The research on writing (even if it’s called something else) reveals that it can provide a powerful boost to learning—and might even underestimate its potential.
For what it's worth, Natalie, everything you say here concerning writing and learning is backed up by my own personal experience of 34 years teaching high school English.
Thank you for this important reminder about the relationship between writing and reading. When I was a high school English teacher, I completed a master's in writing instruction and discovered the research supporting scaffolded writing instruction. BUT--and this is an important 'but'--I hope you will read the research by Ouellette and Senechal before you continue to express concern that:
"Even kindergartners are expected to write at length, without much guidance. And writing activities are often divorced from curriculum content."
The research I discovered while getting my reading specialist credential--which I was able to apply the year I taught kindergarten--deals with the importance of invented spelling through independent writing because this is an effective way for students to cement phonemes to graphemes. (See Ouellette G and Senechal M (2017) Invented spelling in kindergarten as a predictor of
reading and spelling in grade 1: a new pathway to literacy, or just the same road, less
known? Developmental Psychology 53: 77–88. DOI: 10.1037/dev0000179.). This research was cited in the recent article "Writing experiences in early childhood classrooms where children made higher language gains" (Journal of Early Childhood Literacy 2024, Vol. 0(0) 1–30).
In fact, this research is so important--and confirmed by my own experience--that I devote an entire chapter (Making Sense of Words We Say) to it in my instructional guide to reading, From Sound to Summary: Braiding the Reading Rope to Make Words Make Sense. I also discuss invented spelling with Anna Geiger in the podcast episode, "How to apply reading research to classroom teaching." (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-apply-reading-research-to-classroom-teaching/id1498200908?i=1000671249772)
The Writing Revolution laments that first graders are writing "furiously," failing to recognize the rationale supporting this type of writing.
In adult foundational education, students would benefit from a measured, systematic approach to writing development and from an increase in the use of writing for elaboration and retrieval practice in reading and math. But because of minimal formal schooling or trauma, will likely encounter the same cognitive load effect as has been observed in the younger age learners. Who is working at this intersection of learning/cognitive science and literacy and developmental math? I'd like to connect.
I do an exercise with students on the first day of class, where they have to write down all the personal names they just heard during introductions. I don't warn them about this ahead of time.
They do better than they think they will, but not well, because they were mostly politely daydreaming rather than actively listening. Later I repeat the recall exercise, and they improve, most without any active studying of their peers' names. This is all part of teaching them to use their brains as they actually work, rather than how they've been trained to use them.
Natalie, do you have any thoughts about the SRSD writing approach? It has hundreds of studies which support its effectiveness. I'd think it would need a mention when talking about any research based writing frameworks.
Interesting comment, Matt. SRSD is well-researched with convincing evidence of efficacy, as near as I can tell implemented primarily in special education. The pedagogy itself aims to teach self-regulation in the context of a structured heuristic modeled through instructional think alouds. Grounding the writing in knowledge building, providing explicit instruction with modeled self-regulation, building a mindset for “picking an idea” and elaborating puts the learner in charge of the writing. Given the specificity of the instructional strategy and its demonstrated effectiveness, it seems robust and flexible, well worth a look.
Yes, it's great. It's actually pretty widely used in general ed settings as well (both in research and classroom practice). ThinkSRSD offers reasonably priced and effective PD in implementing the approach.
Similar but with some key differences. TWR requires sentence mastery before moving onto longer pieces. The research suggests you can do both in tandem, so I'd avoid this advice. SRSD also builds in the self regulation piece which is missing from TWR.
Just for the record, TWR doesn't "require sentence mastery" before students move on to longer writing. That is, it doesn't require that students master ALL of the sentence-level strategies that are taught as part of the method--only some of them. And outlining can and should be taught simultaneously with sentence construction.
I don't want to get into a comparison of SRSD and TWR, because although I've read some of the studies behind SRSD I don't feel I have a handle on what it actually looks like in practice. I'm sure there's much to recommend it, and I'm not saying that TWR is the only writing method that can work.
You're right; TWR doesn't require mastery of all sentence level skills, just some. For example, Hochman states:
"Ideally, however, you won't ask them to write independently at length until after they have learned some basic skills. Those include distinguishing sentences from fragments; using simple conjunctions like because, but, and so; and using simple subordinating conjunctions like before and when." This means that kids aren't supposed to writing a paragraph (which are simply sentences strung together to elaborate on an idea) until they've mastered the above skills. That means that in K and a large chunk of Grade 1, lots of kids won't write paragraphs. Moreover, kids in the older grades who have lower language skills (including ELL students) will require modified learning outcomes which focus on sentence level writing.
I don't believe this way of teaching is supported by research and I actually think it runs counter to the research. Karen Harris was interviewed about this (on the Ollie Lovell Podcast if I remember correctly) and she affirmatively said that sentence level mastery shouldn't preclude paragraph writing.
Natalie, do you know of any research being done on TWR?
I need to read more about it. Sounds promising. It packs a lot of instructional value on a theoretically sound and empirically verified approach. Thanks 🙏 for bringing it forward
This is very interesting to me as the parent of 3 kids with very high intelligence, very skilled and eager readers, and the Specific Learning Disability called dysgraphia. Our local public school district is widely considered "good", but starting in middle school, the teachers in the academic departments are very rigid, and assign a lot of written work. In several cases, they demanded students take class notes and/or write in journals every day, both of which were graded based on neatness and spelling.
The accommodation recommended by the educational neuropsychologist who evaluated them all was to use a keyboard for written work that was longer than 3-5 word phrases, and to do all math problems where work was required to be shown on 1/4 inch or 1/3 inch graph paper, to improve place value alignment. You would have thought I was asking for the moon, rather than permission to send my kids to school with computers, and buy graph paper by the ream to supply everybody on those math classes with graph paper.
However, all's well that ends well. They all 3 have become successful adults who are able to write well enough by hand to sign official documents and greeting cards, write labels for containers, etc. They slso have an extensive and global network of email/game site friends and teammates in addition to their "real life" classmates, because for them, typing is one of the easiest modes for self expression.
Your insight that "writing is hard" but that finding ways to work around that difficulty can lead to more and faster learning has been very much borne out by my kids' life experiences.
For what it's worth, Natalie, everything you say here concerning writing and learning is backed up by my own personal experience of 34 years teaching high school English.
Thank you for this important reminder about the relationship between writing and reading. When I was a high school English teacher, I completed a master's in writing instruction and discovered the research supporting scaffolded writing instruction. BUT--and this is an important 'but'--I hope you will read the research by Ouellette and Senechal before you continue to express concern that:
"Even kindergartners are expected to write at length, without much guidance. And writing activities are often divorced from curriculum content."
The research I discovered while getting my reading specialist credential--which I was able to apply the year I taught kindergarten--deals with the importance of invented spelling through independent writing because this is an effective way for students to cement phonemes to graphemes. (See Ouellette G and Senechal M (2017) Invented spelling in kindergarten as a predictor of
reading and spelling in grade 1: a new pathway to literacy, or just the same road, less
known? Developmental Psychology 53: 77–88. DOI: 10.1037/dev0000179.). This research was cited in the recent article "Writing experiences in early childhood classrooms where children made higher language gains" (Journal of Early Childhood Literacy 2024, Vol. 0(0) 1–30).
In fact, this research is so important--and confirmed by my own experience--that I devote an entire chapter (Making Sense of Words We Say) to it in my instructional guide to reading, From Sound to Summary: Braiding the Reading Rope to Make Words Make Sense. I also discuss invented spelling with Anna Geiger in the podcast episode, "How to apply reading research to classroom teaching." (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-apply-reading-research-to-classroom-teaching/id1498200908?i=1000671249772)
The Writing Revolution laments that first graders are writing "furiously," failing to recognize the rationale supporting this type of writing.
In adult foundational education, students would benefit from a measured, systematic approach to writing development and from an increase in the use of writing for elaboration and retrieval practice in reading and math. But because of minimal formal schooling or trauma, will likely encounter the same cognitive load effect as has been observed in the younger age learners. Who is working at this intersection of learning/cognitive science and literacy and developmental math? I'd like to connect.
https://johnmoyermedlpcncc.substack.com/p/writing-a-wrong?r=3p5dh
I do an exercise with students on the first day of class, where they have to write down all the personal names they just heard during introductions. I don't warn them about this ahead of time.
They do better than they think they will, but not well, because they were mostly politely daydreaming rather than actively listening. Later I repeat the recall exercise, and they improve, most without any active studying of their peers' names. This is all part of teaching them to use their brains as they actually work, rather than how they've been trained to use them.
Natalie, do you have any thoughts about the SRSD writing approach? It has hundreds of studies which support its effectiveness. I'd think it would need a mention when talking about any research based writing frameworks.
Interesting comment, Matt. SRSD is well-researched with convincing evidence of efficacy, as near as I can tell implemented primarily in special education. The pedagogy itself aims to teach self-regulation in the context of a structured heuristic modeled through instructional think alouds. Grounding the writing in knowledge building, providing explicit instruction with modeled self-regulation, building a mindset for “picking an idea” and elaborating puts the learner in charge of the writing. Given the specificity of the instructional strategy and its demonstrated effectiveness, it seems robust and flexible, well worth a look.
Yes, it's great. It's actually pretty widely used in general ed settings as well (both in research and classroom practice). ThinkSRSD offers reasonably priced and effective PD in implementing the approach.
Writing Revolution is fairly similar in design, it focuses on a 'single paragraph outline' instead of TIDE/TREE.
Similar but with some key differences. TWR requires sentence mastery before moving onto longer pieces. The research suggests you can do both in tandem, so I'd avoid this advice. SRSD also builds in the self regulation piece which is missing from TWR.
Just for the record, TWR doesn't "require sentence mastery" before students move on to longer writing. That is, it doesn't require that students master ALL of the sentence-level strategies that are taught as part of the method--only some of them. And outlining can and should be taught simultaneously with sentence construction.
I don't want to get into a comparison of SRSD and TWR, because although I've read some of the studies behind SRSD I don't feel I have a handle on what it actually looks like in practice. I'm sure there's much to recommend it, and I'm not saying that TWR is the only writing method that can work.
You're right; TWR doesn't require mastery of all sentence level skills, just some. For example, Hochman states:
"Ideally, however, you won't ask them to write independently at length until after they have learned some basic skills. Those include distinguishing sentences from fragments; using simple conjunctions like because, but, and so; and using simple subordinating conjunctions like before and when." This means that kids aren't supposed to writing a paragraph (which are simply sentences strung together to elaborate on an idea) until they've mastered the above skills. That means that in K and a large chunk of Grade 1, lots of kids won't write paragraphs. Moreover, kids in the older grades who have lower language skills (including ELL students) will require modified learning outcomes which focus on sentence level writing.
I don't believe this way of teaching is supported by research and I actually think it runs counter to the research. Karen Harris was interviewed about this (on the Ollie Lovell Podcast if I remember correctly) and she affirmatively said that sentence level mastery shouldn't preclude paragraph writing.
Natalie, do you know of any research being done on TWR?
I need to read more about it. Sounds promising. It packs a lot of instructional value on a theoretically sound and empirically verified approach. Thanks 🙏 for bringing it forward
This is very interesting to me as the parent of 3 kids with very high intelligence, very skilled and eager readers, and the Specific Learning Disability called dysgraphia. Our local public school district is widely considered "good", but starting in middle school, the teachers in the academic departments are very rigid, and assign a lot of written work. In several cases, they demanded students take class notes and/or write in journals every day, both of which were graded based on neatness and spelling.
The accommodation recommended by the educational neuropsychologist who evaluated them all was to use a keyboard for written work that was longer than 3-5 word phrases, and to do all math problems where work was required to be shown on 1/4 inch or 1/3 inch graph paper, to improve place value alignment. You would have thought I was asking for the moon, rather than permission to send my kids to school with computers, and buy graph paper by the ream to supply everybody on those math classes with graph paper.
However, all's well that ends well. They all 3 have become successful adults who are able to write well enough by hand to sign official documents and greeting cards, write labels for containers, etc. They slso have an extensive and global network of email/game site friends and teammates in addition to their "real life" classmates, because for them, typing is one of the easiest modes for self expression.
Your insight that "writing is hard" but that finding ways to work around that difficulty can lead to more and faster learning has been very much borne out by my kids' life experiences.
I am looking forward to giving 'The Writing Revolution' a read :)