Learning by Writing

Being able to write a clear and concise essay has become even more important in today’s world, given our tendency to write in short blurbs all over social media. But writing instruction has disappeared in many of our traditional schools, and young learner’s writing ability has arguably disappeared too.

Recently, EducationWeek online wrote a story about writing instruction inside Tennessee’s Sumner County school district. EducationWeek reporter Caitlynn Peetz wrote,

“A more intentional focus on writing instruction is reaping big rewards for a Tennessee district.”

“In Sumner County, a district serving about 29,000 students, school leaders in 2019 were looking for a new, more effective way to bolster students’ comprehension skills, starting in the early elementary grades.”

“Reading comprehension – unlike foundational skills like phonics – takes years, even a lifetime to build. As the identify words, students need to know a lot in order to make sense of what they read, and so they have to be introduced to content systematically. The idea has roots in cognitive science and the work of educator E.D. Hirsch, though research about how best to build students’ background ‘world knowledge’ is still emerging.”

“Sumner County began implementing a new English/language arts curriculum that incorporates writing as a main focus of students’ lessons, pushing them beyond memoirs and personal essays to build this background knowledge. While the bulk of the writing instruction happens in students’ ELA classes, other courses, like science and social studies, now also incorporate more writing projects linked to their lessons.”

“Charles MacArthur, a professor emeritus in the School of Education at the University of Delaware who researches writing development and instruction for struggling writers, said more than 100 studies show that intentional approaches to writing instruction benefit students’ academic performance both in writing and reading – and in other subjects.”

“That’s because students are better able o comprehend and analyze their lessons, and have more background knowledge to support their class work, he said.”

“But actually implementing that instruction can be difficult. Teachers are generally used to assigning memoir-type writing, especially for earlier grades, that focuses on students’ personal experiences and feelings, rather than the content they’re learning or the world around them. Asking a 2^nd grader to write opinion essays can feel counterintuitive, initially.”

“The benefits, though, can be impressive. Along with improved test scores, Sumner County students’ confidence has increased, both in their academics in and general, according to the district’s chief academic officer, Scott Langford.”

Here are some comments from Langford and other Sumner County learning leaders about their move to emphasize writing:

Langford: “From my perspective, our reading and literacy scores were stagnant for many years. I always presumed we moved the needle for kids’ reading and writing performance in high school, but what I discovered is it’s a K-12 issue. You have to invest from the first time a child walks into your building.”

Frankie Skinner, Supervisor of Federal Program: “To some extent, students are writing in some capacity every day. Along with assignments and projects, they keep what’s called a response journal, where students are constantly reflecting on what they’re learning in a written way that is more informal but still keeping them practicing their writing.”

“Most teachers have been teaching one standard at a time, learning it one day then reviewing it tomorrow and having a test on Thursday, and so on. It took a little bit of time to get used to the fact that there wasn’t going to be a single standard mastered at a time, that it’s more of touching on several standards in a week, then coming back. It’s not a finality, it’s a building of knowledge along the way. It’s tough to go from being able to see a clear, definitive end goal to a standard to not necessarily seeing from the outset how everything’s connected.”

Langford: “If anybody tells you that it’s not challenging to move from what’s traditionally been done to instruction with a commitment to writing and verbal expression, they’re lying. You have to give teachers permission to understand that it’s productive struggle.”

Productive struggle. I like that phrase, especially when it comes to learning. It’s productive struggle, and the power of negotiating the creation of your own learning plan, that is missing in many traditional school spaces.

I remember the “writing-across-the-curriculum” movement, prevalent in the 1990’s. The idea was to have all teachers emphasize writing in their classrooms – social studies, science, and math teachers along with English/language arts.

For the most part, “writing-across-the-curriculum” failed, mainly because of what the Sumner County leadership shared in the story above – teachers, principals, and district administrators total focus on individual and many times isolated learning standards and their attainment.

Although an example of another “boutique” operation, Sumner County should be applauded for breaking away from the everyday instructional methodology shown by most traditional schools and investing in a learning model that works – learning through writing.

The problem with the traditional system is that they won’t create enough Sumner County’s to make a difference. Too many traditional schools continue to stick with expecting students to learn individual and isolated standards, many that don’t make a difference when it comes to producing a smarter and stronger learner.

Til tomorrow. SVB