Strategy Toolboxes for
K-8 Writers
Presented at the State of Maryland International Reading Association
March 29, 2012
Janet C. Richards and Cindy Lassonde
with Joanne Durham
Part I: Writing Strategy Instruction
• Our impetus—reading comprehension
strategies
• We thought—How about writing strategies?
• But, what are writing strategies? Where are
they? Who uses them? How can we create
writing strategies?
• Plans to get a job accomplished—in this case,
writing
• Accounts for individual differences
• Writers have direct control
• Writers can independently regulate their writing
• Studies show writing strategy instruction produces
positive effects on students’ writing (20 group
comparison studies, 19 single-subject design studies,
and our own and our graduate students’ observational
data)
• Effective for all writers – students with special needs,
ESL students, students in need of some occasional
individual/group writing assistance, students writing on
grade level, advanced writers
• Strategy instruction fits with any district-wide writing
instructional curriculum and within any grade level.
Teachers can use strategy instruction as their main
writing program or as a supplement to a required
writing instruction.
Why Do Students Need to Know Writing
Strategies?
Skilled writers regulate the writing
process using strategies for planning,
drafting, monitoring, evaluating, revising,
and editing (De La Paz & Graham, 2002).
Students who know when to use
appropriate writing strategies are
effective, self-directed writers. Thus,
efforts aimed at improving writing
instruction need to help students develop
strategies they require to write effectively.
What Can Writing Strategy Instruction Do?
Strategies are useful for students’ inventing, drafting,
revising, editing, conventions of written language, and
language functions. Strategies…
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Help students learn to independently check spelling, punctuation,
capitalization, and sentence-level writing. Help 4-6th grade students learn to
independently ensure that verbs agree with singular or plural subjects.
Help students learn how to independently employ dialogue and develop
story characters.
Allow students to independently plan, draft, revise, and edit their narrative
and expository compositions, that include stories, research reports, literacy
responses, letters, poems, journals, and other genre, such as how-to
pieces, descriptive writing, and persuasive writing.
Assist students to independently use examples and evidence to support
their statements.
Facilitate students’ abilities to independently summarize information and
synthesize contradictory facts from a variety of informational sources,
including the Internet, and to explore organizational features of electronic
text, such as databases and keyword searches.
Research to Support Writing Strategy
Instruction
• A recent report from the Carnegie
Corporation of New York found that while no
single approach to writing meets the
instructional requirements of all students,
writing strategy instruction “has shown a
dramatic effect on the quality of
students’ writing” (Graham & Perin,
2007, p. 15).
• Use of writing strategies provides necessary
support for students by reducing their
cognitive load as they proceed through the
writing process (Olinghouse, Zheng, &
Reed, 2010).
Basis of Our Model for Writing Strategies
•
According to Afflerbach, Pearson, and Paris (2008), “there is a lack of
consistency in the use of the terms skill and strategy, reflecting an
underlying confusion about how these terms are conceptualized” (p. 364).
• We clearly and consistently use the term strategy to
denote an intentional “sequence of cognitive steps
designed to accomplish a particular outcome” (Collins,
1998, p. viii).
•
Writing strategy instruction is instruction explicitly designed to teach
students how to self-regulate their writing as they plan, draft, revise, and
edit their texts (Roberts & Wibbens, 2010).
• The “particular outcome” we seek with our collection of
strategies is to help students improve as writers who
“make the use of writing strategies automatic, routine, and
flexible” as they monitor their writing needs and set goals
for improvement through self-regulation (Harris, Graham,
Mason, & Saddler, 2002, p. 110).
•
Ultimately, a teacher’s objective is to help students understand how to
use strategies independently and in a variety of contexts (Graham &
Perin, 2007).
• Students cannot do this alone! Our model offers
supportive scaffolds.
Teachers as Researchers
Teachers who offer writing strategy
instruction actually become researchers
in their own classrooms because they
understand the necessity to determine
students’ specific and immediate writing
instructional needs.
Teachers as Researchers
• Only then are they are able to model and teach
writing strategies that make sense to their
students. Using this precursor (assessing
students’ writing before instruction) teachers ask
themselves questions, such as:
• What do my students know about writing?
• What do they need to learn next about writing?
• What strategies can I model that will improve their
writing?
• Teachers do not waste valuable class time
teaching strategies students already know and
use, and they don’t teach strategies that students
are not ready to learn and apply. Students
become disinterested when instruction doesn’t fit
their current developmental stage and needs.
Part II: Demonstrating Strategies
Differentiating Skills and Strategies
Skill
These are automatic procedures that do not
require thought, interpretation, or choice.
Strategy
A strategy is a conscious plan under the control
of the reader, who must make decisions about
what strategies to use and when to use them.
Skills are product-oriented, observable
Strategies are process-oriented, cognitive
behaviors such as answers to questions, answers operations the reader engages in, generally
on tests, skills lists, and taxonomies.
thought to be unobservable.
Skill instruction stresses repeated practice in
applying skills until they become habitual
responses to particular tasks.
Strategy instruction stresses the reasoning
process readers go through as they interact with
and comprehend text: how the strategies one
uses change when one reads different texts or
reads for different purposes.
Strategy instruction teachers what to do with a
skill, how and why to use it, and why it is
important.
Strategy instruction focuses on ways to help
students understand what they read.
Types of Strategies
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Making associations
Planning
Questioning
Visualizing
Accessing cues
Using mnemonics
Revising
Checking and monitoring
Verbalizing
The SCAMPER Strategy Mini-lesson
Model for Primary Grades
(S) Survey and Assess
(C) Confer
(A) Assemble Materials
(M) Model
(P) Practice
(E) Execute
(R) Reflect
Inventing:
Growing a Poem with Interview Buddies
Survey and Assess:
As I was walking in the woods, I saw
As I was walking in the woods, I smelled
As I was walking in the woods, I heard
Confer
What do you like about writing poems?
Is there anything you don’t like about writing poems?
How do you get ideas for poems?
How do you start writing a poem?
Do you ever have trouble getting started?
Would it be helpful if you had a friend who would help you
think of ideas for your poem?
Drafting Strategies:
To Rhyme or Not to Rhyme?
My dog’s name is Jake.
He is not a fake.
Barks he makes.
In the morning he wakes.
Survey and Assess
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What kinds of poems does the student write?
Does he use rhyming? How frequently?
Do the rhyming poems make sense?
Do the non-rhyming poems make sense?
Do the rhyming poems flow smoothly and
have a strong voice?
• Which poem style is generally more
comprehendible and poetic?
Polishing Strategies: Turning Up the
Volume of Voice in Poetry
Cocoa lies in the sun spot on the floor.
I get out of bed to get ready for school.
Cocoa slowly licks his fur.
I quickly get dressed and go out the door.
While I’m gone, Cocoa sleeps
And sleeps
And sleeps
While I work
And work
And work.
Cocoa wakes and sits by the door
For me to come home.
I pick him up and give him a great, big hug.
My hug-a-bug Cocoa.
My big boy. My friend.
Polishing Strategy:
Act It Out to Discover the Details
Joanne Durham
Prince George’s County Public Schools, Maryland
jdurham@pgcps.org
• Children need strategies for “adding details” as
they revise their writing.
• Movement to support revision
– Inspired by Susan Griss, Minds in Motion
– Kinesthetic memory helps children “find details”
• Useful across elementary grades
• Supports personal narrative, procedural, and
fiction writing
Act It Out: The Lesson
• Modeling:
I got on my bike to ride to my friend’s house. I went up and down the hill.
I got on my bike to ride to my friend’s house. When I went up the
hill, I had to push down hard on the pedals. Pretty soon my legs got
tired and I started sweating. Finally, I got to the top. I loved feeling
the wind blow through my hair as I coasted down the hill fast.
• Guided Practice:
I blew out the candles on my cake.
I closed my eyes and thought my wish in my mind. I took a big
breath. The air was all puffy in my cheeks like a chipmunk. Then I
let all the air go at once, and all six candles went out.
• Student Execution with their own drafts
Act It Out – In Action!
• Builds vocabulary –
especially helpful for
English language
learners
• Useful in procedural
writing:
“Flip over the bucket;
plant a flag on top”
• Not a performance
for others – a
metacognitive
strategy that’s fun!
…And, even more strategies…
Inventing Strategies: Color-Coding Sources
Figure 2.1: Note Chart for Sorting Sources
Inquiry Question:
Source # _____
Bibliography
Author ______________________________
Copyright Date __________
Title _______________________________________________________
Publisher City, State _____________________
Publisher ______________________________ or Website _______________________
Notes and Quotes
Page _____
Page _____
Drafting Strategies: Quilting Together…
Figure 9.1 Reproducible Poster of the Steps for Quilting Together an Expository Paper
The Quilting Strategy: How to Quilt Together an Expository Paper
Step 1—Tell the Story
I tell a friend a story about all I’ve learned about my topic through my reading and
note-taking. I use story language to pull together everything I’ve learned from all of
my sources.
Step 2—Retell the Story
I work alone now and retell the story using my notes. I use the sticky notes to
record the main components of the structure of the report on large poster paper.
Step 3—Let the Notes Tell the Story
As I tell my story, I write the main points of my report on other sticky notes. I
organize them on my poster paper under the main components, leaving room
between each one to write my story.
Step 4—Quilt the Story Together
From these sticky notes, I create a writing frame and begin to quilt the story
together into an expository paper or report.
Revising Strategies: Deconstructing…
Figure 15.2: Reproducible Examples of Patterns of Organization and Their Criteria
Categories—classifies items into parts or types of something. Example: Explaining the various
biological systems.
Cause and Effect—indicates results (effect or solution) from some action (cause or problem).
Example: Scientific or historic reports that ask “why?” and “with what results?”
Chronological Order—a description of events as they occur over time. Example: Biographies and
historic events.
Comparing and Contrasting—a description of similarities and differences. Example: A report on the
governments of two countries.
Definition and Example—explaining the meaning of a concept and providing illustrative examples.
Example: Defining an abstract term like “trust” and explaining it through examples.
Listings—a presentation of information as a list. Example: Descriptive listing of a category of items,
events, reasons, places, or consequences.
Order of Importance—a presentation of information sorted from most to least important (or the
reverse). Example: A persuasive essay that presents its arguments from most to least
important.
Process Order—a description of a series of stages, steps, or changes needed to make or do
something in proceeding to an end result. Example: Directions on how to do something.
Deconstructing continued…
Steps to the Deconstruct/Reconstruct Strategy
1. Read the first draft out loud.
2. Identify the intended organization of the draft.
3. Does the draft reflect the intended organization? Is the organization logical or could
it be improved?
4. If the organization could be improved, deconstruct the draft by outlining its current
structure.
5. Revise or reconstruct the outline so it makes sense.
6. Analyze the revised outline. Is the new organization logical?
7. If the organization of the outline is logical, reconstruct the draft to follow the new
outline.
8. Read the new draft out loud. Is it better organized? Does it make better sense than
the first draft?
How would you apply these strategies
to your teaching contexts to meet
students’ needs?
Questions?
Janet janetusm@me.com
Cindy cindy.lassonde@oneonta.edu
Joanne jdurham@pgcps.org