A new report co-authored by Vanderbilt literacy expert Steve Graham identifies 11 strategies to improve writing skills in the nation‘s adolescents. The report was presented at a briefing Oct. 19 in Washington, D.C.
“We undertook this research to determine what we could do to change writing achievement and writing instruction in this country,” Graham said. “We‘ve identified 11 strategies as being effective at teaching students how to write and improve their achievement.”
Data from the National Assessment of Education Progress indicates less than approximately 70 percent of American 4th through 12th graders are writing at or below minimum proficiency standards. The report, Writing Next: Effective Strategies to Improve Writing of Adolescents in Middle and High School, is designed to address this critical shortfall in student learning and achievement. It was released by the Alliance for Excellent Education and commissioned by Carnegie Corporation of New York.
The report was co-authored by Dolores Perin, associate professor of psychology and education, Teachers College, Columbia University.
The report is a companion publication to the Alliance‘s 2004 report, Reading Next: A Vision for Action and Research in Middle and High School Literacy.
“Reading proficiency is just half the literacy picture,” Bob Wise, former governor of West Virginia and Alliance president, said. “We have to widen the literacy spotlight to include writing as well as reading. Increasing students‘ writing abilities increases their literacy abilities, which in turn, increases the likelihood that they will stay in school and graduate. And that means they have a much better chance for future success.”
Graham and Perin conducted an analysis of existing experimental and quasi-experimental research on a variety of writing instructional methods and were able to glean from this comparison data which identified the most effective strategies.
The 11 instructional practices that Writing Next recognizes as holding the most promise to improve students‘ writing skills, in order of statistical strength, are:
Writing Strategies: Teaching students strategies for planning, revising and editing their compositions.
Summarization: Explicitly and systematically teaching students how to summarize texts.
Collaborative Writing: Instructional arrangements in which adolescents work together to plan, draft, revise and edit their compositions.
Specific Product Goals: Specific, reachable goals for the writing assignment they are to complete.
Word Processing: Using computers and word processors as instructional supports for writing assignments.
Sentence Combining: Teaching students to construct more complex, sophisticated sentences.
Prewriting: Engaging students in activities designed to help them generate or organize ideas for their composition.
Inquire Activities: Engaging students in analyzing immediate, concrete data to help them develop ideas and content for a particular writing task.
Process Writing Approach: Interweaving a number of writing instructional activities in a workshop environment that stresses extended writing opportunities, writing for authentic audiences, personalized instruction and cycles of writing.
Study of Models: Providing students with opportunities to read, analyze and emulate models of good writing.
Writing for Content Learning: Using writing as a tool for learning content material.
The full report will be available after Oct 19 at:
www.all4ed.org/publications/WritingNext.pdf.
Steve Graham is the Currey Ingram Professor of Special Education and Literacy, a chair he shares with Karen R. Harris at Vanderbilt‘s Peabody College of education and human development. His research has focused primarily on identifying the factors that contribute to the development of writing difficulties; the development and validation of effective procedures for teaching planning, revising and the mechanics of writing to struggling writers; and the use of technology to enhance writing performance and development. He is the editor of Exceptional Children and the coauthor of the Handbook of Writing Research, Handbook of Learning Disabilities, Writing Better, and Making the Writing Process Work. He is a Vanderbilt Kennedy Center for Research on Human Development investigator.
The Alliance for Excellent Education is a Washington, D.C.-based policy, research and advocacy organization that works to make every child a graduate, prepared for post-secondary education and success in life. To learn more about the Alliance, visit www.all4ed.org.
Media contact: Melanie Moran, 615-322-NEWS
Melanie.moran@vanderbilt.edu