Guiding Student Writing
WRITING BENCHMARKS:
REPORTS AND ESSAYS
When students successfully produce standard-setting reports in the 4th grade and persuasive essays in 8th grade (Board of Education, 2001), they demonstrate that they have acquired and integrated particular writing and content skills and knowledge.
Above all, the biggest secret to writing success is no secret. Guided practice makes proficiency. How can we best guide students’ preparations for essay and report writing so that they succeed? One way is to be sure that we offer them many opportunities to learn key skills in advance of these assignments. As students’ responses to offered resources and approaches will vary, it makes sense to develop a wide array. Some possibilities: - Offer readings, because knowledge about reports and essays through reading and discussion ensure that students have good models. - Build in report reparation—especially practice in selecting and citing sources related to topics —because this crucial skill is too hard to learn for the first time if the students are also in the middle of trying to grasp the elements of argument.
- Customize other materials from resources, introduce them, invent practice sessions with them and encourage students to ask questions. Assist students to develop the questions (comprising an internal rubric) that they will need to be able to ask of themselves as they work (see also Lucy Calkins, 1994).
- Utilize partnering and grouping to widen students’ scope for independent work.
- Enlist parents to support their children as writers.
EDUCATORS’ RESOURCES
Following are some resources that can be customized and matched to students’ group and individual needs.
For Report Writing: First, Accurately collecting and citing information can be an entire study in itself. For students who are unfamiliar with this process, especially younger students, making and using a double-entry journal is a good way to start. (For a description of the double-entry journal, see “Writing as a Tool for Learning in Secondary Schools” in For You From Teacher Center in this issue.) Secondly, selecting a style manual, or developing a style sheet to guide students in formatting their citations, and then sticking with it enables students to keep detailed track of the sources of their information so that it is useful later in papers, reports and, yes, essays.
Essay Writing: A successful essay writer is familiar with well-written persuasive/ argumentative essays, having read many examples. An excellent source of annotated standardsetting examples that have been written by students can be found on pages 42-46 (elementary) and scattered through pages 95-142 (middle school) in the New York City English Language Arts performance standards (Board of Education, 1997). To give students information and vocabulary on the technical construction of an argumentative essay, there is excellent material to be found at http://www.eslplanet.com/teachertools/argueweb/frntpage.htm. Also at this site, “Writing Argumentative Essays” by Bill Daly (1993), offers an entire mini-curriculum to be read, studied, reviewed and customized (whole or in part). Bill Daly’s model, “Marine Parks,” illustrates the integration of essay structure and science sources. (To introduce a simple formal essay structure, see “The Four- Paragraph Essay,” in the For You From Teacher Center section, in this issue.)Although report- and essay-writing are rooted in different templates, they share a feature: research. Reports include information culled and cited from various sources, as do essays. In essays, however, this information (or data) is used differently than it is in reports. It is applied to support or refute parts of the writer’s argument. Researchers, Nystrand and Graff (2000), believe that the basis of effective teaching of argument and rhetoric is created when educators focus classroom resources and activities in ways that enable students to learn the distinctions, structures and then apply these in writing.
For Report and Essay Writing: Writers organize and sequence the pieces or sections before trying to assemble an entire report or essay. Creating an extra-large writing plan or outline printed on a sheet of newsprint, with plenty of space to add information, may be helpful. It can be used to demonstrate the entire outline/structure of a report or essay to a group or used by student-coaching partners. Comparing the large outline with notes and going over the plan with a teacher or writing buddy gives authors feedback and allows them to make adjustments. An accompanying review process can be formal and follow preset key questions, or informal.
The writer selects and relies on reputable academic sources for technical questions relating to writing, quotations and references. That writing is responsible to the community (of writers, scholars and researchers) is something that it is valuable to learn early. Dictionaries and thesauruses, in addition to a style sheet or manual, are important to have on hand and/or loaded on the class computer.
For Enlisting Parents:
An excellent written source, “Help Your Child Learn to Write Well,” for sharing with parents can be found on the Internet (http://www.ed.gov/pubs/parents/Writing/index.html) (U.S. Department of Education, 1993). Right on the first page is the heart of educators’ concern about students and writing, “Study after study shows that students’ writing lacks clarity, coherence and organization. Only a few students can write persuasive essays or competent business letters.” Reviewing the entire three-page article with students and then with parents provides the partners—parents, students and educators —with a common text from which to further develop a learning community.
References
• Board of Education of the City of New York. (1997). New Standards™Performance Standards: English Language Arts, English as a Second Language, Spanish Language Arts(1st New York City ed.). New York City: Board of Education of the City of New York.
• Board of Education of the City of New York. (2001). A Standards-Based Scope and Sequence for Learning: A Teacher’s Framework for Standards-Based Planning, Kindergarten—Grade 8. New York City: Board of Education of the City of New York. (p. 9).
• Calkins, L. (1994). The Art of Teaching Writing. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. (p. 222-223).
• Nystrand, M., Graff, N. (2000). Report in Argument’s Clothing: An Ecological Perspective on Writing Instruction, p.11. A report, online: http://cela.albany.edu/nygraff/main.html
Further Reading
• Applebee, A. (2001). Alternative Models of Writing Development, (on: http://cela.albany.edu/publication/article/writing.htm) and in Writing: Research/Theory/Practice, Indrisano and Squire (Eds.). Newark: DE: International Reading Association (2000).