Writing Instruction

The ongoing quest to improve written expression exists in virtually every school in Sonoma County and across the state and country. Teachers have noted the distinct lack of systematic, explicit writing instruction in the core basal anthologies used in many English/Language Arts classes, K-10. To fill this void, educators are attempting to locate viable research-based writing programs to supplement existing curricula. The following resources may prove helpful in this regard.

Research about Writing Instruction
Writing Next: Effective Strategies to Improve Writing of Adolescents in Middle and High Schools provides a summary of the research related to practical tools teachers can employ to improve writing instruction. The report was authored by writing and literacy scholars Steve Graham and Dolores Perin in 2006.

Center on Accelerating Student Learning (CASL) was a project designed to provide educators and parents with information on effective practices for improving reading, writing, and math learning for students with disabilities in the early grades. Although the project has concluded, helpful information is still available at this website.

Prevention and Intervention of Writing Difficulties for Students with Learning Disabilities is a 2001 paper by three respected researchers – Steven Graham, Karen Harris, and Lynn Larsen – that presents six principles designed to help educators alleviate writing difficulties and build writing skills among students with learning disabilities.

Components of Effective Writing Instruction, written by literacy expert Louise Spear-Swerling, provides a summary of what the research suggests for effective writing instruction in grades K-4.

Mechanical Obstacles to Writing: What Can Teachers do to Help Students with Learning Problems explores how spelling, punctuation, and handwriting problems may draw attention away from focusing on what students are writing. In this article, Stephen Isaacson, Ph.D., examines eight methods that teachers can use to help students deal with the spelling obstacle.

Introduction to Writing Instruction for Secondary Students is a collection of research-based resources to support writing in grades 6-12 compiled by the Vaughn Gross Center for Reading and Language Arts (University of Texas at Austin).

Writing Programs & Curricula
Step Up to Writing is one of the most widely used research-informed approaches to systematically teaching writing.

Expressive Writing, Reasoning and Writing, and Language for Writing are three direct-instruction writing programs from McGraw Hill/SRA with a long track record of effectiveness, especially for intervention students.

Write … from the Beginning is a developmental writing program designed to follow the use of Thinking Maps.

My Access is a Web-based writing support program that provides grammar and structural support to students and teachers.

Co-Writer is a technology-based writing support system that is very helpful for students with disabilities and others in need of intense writing scaffolding.

REWARDS Writing: Sentence Refinement is a writing intervention program designed and validated by Dr. Anita Archer et al. to explicitly teach grade 5-12 students essential sentence-writing skills. Combining the latest research about word choice, sentence combining, and editing, REWARDS Writing is an excellent supplement to any core writing program.

Dr. Anita Archer has kindly shared her Writing Rubrics (doc) for various genre to download and use, modify, or adapt as appropriate. These rubrics are intended to be used as learning tools, not simply teacher evaluation. For more details on using rubrics in writing instruction, take a look at Kevin Feldman’s notes from the writing workshop with Dr. Archer (pdf).