responses, interpretations, poems, stories, drama,
essays, speeches, research reports, and more. While
students use many forms of writing, their writing is not
formulaic. Students develop their thinking and explore
ideas through talking and writing, and opportunities for
both should be substantial, including collaborating on
writing projects with partners and small groups. Many
students view writing as difficult or time consuming.
Yet adolescents use writing every day to communicate
via social media and express themselves via poetry
and songs. Bridging the literate worlds of adolescents
outside of school and inside school is a way to build
students’ motivation to write and engage them as
members of the academic community (Schoenbach,
Greenleaf, and Murphy 2012; Hull and Schultz 2002;
Morrell 2004).
Effective writing—writing that is appropriate to the task, purpose, and audience—is the result
of instruction, practice, and feedback. Graham and Perin in Writing Next: Effective Strategies to
Improve Writing of Adolescents in Middle and High Schools (2007) identified 11 elements of effective
adolescent writing instruction based on a meta-analysis of research. These elements are related
and overlap in their use. “In an ideal world, teachers would be able to incorporate all of the 11 key
elements in their everyday writing curricula, but the list may also be used to construct a unique blend
of elements suited to specific student needs” (Graham and Perin 2007, 11). The key elements, arrayed
in order of their effect size, are displayed in figure 6.5:
Figure 6.5. Elements of Effective Adolescent Writing Instruction- Writing strategies
- Summarization
- Collaborative writing
- Specific product goals
- Word processing
- Sentence combining
7. Prewriting
8. Inquiry activities
9. Process writing approach - Study of models
- Writing for content learning
Teachers of all subjects, but especially English language arts, need support to assign writing
frequently. Teachers should engage in professional learning on strategies for providing feedback to
students that do not require marking every sentence and grading every writing product. Teachers
working collaboratively across disciplines need to establish writing norms, rubrics, and processes for
providing feedback to students, and students need to be guided to respond to the feedback they
receive to improve their writing.
A process approach to writing positively impacts the quality of student writing. The approach
“involves a number of interwoven activities, including creating extended opportunities for writing;
emphasizing writing for real audiences; encouraging cycles of planning, translating, and reviewing;
stressing personal responsibility and ownership of writing projects; facilitating high levels of student
interactions; developing supportive writing environments; encouraging self-reflection and evaluation;
and offering personalized individual assistance, brief instructional lessons to meet students’ individual
needs, and in some instances, more extended and systematic instruction” (Graham and Perin
2007, 19).
Many students view writing as
difficult or time consuming. Yet
adolescents use writing every day to
communicate via social media and
express themselves via poetry and
songs. Bridging the literate worlds
of adolescents outside of school
and inside school is a way to build
students’ motivation to write and
engage them as members of the
academic community.524 | Chapter 6 Grades 6 to 8