Chapter 14 page 333
purposes, parts, and characteristics of good stories and persuasive essays, students gain metacognitive
awareness of good writing. They also learn strategies that can help them write stories and essays that
satisfy the criteria of good writing. The goal is for students to become self-regulated writers who can use
these strategies appropriately to write well on their own, without the teacher or instructional aids prompting
them to use these strategies.
Instruction in all these strategies lasts for several months. Students do not learn one or two
strategies but many multiple, interrelated strategies that they can combine to become effective writers.
Students work regularly with the target strategies whenever they are writing (in literacy classes, in social
studies, and so on) through weeks or months of instruction. Thus, SRSD focuses on embedding instruction
of multiple strategies in regular writing instruction over an extended period of time.
Extensive, Varied Practice. As the preceding discussion indicates, extensive, varied practice is a
central feature of SRSD. The teacher works with students to apply all the strategies being learned in
writing classes and, as we have seen, in other classes as well. Because the program lasts five months, and
because the strategies are used consistently across many, many writing tasks, the students have many
chances to master the strategies across many writing contexts.
Explaining what the strategies are, how to use them, why they are useful, and when they can
be used. When using SRSD, teachers explain to students what the strategies are, how to use them, why
they are useful, and when they can be used. Teachers first tell the third graders about the three POW
strategies for writing. The class and teacher talk about what each letter in POW stands for, and why it is
important to use each of these strategies when writing. Then students work in pairs checking each other
until each student can explain what POW means and why each step is important.
Similar processes are used for the story-planning strategies and the persuasive-essay-planning
strategies. Teachers explain the strategies and then discuss the strategies with the class. After students write
stories and essays, the teacher leads discussions in which the students tell their classmates how using the
strategies helped them write better.
After discussing the strategies in class, teachers encourage students to think about when and how
to use the strategies outside of writing class. Students work in pairs to talk about when, where, and how
they can use the strategies they are learning in other classes, such as science and social studies. Teachers
explain what transfer is, and students talk about how they can transfer the writing strategies they are
learning. As they write in other classes, they help each other use the strategies. After writing, they discuss
what they have done well and what they had trouble with when applying the strategies to other classes.
They use handouts such as the one in Figure 14.6 to record their ideas.