at 5 years old with very few skills and now they can write. They can write at around level 2, maybe up to beginning level 3. They have learnt that much. So clearly they can learn.

So initially I wanted to know why. WHY have these kids not managed to meet the required standard? But then I realised that the 'WHY' doesn't matter. Laying blame, speculating and pointing finger as to why these students haven't achieved won't improve their performance. It won't prepare them for high school. Asking why is a cop-out. The real question, the important question is WHAT? As in 'What am I going to do about it?'

I needed to identify the issues. What is it that prevents any piece of student writing from being assessed at the required level?  On taking a close look at the work of the underachieving writers in my class I felt that there were two specific things holding them back:

1. Vocabulary. The writing of the students in the target group lacks a general maturity of vocabulary. These writers tend to use too many 'baby' words in a row. This sort of thing..."and then we got in the car and went to ..." They don't seem to have a very big 'internal resource bank ' of words and they tend not to explore new words.

2. Sentence Structure. Target group students write almost entirely in mid-length (sometimes long) simple sentences. They generally do not include commas or other more advanced forms of punctuation and sentences most often begin with simple words such as 'then, the, when, I,' etc. Some forget about sentences completely.

 So, this seems easy! I just have to fix those two issues and the problem will be solved. So there's that question again; 'What am I going to do about it?'

1. What am I going to do to assist students to develop a wider vocabulary and use it in their writing?

• I am going to read aloud to my class everyday from quality literature and specifically teach the meaning of selected unfamiliar words.
• I am going to use these texts to discuss words and develop 'interesting word charts' which will be displayed and referred to.
• I am going to create a classroom environment rich in text.
• I am going to ensure that learning new words is interesting and fun and occurs almost daily.

2. What am I going to do to assist students to develop a greater variety of sentence structures in their writing?

• I am going to read aloud to my class everyday from quality literature and use these texts as sentence structure exemplars.
• I am going to teach specific lessons on punctuation. Students will be taught how to apply commas, colons, speech marks, apostrophes. These short lessons will be whole class but may be re-visited with target group writers.
• I am going to use sentence structure as an on-going focus of success criteria for writing.
• I am going to give students targeted written feed forward about sentence structure. They will use this feed forward to create personalised writing goals.

You will notice that I believe part of the answer to both of these questions is the reading aloud and discussion of quality literature. To constantly be showing learners what good text looks like and sounds like is a really powerful teaching tool. Reading aloud to students is something that I feel strongly about. I think it is a topic which warrants its own blog post. Watch this space (and check out my read-alouds.)

Other important points include the explicit teaching of vocabulary and punctuation and providing really good, targeted written feed forward on students' writing. This is then used by the students to create personalised learning goals for the next piece of writing. Please read my previous blog post on this topic.

However, to me the real key to improving student achievement in writing is when I (the teacher) can identify and focus on the specific issues and ask "What am I going to do about it?" 

Teachers, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts about this.

Why do I bother marking student writing when they barely even look at my comments?

Making Written Feed Forward Work.

Students need good feedback and feedforward in order to improve their writing. But are our written comments on students' writing actually a meaningful part of the teaching and learning process?  How can we ensure that students take our written comments on board to further their skills?

Too often I have spent a considerable amount of my precious time assessing student writing only to have them glance at their score/grade and then disregard the most valuable bit, my personalised 'feed-forward' comments. This frustrated me, for I felt that my written comments, if given due consideration by the learner should be almost as valuable as an individual teacher conference.

This year I really wanted to address this issue and ensure that all learners would acknowledge my feed forward and actually apply it to improve their writing skills.

So, here's what I've tried; I'll explain from the beginning of the process. Most writing has a success criteria (perhaps 3-4 main points / goals.)  The students think they develop this, the best-practice teaching textbook might call it 'co-construction', but let's face it, it's actually me who chooses the success criteria. I just allow the learners to believe that they have selected the key learning points. It makes them happy. I usually write the success criteria up on chart paper and refer to it throughout the process. Even after that I hang it on the classroom wall.

I make up a student / teacher assessment sheet based on the agreed success criteria. I insist that students assess their own writing before handing it in for teacher assessment. Sometimes this might be a peer assisted activity. Students MUST add a comment about their writing. Always. A typical assessment sheet might look like this:

Marking. This is the time consuming bit for me, but I figure that if I can be sure that my students will consider and learn from my written comments then the time spent marking is actually valuable, individualised, differentiated teaching time. I always try to include positive feedback and a 'next - steps' type feed forward comment. An interesting development that I have discovered is, that as the students became accustomed to this style of assessment they began writing their own really good feed - forward comment. It gives me a  'teacher - type - buzz' when I find myself writing, "I agree with your comment, you know what your next steps are to improve your poetic (or whatever) writing.  Continue to focus on......

The next step, I think, is the most important bit, when students receive some written comments from me I always use some class time to insist that they read and consider it. They use a highlighter and I ask them to highlight the 'next-steps' comment. At this point their finished writing and assessment might look a bit like this:

Finally,  (not really, for the process will surely never end!) when we begin our NEXT piece of writing (similar genre) I will have the students start by reflecting on their assessment and recording a personal goal based on their highlighted text from my written comment. This goal will be re-visited throughout the next writing lessons.

In this way I think I have ensured that my teacher written feed-forward comments contribute as a valuable part of the learning process. 

I'd be interested in reading your ideas or comments about this.