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In high school, teachers who hand out essay assignments are often met with groans from the class. Why? Writing isn't always easy! Yet, it's one of the most essential skills to learn, no matter where your life may take you in the future.

Why is writing important? It's the fuel that drives communication, and communication serves as a framework for society. Clear communication-and hence, good writing-is critical because it facilitates coworker collaborations, business transactions and interpersonal interactions.

In short, no matter what you plan on doing with your life or which academic fields interest you, you will need to know how to write effectively. It's one reason why you can expect many college courses to have a writing- and reading-intensive curriculum. The more you practice your writing skills, the more they will improve.

Why Writing Is Important for Landing a Job

One of the answers to the question, "Why is writing important?" is that it will help you. Consider the typical process of applying to a job. You'll usually be asked to submit your resume and cover letter before the hiring manager will decide whether to invite you to schedule an interview.

Your resume and cover letter are like your gateway to the job you want. It's vital to be able to write these items well so the hiring manager decides to extend an interview offer. Another skill worth investing in is email writing. You may need to send emailed inquiries to the HR department, for example. It's essential to be able to write well enough to impress the HR staff, and to ensure that your writing reflects a high degree of professionalism.

Landing the job you desire is just one reason why writing is important. You'll also need writing skills to do your job well.

The Importance of Writing for All Types of Careers

There are certain careers in which solid writing skills are absolutely essential, such as journalism, copywriting and technical writing. Yet, even if you do not intend on becoming a professional writer, you'll still need to know how to communicate clearly and effectively. The ability to communicate is vital whether you plan on becoming a nurse, cybersecurity expert, public servant, police officer or any other type of worker.

Written communication skills are essential for allowing employees to coordinate their work, collaborate with coworkers and respond to clients. However, there are some hidden attributes of a good writer.

Employers generally recognize that someone who demonstrates good writing skills is more likely to be someone who thinks clearly, knows how to organize information and understands how to put themselves in someone else's shoes. As a result, good writers may be more likely to work well with other people. Plus, their ability to organize information in logical ways can support their problem-solving and decision-making abilities.

When an employer sees employees or job candidates who possess good writing skills, they tend to form the following opinions about these people:

They are intelligent. Grammatical errors, poorly formed sentences and improper word choices can make a person seem less intelligent than they might actually be.

They are credible. Solid writing implies that the writer is competent, and this leads to credibility and authoritativeness.

They understand professionalism. A good writer is able to convey professionalism in written communication.

They are organized. The act of writing requires the careful organization of information before it can be presented in a logical form.

Why Is Writing Important in Your Personal Life?

Take a few minutes to reflect on what you've done so far today. Perhaps you checked your social media feeds, read the newspaper, checked out the latest emailed announcements about your classes or texted with your family about an upcoming get-together-not to mention taken a few minutes to read this blog. There are very few activities in life that do not involve any reading or writing.

Being a fluent reader and skilled writer are critically important in all aspects of your life. Beyond its importance for your career, knowing how to write clearly and engagingly supports your interpersonal interactions with family, friends and peers. Here's a quick look at just a few of the reasons why it's important to know how to write well.

When you know how to choose words carefully, you can reduce the risk of creating misunderstandings in your social media posts and comments.

If you decide to keep a daily journal, writing is an act that can give you greater self-clarity, and which you can use to ponder your next steps or figure out the solution to a problem.

If you're stressed, writing down what troubles you is a way to unburden your mind.

Writing personal letters-whether via email or old-fashioned snail mail-is an excellent way to stay in touch with family and friends that you do not often see in person.

Good writing and reading skills go hand-in-hand. When you actively work on improving your own writing skills, you may be better able to appreciate excellent writing created by others. This can enhance your enjoyment of both works of fiction and nonfiction.

Tips for Improving Your Writing Skills

Now that you understand the importance of writing, it's time to take a look at ways of improving your skills. One of the most effective ways to improve your writing skills is to become a voracious reader.

Read a wide variety of materials-from novels and nonfiction books to magazine and newspaper articles to industry blogs. Daily reading broadens your mind, expands your vocabulary and instills writing techniques.

In the workplace, your written communication should be concise, clear, well-organized and professional. Remember to keep your intended audience in mind. For instance, if you're communicating with a client or customer, your writing should convey warmth and friendliness, as well as professionalism.

Always proofread your writing before finalizing a document or clicking "Send" on an email. When proofreading, check for these issues:

Unnecessary words

Repeated words and phrases

Run-on sentences

Grammatical mistakes

Misspellings (double-check names and other proper nouns for accuracy)

If possible, set aside a piece to proofread the next day. You're more likely to catch mistakes if you wait a while to proofread.

Grand Canyon University supports and celebrates our students' academic and career-oriented accomplishments. When you become a student at GCU, you'll receive full access to our many resources and support systems, including the Student Success Center. Here, you will find a wide range of tools to facilitate learning, including resources to guide you through the process of writing papers for your classes.

Click on Request Info at the top of your screen to explore our academic resources and learn about our degree options.

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In high school, teachers who hand out essay assignments are often met with groans from the class. Why? Writing isn't always easy! Yet, it's one of the most essential skills to learn, no matter where your life may take you in the future. Why is writing important?

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Despite its importance as a cornerstone of academic success, writing instruction often gets the short end of the stick in the classroom. An essential form of communication across all fields, writing is often relegated to the English Language Arts classroom-where it is second fiddle to reading instruction. Educators prioritize teaching reading due, in part, to its role in standardized testing, and effective writing instruction can fall to the wayside.

Busy teachers don't have the time to find and vet effective writing resources. That's why we put together this list of five research-based writing strategies to give students explicit instruction and practice in writing.
Access 21 reading and writing interventions in our free toolkit

5 Writing Interventions to Add to Your MTSS Intervention Library

Below you'll find implementation instructions for writing activities to support students' writing skills at every grade level, from elementary school through high school.

1. Paragraph Burger

2. Four-Square

3. Mentor Texts

4. Sentence Starters

5. Paraphrasing

Did you know? These interventions have been selected from Playbook, Panorama's professional learning library for K-12 educators. Districts and schools that partner with Panorama have full access to the collection of 500+ strategies, instructional resources, and MTSS interventions developed by our subject matter experts and curriculum partners.

1. Paragraph Burger

The Paragraph Burger is a strategy to teach writing to students at all levels, across genres. This visual graphic organizer supports students in the planning process of writing.

Author: Panorama Education

MTSS Tier: Tier 1

Developmental Stages: Lower Elementary, Upper Elementary, Middle School

Goal: Assist students with organizing paragraph structure for a given writing task

Action:

Preparation:

1. Create or print paragraph burger worksheets for individual student use.

2. Prepare a completed and annotated burger template to display in the classroom for modeling and student reference.

Instructions:

1. Explain to students that well-written paragraphs follow a particular structure. Tell them that they will be using the Paragraph Burger graphic organizer to plan their writing.

2. Distribute the burger template and review the parts of a paragraph as students follow along on the template:

The top bun represents the introduction or topic sentence of the paragraph. This sentence should "preview" the rest of the paragraph for the reader.

The fillings (middle) of the burger represent supporting details. These should "prove" what was stated in the first sentence.

The bottom bun represents the concluding sentence of the paragraph. This sentence should restate the introduction in a new, connected way.

3. Work as a class to create a simple model paragraph based on general knowledge (for example, how to tie your shoe or brush your teeth). Highlight the topic sentence, supporting details, and conclusion as each is created.

4. Instruct students to try the strategy on their own. Then, ask volunteers to share their finished Paragraph Burgers with the class, or have students share within a small group.

Why this works

The Paragraph Burger strategy is an effective planning tool to support student writing and highlight the components of a structured and well-written paragraph.

In addition, it provides a visual model that can help developing writers across levels of writing proficiency organize and relate information concretely.

2. Four-Square

The four-square method is a strategy used to help students at all writing levels plan and organize their writing within a simple graphic organizer.

Author: Panorama Education

MTSS Tier: Tier 1

Developmental Stages: Lower Elementary, Upper Elementary, Middle School, High School

Goal: Provide students with visual and scaffolded pre-writing, or planning, support

Action:

Preparation:

1. Identify a writing prompt to use with this strategy.

2. Provide blank sheets of paper to students if they will be making their own four-square organizer. Alternatively, print and distribute a premade four-square template to students.

3. Prepare an example four-square organizer to share with students as a model.

Instructions:

1. Inform students of the writing prompt. Engage in a class discussion regarding the topic to activate prior knowledge.

2. Introduce the Four-Square graphic organizer, showing students the model you prepared. Explain that they will use a Four-Square organizer to plan and organize their writing.

3. If students will be making their own graphic organizers, instruct them to fold a sheet of paper in half twice, once horizontally and once vertically. Then have them unfold the paper and draw a box in the center that overlaps all four squares.

4. Tell students to think about how they will answer the writing prompt in one paragraph. Then have them write the topic sentence of the paragraph in the center box.

5. Instruct students to write supporting details in the outer squares.

6. Discuss how students might use the completed four-square organizer to complete the writing assignment as a class. If time allows, have students take these steps.

Why this works

The four-square graphic organizer is a visual and kinesthetic approach to pre-writing. Students can perform various planning tasks, from identifying details to conceptualizing their final product. The organizer can be used as a scaffold, with the writing task broken down into more digestible pieces.

3. Mentor Texts

By observing, rereading, and closely analyzing published writing, students see examples and learn the strategies of good writing that they can integrate into their own compositions.

Author: Digital Promise

MTSS Tier: Tier 1

Developmental Stages: Middle School, High School

Goal: Through discussions and rereads of mentor texts, students develop their own voice and confidence by seeing how the authors create their own voice.

Action:

Preparation:

1. Identify a text that exhibits the aspects of writing you want students to adopt in their own writing, such as text structure, vocabulary, or syntax.

2. Prepare copies of the text for each student to annotate in class.

Instructions:

1. Read the text out loud or have the students read to themselves in class.

2. Introduce students to the specific writing concepts they'll be identifying in the text.

3. Have students work in pairs or small groups to discuss and annotate the text. For example, if you are using the text to teach students to develop a topic, they can discuss and annotate the text for significant and relevant facts, concrete details, and relevant quotes.

4. Tip: Offer students multiple opportunities to encounter the text to deepen their understanding.

Example: Use This Strategy In Your Classroom

Watch how these 11th grade teachers use a mentor text to develop students' abilities to select the most significant details in a text. As students reread their text to find evidence and quotations, they identify concrete techniques that they can try in their own writing, developing their disciplinary literacy skills.

Why this works

Learning science research provides insights into how best to support and engage our full diversity of learners. The Learner Variability Project (LVP) team at Digital Promise works at the intersection of researchers, educators, and edtech developers to design and develop a more rich and equitable education for each learner.

Have you heard the news? Panorama has partnered with Digital Promise, a global nonprofit focused on increasing access to research-backed resources for educators. Through Panorama's Playbook, Digital Promise is offering a set of ELA interventions, math interventions, and adult well-being strategies from their Learner Variability Navigator project.

4. Sentence Starters

Sentence starters are a tool designed to support students in creating complete, assignment-appropriate (spoken and written) sentences. The strategy can be used to scaffold student learning and offer specific support to English language learners and emerging writers.

Author: Panorama Education

MTSS Tier: Tier 1, Tier 2

Developmental Stages: Lower Elementary, Upper Elementary

Goal: Give students a scaffold for relaying main ideas and concepts using complete sentences

Action:

Preparation:

1. Decide on the prompt or topic students will be required to write about. Then, create related Sentence Starters and provide them to each student.

2. Sentence Starters can be scaffolded to guide students in how they sequence and form the ideas within their writing. For example, the first starter may target summarizing (e.g., This idea is supported by details such as __, __, and __). The second starter can target higher depth of knowledge, such as inferring (e.g., The author is implying ___ by ___).

Instructions:

1. Inform students that sentence starters are a way for writers to guide their thinking and help them get their ideas on paper.

2. Display or distribute the sample writing prompt. Review it with students. Then share two or three sample Sentence Starters. Finally, briefly model how one might complete the Sentence Starters using prior knowledge or new information.

3. Display or distribute the Sentence Starters students will use.

4. Direct students to refer to the Sentence Starters throughout their drafts to accurately share their ideas in writing.

5. Optional: Have students read completed Sentence Starters aloud with a partner.

Why this works

Beginning writers often have difficulty verbalizing or writing down their thoughts and ideas. Using sentence starters provides the needed support to translate their ideas on paper accurately.

Additionally, when students complete and read the starters aloud, they share and hear various sentence structures and vocabulary and engage in academic conversations. Starters support students in being specific with their ideas, provide a starting point for writing, and decrease anxiety about the writing process.

5. Paraphrasing

Successful paraphrasing involves identifying key ideas and supporting details in a text and rephrasing them using simpler language. A paraphrase is often the same length as or longer than the original text.

The ability to paraphrase a text demonstrates that a student has read critically and proficiently.

Author: Panorama Education

MTSS Tier: Tier 1, Tier 2

Developmental Stages: Upper Elementary, Middle School, High School

Goal: Students can accurately recount key ideas and details in a text after reading it, using original language and phrasing. This strategy aims to help students recall the text and strengthen their analytical reading skills. In a classroom, it helps teachers monitor students' comprehension of texts.

Action:

Preparation:

1. Identify a text that you can use to model paraphrasing.

2. Consider a text that can be used in multiple settings, such as within a small group or for independent student work.

Instructions:

1. Explain to students that paraphrasing means stating a text's main ideas and details in your own words. Share that paraphrasing is an important strategy to check your comprehension of a text during and after reading.

2. Model the strategy: Project a short text and read it aloud to the class. Think aloud about your process for identifying both key ideas and details, allowing students to track your thought process. Use digital markup strategies for additional scaffolded support (circle main ideas, underline details, etc.).

3. Next, model how to transform this initial paraphrase into a short paragraph. Pause to define plagiarism (to use another person's ideas or words as your own without properly crediting them) and explain the importance of avoiding it, especially through unattributed direct quotations.

4. Share tips for making it easier to put text in your own words, including rereading, looking up unfamiliar words and identifying synonyms, taking notes as bullet points instead of complete sentences, combining and dividing sentences, and changing the order of ideas while maintaining a logical sequence.

5. Guided practice: Guide students in performing the strategy in small groups. Project or provide a copy of another short text. Have a volunteer in each group read aloud the text. Then direct students to reread the text and work together to identify key ideas and details, using markup strategies as needed. Each group should then write a short paragraph, paraphrasing the text.

6. Call on groups to share their paragraphs with the rest of the class. Encourage students to identify any problems they encountered while trying to put the text in their own words and troubleshoot as a class, using the tips you introduced earlier.

7. Independent practice: Have students perform the same activity independently with a new text. Before students write their paraphrase, have them use any notes they have to explain the text to someone else. If the partner has trouble understanding the paraphrase, encourage the student to reread further and annotate the text.

Why this works

Educational research indicates that when students successfully understand and apply the strategy of paraphrasing, a significant increase in reading comprehension occurs. In addition, the ability to recount key ideas and details in a reader's own words can offer the complementary advantages of increased comprehension and reading confidence.

Supporting the Whole Student

Learning recovery is top of mind for district administrators and MTSS leaders everywhere. Now more than ever, students need holistic support and research-based practices that improve their learning.

Ensuring educators in your district have access to high-quality strategies for teaching writing will enable students to reach their full academic potential.

Download the MTSS Interventions Toolkit

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5 Research-Based Writing Interventions for Your MTSS

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Get implementation guides for five research-based writing interventions from Panorama's MTSS intervention library.

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Generative Sentence Strategy to Scaffold Writing 

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Generative Sentence Strategy to Scaffold Writing 

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Big Paper Writing | Literacy Strategies for Students with Significant Cognitive Disabilities

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Writing and the Profoundly Gifted Child - Davidson Institute

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The following article shares highlights and insights from one of our Expert Series events, which are exclusive for Young Scholars and their parents. Our

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Writing Lessons : How to Teach Writing Skills to ESL Students

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Educational research states that all good writing includes six key ingredients:

These are the Six Traits of Writing.

But, as you've likely experienced, building stronger writers can seem overwhelming, regardless of the grade you teach. Every classroom includes a broad range of students at varying writing levels. As such, a canned writing curriculum will never meet the unique needs of every student.

That's why our team believes so strongly in the 6 Writing Traits. It's not a program. Instead, it is a framework that uses the six qualities of "good" writing to guide every lesson, assignment, and assessment.

If you want to learn what are the Six Traits of Writing, you've come to the right place! For nearly 20 years, we've been helping educators build stronger writers with the Six Traits. In this guide, you'll find a comprehensive overview of the Six Traits of Writing. This includes suggestions for implementation in your own classroom.

Let's get started!

Don't have time to read this now?

Enter your email address below and we'll send you a printable version that you can reference later.

"We are not editors, but teachers. The goal of a conference is to help students become better writers." - Carl Anderson

Process Conferences

Students need feedback during all stages of the writing process-not just during the final revision and editing stages. Unlike the longer product conference, a process conference lasts only a few minutes, and it can happen at any stage in the writing process. Teachers may sit down with students and talk about choosing a topic or discuss their pre-writing plan or give feedback as they draft a new piece or when they're fine-tuning it.

Students would rather have a few minutes of teacher feedback regularly versus 20 minutes once a month. They need to be in touch with the teacher more often, but they do not necessarily need to be one-on-one. Leading a process conference with small groups of students allows more students to receive feedback more often.

Group process conferences allow teachers to touch base with more students each day and provide a critical, formative assessment of where students are and what they need next.

Where did the traits come from?

In the 1960s, a researcher named Paul Diederich asked a group of professionals to identify what makes writing effective. He received hundreds of responses, ranging from strong metaphors to correct semicolons. But no one can remember hundreds of things simultaneously, so Diederich grouped the responses and found they fell within six categories.

In 1984, literacy expert Vicki Spandel led a team who replicated Diederich's study. In the end, Spandel, curriculum experts at the Northwest Regional Education Laboratory, and willing teachers from Missoula, Montana and Beaverton, Oregon all settled on the same six ingredients.

Since that time, the research has been formally conducted a third time. Using an even wider variety of writing genres, including digital and online writings, Education Northwest has proven that the same six ingredients are still the core of "good" writing.

The Six Traits of Writing model is now used in all 50 of the United States as well as multiple countries around the world.

Written by Lois Bridges, Ph.D.

EXCERPT: For more than two decades, the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory (now known as Education Northwest) and other researchers have studied the effectiveness of the Trait Model and the professional development tools used to train the teachers who use it. In a nutshell, the traits represent the essential elements of writing inherent in all extended written communication: ideas, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, conventions, and presentation. Educators who use the Trait Model center both their instruction and their assessment on helping students understand how these elements work together and interact to create a well-written, cohesive piece that accomplishes the writer's goal.

Conducted by: U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance

EXCERPT: The study was designed to estimate the impact of 6+1 Trait Writing on student achievement in writing during the first year of a typical implementation. This question was addressed among grade 5 students in Oregon using a single "holistic" writing score on student essays. Exploratory analyses using six scores on specific traits of writing were also conducted. Professional development was provided by the model developers in the same year that student assessments were administered. The particulars of school and classroom implementation of the approach were allowed to vary in the schools, without any special oversight or intervention by the developers beyond the technical assistance normally offered to those who receive the materials and professional development.

For the confirmatory research question (What is the impact of 6+1 Trait Writing on grade 5 student achievement in writing), use of the 6+1 Trait Writing model caused a statistically significant difference in student writing scores.

Students grow when their teachers use targeted language to teach and assess their writing. Furthermore, when an entire grade level, department, or school use the Six-Traits framework with fidelity, the impact is enormous.

When a K-5 school, for example, commits to Six-Traits implementation, students at every level are exposed to age-appropriate mini-lessons, mentor text, anchor papers, and writing rubrics-all of which are intentionally tied to the Six Traits. That consistent exposure to the same elements over a period of years strengthens students' depth of knowledge but also their capacity to apply the traits in writing. This includes persuasive, argumentative, informative, and narrative pieces.

Such repeated exposure requires more than a poster and six words. It's about the daily and explicit teaching of dozens of granular writing skills across the grade levels and tied to the Six-Traits language.

Six-Traits Professional Development

Most English/language arts textbook publishers are intentional about labeling their resources with the Six-Traits language. But too often, boxed curriculums lack the depth and intentionality that is required in order to fully implement the Six Traits.

In order to know how to launch and execute a fluid Six-Traits model that is responsive to student needs, teachers need the support of ongoing professional development. After all, most teachers didn't learn how to teach writing in college, making vague guidance from the language arts textbook a recipe for shallow writing instruction. Using professional development as a catalyst to building-wide implementation of the Six Traits involves a continued cycle of professional learning, practice, and collaboration.

3. Provide time during the school day (or in the summer) for every teacher to participate in Six-Traits workshops. With cost-effective online options like those available from Smekens Education's webAcademy, learning becomes easier. The entire staff can use on-demand videos to learn innovative ways to launch and begin to implement the Six Traits.

4. After teachers have embedded the Six Traits into their writing lessons, assignments, and assessments, engage teams in instructional rounds. This activity allows educators to observe their colleagues deliver trait-based instruction and then collaborate afterward to offer feedback and encouragement.

5. Use PLC time to examine how the Six Traits are being implemented and how learning is ultimately being impacted. As learning gaps are identified throughout the school year, use professional learning tools such as Smekens Education's webPD. This will provide teachers with innovative strategies to address specific writing weaknesses.

6. Offer teachers ongoing implementation support with an instructional coach. Whether turning to a highly-trained in-house staff member or leaning on an outside expert like Smekens Education's Remote Coach, this type of sustained guidance will help teachers maximize success with the Six Traits.

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The Ultimate Guide to the 6 Traits of Writing | Smekens

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All good writing has six key ingredients: ideas, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, and conventions - these are the Six Traits of Writing.

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Teaching Students to Organize Writing - The Brown Bag Teacher

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Color-coding can help students organize This concrete, simple idea allows students and teachers to quickly reflect on their writing.

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As an elementary school student, I vividly remember learning to diagram sentences. I remember marking up all the verbs, nouns, prepositional phrases and thinking to myself, "How will this help me be a better writer?" I never completely connected the dots because this activity was just that-an activity, a test of my skills of identifying sentence structure that I would never apply to my own writing. It did not make me a stronger writer. In fact, it made me dread the task of writing. If my teachers had modeled how to incorporate ideas and details into writing, using real writing instead of the drill-and-kill approach, I would have been much more motivated and engaged to try it on my own.

As a literacy consultant and teacher educator, I have visited many classrooms over the years to watch both pre-service and in-service teachers. After observing and talking with teachers about ways to teach writing, the questions that continue to come up are:

How do I develop my students into writers who expand on their ideas and develop strong sentences their readers will devour?

What does it look like in the classroom to have students write grammatically correct sentences that paint a clear picture for the reader?

For many teachers, moving away from the drill-and-kill approach means leaving behind isolated grammar instruction with worksheets and, instead, pushing students to use their own original writing to make simple sentences more complex and interesting. However, teachers need to provide explicit instruction for their students, demonstrating how sentence construction and mechanics interact to form strong sentences. This can and should start early for students.

Constructing Clear and Meaningful Sentences

In the primary grades, young writers are learning what a sentence is and how capitalization and punctuation help readers understand the sentence. This knowledge will allow students to apply simple sentence construction skills to their own writing. As students become more familiar with simple sentence construction, teachers can begin to teach students to identify areas where they can expand their sentence by adding details that can paint a vivid picture for the reader. Using a variety of sentence types and sources, teachers first model how to identify well-written, elaborated sentences during reading and then demonstrate how to add similar kinds of elaboration to sentences during a shared writing time with students.

In the intermediate grades, teachers can devote more time to sentence-construction skills using a variety of sentence types and sources. For example, the books students are reading in the classroom, school newsletters, newspaper or magazine articles, and the students' own writing can all be used to demonstrate sentence expanding and ways students can incorporate it into their own writing. For example, the teacher could take a few simple sentences from a common book the students are reading to demonstrate how to expand them for the reader. She also could take the class newsletter and demonstrate through a think aloud how to take a classroom moment and create a clear and memorable picture in the minds of the reader by adding explanatory details.

At all grades, teachers can help students develop strong sentence-construction skills by modeling how to expand and refine their writing throughout the writing process. Below are a few simple steps teachers can take to incorporate sentence expanding into their writing instruction.

Step 1: Identify What is Included in a Simple Sentence

Help students realize that a simple sentence includes one subject-verb combination, correct capitalization, and punctuation. The subject describes who or what the sentence is about, and the verb describes the action. The following is an example of a simple sentence:
"The dog ran."
Step 2: Expand the Sentence

Once you have identified a simple sentence, help students understand that we can add details by answering the following questions:

From the example sentence above, we know the subject is the dog and the verb is "ran," but we are missing details that can provide a better understanding for our readers about the dog. Where was the dog? When and how did it run? Why was the dog running? These are questions you can ask students to elicit ideas and phrases that could be incorporated into your simple sentence to expand or stretch it into a more complex and detailed one.

Step 3: Practice Writing Expanded Sentences

After teaching students what you should include in a more complex and detailed sentence, they can practice revising their own work, or practice revising simple sentences from meaningful writing examples (see sample lesson plans below). Remember, you don't want your students to spend all of their time on a worksheet. The goal is to help them develop the skill and apply it to their own writing so they can develop into effective writers.

Time spent daily on writing instruction that encourages students to ponder what their sentences are saying to the reader and how to stretch them out to paint a clear picture can be very valuable. Teachers and students alike will move from task writing to more fulfilling and enjoyable writing when they put these simple steps into place.

Sample Lesson Plans

Now that you are familiar with instructional methods and ways to practice sentence expanding, you may wish to utilize the following sample lesson plans with your class, or review them to get a better sense of how to implement these instructional strategies in the classroom.

Sentence Expanding Elementary School Example Lesson Plan Contains a lesson plan that reviews simple sentences, offers guided practice expanding simple sentences by answering four key questions, suggests a practice activity for expanding sentences with a partner, scaffolds students' work with a checklist containing the steps of expanding sentences, and provides information on assessment. The lesson plan also includes a downloadable sentence expanding notes page, words and phrases bank, and practice page.

Sentence Expanding Middle School Example Lesson Plan Contains lesson plan that reviews simple sentences, offers guided practice expanding simple sentences by answering four key questions, suggests a practicing activity for expanding sentences with a partner, scaffolds students' work with a checklist containing the steps of expanding sentences, and provides information on assessment including a rubric to assess student work. The lesson plan also includes a downloadable sentence expanding notes page, words and phrases bank, and practice page.

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Sentence Expanding: Helping Students Build Stronger Sentences

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As an elementary school student, I vividly remember learning to diagram sentences. I remember marking up all the verbs, nouns, prepositional phrases and thinking to myself, "How will this help me be a better writer?"

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Writer's Workshop Middle School: The Ultimate Guide defines the writer's workshop model, its essential components, pros and cons, step-by-step set-up, and further resources.

Using a writer's workshop model helps my students improve their literacy skills and saves me lots of time planning and grading. So, now I have more time and energy for my family and for helping other teachers through Teach2Write.

What is the writer's workshop model?

Writer's workshop is a method of teaching writing developed by Donald Graves and Donald Murray , amongst other teacher-researchers.

The writer's workshop provides a student-centered environment where students are given time, choice, and voice in their learning. The teacher nurtures the class by creating and mentoring a community of writers.

So, why does the writer's workshop in middle school matter?

Students learn more during the writer's workshop because you can mentor them toward what they need to know and practice, and they have lots of time to write and read in order to improve at their own pace (to an extent).

For example, if the skill I need to teach is how authors use mood and tone to create meaning, then I would use a mentor text to teach that concept. However, after reading, the focus will not be on answering questions about the text in written form. Instead, I demonstrate how writers choose particular words and the arrangement of those words to create a mood and tone.

Students then try creating mood and tone with their own pieces of writing. Only after students have practiced their own creations, do I then circle back around to other literature for students to practice literary analysis of mood and tone and its effect on meaning.

Why I focus on writing in the ELA classroom?

I've found students are more likely to read assigned texts I've given them a reason to use those texts. That reason? To apply what they learn from mentor texts to their choice writing. Middle school students love to express themselves in creative ways, and by giving students this choice, you build engagement and motivation to continue learning.

The focus becomes reading to write more clearly and expressively. All texts become mentor texts that students study with a writer's eye. How did the writer hook the reader into the story? What techniques did the writer use for dialogue? How many different ways does my favorite author introduce characters? Why did the character do that? What motivated him/her? How do I write character motive into my stories? What kind of mood and tone do I want to create for my reader?

The essential components of the writer's workshop in middle school are:

1. Time to Write Daily

Students need a chance to write daily. Various ways you can do this are through Bell Ringers at the beginning of the class, writing during the mini-lesson, and writing projects during workshop time. My students use writing journals because they need a space to think they face a blank computer screen.

Students read in my classes. However, their purpose for reading is to become better writers. This reading is either assigned, student choice, or a choice between the assigned reading and student choice, depending on the skill or concept I'm targeting that week.

This is how I break up our daily writing:

Write Now (bell ringer)

Mini-lesson and sharing

Writing/Reading Workshop while I confer with writers

Short turn and talk, log off computers and pack up

Below is an example of my story writer's workshop time transformation. This is what I use when we are writing narratives. I'm using a fantasy magic theme here:

2. Student Choice

To keep students motivated to write, you want to build in student choice whenever and wherever possible. Just to clarify, you don't have to give them choices for everything they do.

For one thing, that would be as overwhelming as shopping on the cereal aisle at your local grocery store. Just too many choices.

When I introduce a concept, I may give them a few choices on how students can practice that concept. If I give them a writing assignment, I often allow them ONE choice in topic, genre, audience, or mode of writing.

If you need students to complete an assignment/activity within a certain time period, tell them ahead of time. Let them know they can turn in an excerpt if they want to write something longer than you expect.

Of course, this is not always possible. They need to learn how to write within certain time parameters. So, let them practice this through timed writings or word sprints .

One way to help students with choice is to have them do listing activities frequently. They could even have a section in their writing notebooks just for lists of ideas.

Another way to help students with choice writing is to teach them the 5 tricks that break writer's block.

3. Exploring the writer's voice

Writer's voice - that elusive term that most writers have no idea how to achieve until they've written for a while, and then finally realize they have it. The ultimate goal for me as a writing teacher is to help my students to find their voice.

I want students to be able to explore what is important to them personally and to explore how they can share this with others. From encouraging students to participate in small group sharing to author's celebrations, students need the opportunity to see their writing voice matters.

There are so many different ways for kids to publish safely online - Edublogs, Adobe Spark, Google Sites, FlipGrid, etc.

The writer's workshop allows students to bring pieces of writing through the writing process to share with others their unique, multimedia creations. Not ALL writing goes through this process, only those pieces that demonstrate their learning.

4. Building a community of writers in your writer's workshop for middle school

Middle school students are very social, but even the quiet writers need to socialize often with other writers. This component of the writer's workshop for middle school is what makes this model an actual workshop.

Students share their writing with each other. Usually, I allow for natural partnerships and groups to form. However, at the beginning of the year, I often pair up students for short activities. This helps everyone feel more comfortable with each other.

One way I build a community of writers is to play the name game at the beginning of the year. We all stand in a circle and we toss a ball to each other and say our name and all the people who have had the ball tossed to them. It gets fun when students start to forget names. They all start out being self-conscious but end up laughing and smiling.

Another way to build a community is during share time. I have students write in their notebooks as soon as they come into the classroom as a warm-up, starter activity that I call Write Nows. These Write Nows are projected up on the screen, and students write for 2-5 minutes. After this, I ask students to turn and talk to a neighbor about what they wrote.

Sometimes this writing is a review of the previous day or another activity that goes along with the skill we are learning. Other times it is a prewriting activity that helps break writer's block .

Write a Letter to your Students

To help students get to know me as a community member, I write a letter to them and they write back to me. This starts the relationship-building between my students and me within the first week, and I conference with the students about their letters. This also gets them into the swing of a writer's workshop.

My students love this letter-writing activity that I've done every year for the past 24 years. It's a hit every year and establishes the tone and mood of our workshop.

5. Teacher as Writing Mentor

One of the most important components of the writer's workshop in middle school is you - the writing teacher.

To teach writing well, you should write along with your students. Over the years, I've written on transparencies, used a document camera, and filmed myself writing. All of these methods work. Generally, I write along with students during the bell-ringer activity, which I call Write Now, but sometimes I've prewritten the Write Now.

Additionally, I show students my various writing projects, both published and unpublished, during daily lessons.

My students have seen this blog, heard my , listened to me read aloud from stories I've written and/or published. My students are the ones who pushed me to publish my first YA books . You'll be amazed at what you come up with and how this creates a bond with your students that lasts a lifetime.

Also, by completing the writing assignments you assign, you'll be able to empathize with and anticipate the writer's struggle with each assignment.

During writing conferences, share your expertise to help students to celebrate their strengths and how to overcome their challenges. This is where you shine as a writing teacher mentor. This is also where you save tons of time by using this time to assess student work as well.

Terms to Know for Writing Workshop
This is not an exhaustive list, but one that will be added to as I find more terms that should be added here.
Activity: the practice of a skill or process, especially when gaining new knowledge

Assignment: a product created by the student after practicing a skill or process that may be revised up until a particular due date

Bell ringer: a beginning of the period activity (I call these Write Nows in my class)

Blended learning environment: in-person LIVE teaching and learning or digital learning with recorded lessons

Conference: a meeting between teacher and student about their writing

Journal write: handwriting in a journal for ideas, bell ringers, collecting information, etc.

Mini-lesson: a short 5-10 minute lesson that teaches either a whole or partial skill or process

Mastery Learning: quizzing students on their conceptual knowledge, giving them different activities based on the results of their quizzes - either reteach or extend - and quizzing again. Revisions can also be mastery-learning pieces.

Mentor texts: well-written, multicultural texts used to demonstrate a literary concept or style

Rubric: a breakdown of the skill into levels of learning - students revise to earn a higher level

SEL: Social-emotional learning

Writing Workshop Middle School Pros and Cons

Builds student relationships with you and each other - lots of SEL

Easier to differentiate for students than the traditional classroom model

Grading can be accomplished during conferences

Students are more engaged and begin to enjoy writing

They might even enjoy reading more, too

Mini-lessons are short, sweet and to the point, less prep time for presentations

Breaking through writer's block

Teaching students how to use the technology

Helping students revise if they don't have access to technology

Adapting to technology challenges that arise (switch to writing journals or change Internet browsers)

Deadlines can be difficult to manage sometimes

As far as time management is concerned - one of the things I am going to stress to my students is the need for getting assignments turned in, even if it's not perfect. I need to be able to keep them to deadlines. So, this year, I'm going to teach my student's Parkinson's Law :

How to start a writer's workshop for middle school

These are the steps I'm taking this year to start my writer's workshop, and I've used these for quite a few years now. Some steps may be done simultaneously on the same day. There will be future blog posts about each of these steps.

1. Create a welcoming classroom space.

2. Decide what technology you will be using - hardware and software. If you need help with Canvas LMS, click .

3. Send out your course syllabus with materials students will need for your course.

4. Create a course outline based on your school's curriculum guides or state standards.

5. Plan and post your first 2 weeks of lessons and assignments into your online course (if you are using technology in your course).

6. Establish classroom expectations and routines.

7. Build a classroom community of writers.

8. Show students how to navigate your course online.

9. Write a letter to your students and have them write back to you as their first assignment.

10. Confer with your writers as they are writing their letters and make a list for yourself of things students need to work on with their writing.

11. Set up writing journals and begin writing workshop routines.

12. During mini-lessons, teach the 5 tricks that break writer's block .

13. Students write in journals to gather ideas and begin writing pieces.

14. Assign a short writing piece and confer with writers during workshop time.

15. Teach ONE revision strategy during a mini-lesson, depending on your curriculum.

16. Teach ONE editing strategy during a mini-lesson, depending on your curriculum.

17. Allow writers to revise and edit before turning in their first short writing assignment.

18. Celebrate your writers with the Author's Chair presentations.

19. Continue writer's workshop by using daily bell ringers, mini-lessons about writing and reading, sharing, writing/reading workshop, conferencing, and turn and talk.

20. Breakaway from the writer's workshop routine every once in a while to play - escape rooms, read-arounds, watch a movie, celebrate authors, group brainstorm, catching up on overdue assignments.

References for Writing Workshop in Middle School

Atwell, Nancie. In the Middle: A Lifetime of Learning about Writing, Reading, and Adolescence. Heinemann, 2014.

Graves, Donald H. "All Children Can Write." http://www.ldonline.org/article/6204/

Lane, Barry. After The End: Teaching and Learning Creative Revision. Heinemann, 2015.

Murray, Donald. "The Listening Eye: Reflections on the Writing Conference" https://secure.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/Journals/CE/1979/0411-sep1979/CE0411Listening.pdf

Learning materials for Writing Workshop for Middle School

PEEL, RACE, ACE, and all the other strategies did not work for all of my students all of the time, so that's why I created these standards-based resources.

These standards-based writing activities for all Common Core Reading Literature and Informational standards help scaffold students through practice and repetition since these activities can be used over and over again with ANY literary reading materials.

Included in these resources:

step-by-step lesson plans

poster for literary skills taught in this resource

rubrics for assessments standards-based

vocabulary activities and notes standard-based

graphic organizers that incorporate analysis of the literature and information standard-based

paragraph frames for students who need extra scaffolding standard-based

sentence stems to get students started sentence-by-sentence until they master how to write for each standard

digital version that is Google SlidesTM compatible with all student worksheets

Mind Maps: This resource helps students break through writer's blocks - includes several mind mapping webs with questions to help students discover the specific details.

List Making: This resource helps students make 27 different lists of topics they could write about.

Sensory Details: This resource will help you to teach your students to SHOW, not tell. Descriptive writing with a sensory details flipbook and engaging activities that will get your students thinking creatively and writing with style.

Mind Maps Digital Notebook: These mind maps are designed to get your students asking themselves questions to get at the specific details they need in order to express themselves more clearly. Also, the pages of this digital writer's notebook are illustrated, colorful, and fun. Students can add images as well as text to create their own digital writer's notebook.
Included in this resource are 2 digital files:

1. Lesson Plans PDF that includes step-by-step lesson plans, a grading rubric to make grading faster and easier, along with suggestions for what to do after mind mapping.

2. Google SlidesTM version of the Student Digital Writer's Notebook allows students endless amounts of writing simply by duplicating a slide.

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Writer's Workshop Middle School: The Ultimate Guide - www.teach2write.com

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Writer's Workshop Middle School: The Ultimate Guide defines the writer's workshop model, its essential components, pros and...

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Efficient Ways to Improve Student Writing 

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Efficient Ways to Improve Student Writing 

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Strategies, Ideas, and Recommendations from the faculty Development Literature
General Strategies

View the improvement of students' writing as your responsibility.
Teaching writing is not only the job of the English department alone. Writing is an essential tool for learning a discipline and helping students improve their writing skills is a responsibility for all faculty.

Let students know that you value good writing.
Stress the importance of clear, thoughtful writing. Faculty who tell students that good writing will be rewarded and poor writing will be penalized receive better essays than instructors who don't make such demands. In the syllabus, on the first day, and throughout the term, remind students that they must make their best effort in expressing themselves on paper. Back up your statements with comments on early assignments that show you really mean it, and your students will respond.

Regularly assign brief writing exercises in your classes.
To vary the pace of a lecture course, ask students to write a few minutes during class. Some mixture of in-class writing, outside writing assignments, and exams with open-ended questions will give students the practice they need to improve their skills.

Provide guidance throughout the writing process.
After you have made the assignment, discuss the value of outlines and notes, explain how to select and narrow a topic, and critique the first draft, define plagiarism as well.

Don't feel as though you have to read and grade every piece of your students' writing.
Ask students to analyze each other's work during class, or ask them to critique their work in small groups. Students will learn that they are writing in order to think more clearly, not obtain a grade. Keep in mind, you can collect students' papers and skim their work.

Find other faculty members who are trying to use writing more effectively in their courses.
Pool ideas about ways in which writing can help students learn more about the subject matter. See if there is sufficient interest in your discipline to warrant drawing up guidelines. Students welcome handouts that give them specific instructions on how to write papers for a particular course or in a particular subject area.

Teaching Writing When You Are Not an English Teacher

Remind students that writing is a process that helps us clarify ideas.
Tell students that writing is a way of learning, not an end in itself. Also let them know that writing is a complicated, messy, nonlinear process filled with false starts. Help them to identify the writer's key activities:

Developing ideas

Finding a focus and a thesis

Composing a draft

Getting feedback and comments from others

Revising the draft by expanding ideas, clarifying meaning, reorganizing

Editing

Presenting the finished work to readers

Explain that writing is hard work.
Share with your class your own struggles in grappling with difficult topics. If they know that writing takes effort, they won't be discouraged by their own pace or progress. One faculty member shared with students their notebook that contained the chronology of one of his published articles: first ideas, successive drafts, submitted manuscript, reviewers' suggested changes, revised version, galley proofs, and published article.

Give students opportunities to talk about their writing.
Students need to talk about papers in progress so that they can formulate their thoughts, generate ideas, and focus their topics. Take five or ten minutes of class time for students to read their writing to each other in small groups or pairs. It's important for students to hear what their peers have written.

Encourage students to revise their work.
Provide formal steps for revision by asking students to submit first drafts of papers for your review or for peer critique. You can also give your students the option of revising and rewriting one assignment during the semester for a higher grade. Faculty report that 10 to 40 percent of the students take advantage of this option.

Explain thesis statements.
A thesis statement makes an assertion about some issue. A common student problem is to write papers that present overviews of facts with no thesis statement or that have a diffuse thesis statement.

Stress clarity and specificity.
The more the abstract and difficult the topic, the more concrete the student's language should be. Inflated language and academic jargon camouflage rather than clarify their point.

Explain the importance of grammar and sentence structure, as well as content.
Students shouldn't think that English teachers are the only judges of grammar and style. Tell your students that you will be looking at both quality of their writing and the content.

Distribute bibliographies and tip sheets on good writing practices.
Check with your English department or writing center to identify materials that can be easily distributed to students. Consider giving your students a bibliography of writing guides, for example:

Crews, F.C. Random House Handbook. (6th ed.) New York: McGraw-Hill, 1992.

A classic comprehensive textbook for college students. Well written and well worth reading.

Lanham, R.A. Revising Prose. (3rd ed.) New York: Scribner's, 1991. Techniques for eliminating

bureaucratese and restoring energy to tired prose.

Tollefson, S. K. Grammar Grams and Grammar Grams II. New York: HarperCollins, 1989,

1992. Two short, witty guides that answer common questions about grammar, style, and usage. Both are fun to read.

Science and Engineering
Barrass, R. Scientists Must Write. New York: Chapman and Hall, 1978. Biddle, A. W., and Bean, D. J. Writer's Guide: Life Sciences. Lexington, Mass.: Heath, 1987.

Arts and Humanities
Barnet, S. A Short Guide to Writing About Art. Boston: Little, Brown, 1989. Goldman, B. Reading and Writing in the Arts. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1978.

Social Sciences
Biddle, A. W., Fulwiler, T., and Holland, K.M. Writer's Guide: Psychology. Lexington, Mass,:

Heath, 1987.
McCloskey, D. N. The Writing of Economics. New York: Macmillan, 1987.

Ask a composition instructor to give a presentation to your students.
Invite a guest speaker from the composition department or student learning center to talk to your students about effective writing and common writing problems. Faculty who have invited these experts report that such presentations reinforce the values of the importance of writing.

Let students know about available tutoring services.
Individual or group tutoring in writing is available on most campuses. Ask someone from the tutoring center to give a demonstration in your class.

Use computers to help students write better.
Locally developed and commercially available software are now being used by faculty to help students plan, write, and revise their written work. Some software available allows instructors to monitor students' work in progress and lets students collaborate with their classmates.

Assigning In-Class Writing Activities

Ask students to write what they know about a topic before you discuss it.
Ask your students to write a brief summary of what they already know or what opinions they hold regarding the subject you are about to discuss. The purpose of this is to focus the students' attention, there is no need to collect the summaries.

Ask students to respond in writing to questions you pose during class.
Prior to class starting, list two or three short-answer questions on the board and ask your students to write down their responses. Your questions might call for a review of material you have already discussed or recalling information from assigned readings.

Ask students to write from a pro or con position.
When presenting an argument, stop and ask your students to write down all the reasons and evidence they can think of that supports one side or the other. These statements can be used as the basis for discussion.

During class, pause for a three-minute write.
Periodically ask students to write freely for three minutes on a specific question or topic. They should write whatever pops into their mind without worrying about grammar, spelling, phrasing, or organization. This kind of free writing, according to writing experts, helps students synthesize diverse ideas and identify points they may not understand. There is no need to collect these exercises.

Have students write a brief summary at the end of class.
At the end of the class period, give your students index cards to jot down the key themes, major points, or general principles of the day's discussion. You can easily collect the index cards and review them to see whether the class understood the discussion.

Have one student keep minutes to be read at the next class meeting.
By taking minutes, students get a chance to develop their listening, synthesizing, and writing skills. Boris (1983) suggests the following:

Prepare your students by having everyone take careful notes for the class period, go home and rework them into minutes, and hand them in for comments. It can be the students' discretion whether the minutes are in outline or narrative form.

Decide on one to two good models to read or distribute to the class.

At the beginning of each of the following classes, assign one student to take minutes for the period.

Give a piece of carbon paper to the student who is taking minutes so that you can have a rough copy. The student then takes the original home and revises it in time to read it aloud at the next class meeting.

After the student has read their minutes, ask other students to comment on their accuracy and quality. If necessary, the student will revise the minutes and turn in two copies, one for grading and one for your files.

Structure small group discussion around a writing task.
For example, have your students pick three words that are of major importance to the day's session. Ask your class to write freely for two to three minutes on just one of the words. Next, give the students five to ten minutes to meet in groups to share what they have written and generate questions to ask in class.

Use peer response groups.
Divide your class into groups of three or four, no larger. Ask your students to bring to class enough copies of a rough draft of a paper for each person in their group. Give your students guidelines for critiquing the drafts. In any response task, the most important step is for the reader to note the part of the paper that is the strongest and describe to the writer why it worked so well. The following instructions can also be given to the reader:

State the main point of the paper in a single sentence

List the major subtopics

Identify confusing sections of the paper

Decide whether each section of the paper has enough detail, evidence, and information

Indicate whether the paper's points follow one another in sequence

Judge the appropriateness of the opening and concluding paragraphs

Identify the strengths of the paper

Written critiques done as homework are likely to be more thoughtful, but critiques may also be done during the class period.

Use read-around groups.
Read-around groups are a technique used with short assignments (two to four pages) which allows everyone to read everyone else's paper. Divide the class into groups no larger than four students and divide the papers (coded for anonymity) into as many sets as there are groups. Give each group a set and ask the students to read each paper silently and decide on the best paper in the set. Each group should discuss their choices and come to a consensus on the best paper. The paper's code number is recorded by the group, and the same process is repeated with a new set of papers. After all the groups have read all the sets of papers, someone from each group writes on the board the code number from the best paper in each set. The recurring numbers are circled. Generally, one to three papers stand out.

Ask students to identify the characteristics of effective writing.
After completing the read-around activity, ask your students to reconsider those papers which were voted as excellent by the entire class and to write down features that made each paper outstanding. Write their comments on the board, asking for elaboration and probing vague generalities. In pairs, the students discuss the comments on the board and try to put them into categories such as organization, awareness of audience, thoroughness of detail, etc. You might need to help your students arrange the characteristics into meaningful categories.

Sources The Strategies, Ideas and Recommendations Here Come Primarily From:
Gross Davis, B. Tools for Teaching. San Francisco, Jossey-Bass, 1993.
And These Additional Sources...
Boris, E. Z. "Classroom Minutes: A Valuable Teaching Device." Improving College and

University Teaching, 1983,31(2), 70-73.

Elbow, P. "Using Writing to Teach Something Else." Unpublished paper, 1987.

Hawisher, G. E., and Selfe, C. L. (eds.). Critical Perspectives on Computers and

Composition Instruction. New York: Teachers College Press, 1989.

Holdstein, D. H., and Selfe, C. L. (eds.). Computers and Writing: Theory, Research,

Practice. New York: Modern Language Association, 1990.

Lowman, J. Mastering the Techniques of Teaching. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1984.

Petersen, B. T. "Additional Resources in the Practice of Writing Across the Disciplines."

In C. W. Griffin (ed.), Teaching Writing in All Disciplines. New Directions in Teaching and Learning, no. 12. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1982.

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education.

Bright Idea Network, 1989. (For information contact David Graf, Iowa State University, Ames.)

Pytlik, B. P. "Teaching Teachers of Writing: Workshops on Writing as a Collaborative

Process." College Teaching, 1989, 37(1), 12-14.

Tollefson, S. K. Encouraging Student Writing. Berkeley: Office of Educational

Development, University of California, 1988.

Walvoord, B. F. Helping Students Write Well: A Guide for Teachers in All Disciplines.

(2nd ed.) New York: Modern Language Association, 1986.

Watkins, B. T. "More and More Professors in Many Academic Disciplines Routinely

Require Students to Do Extensive Writing." Chronicle of Higher Education, 1990, 36(44), pp. A13-14, A16.

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Efficient Ways to Improve Student Writing

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Efficient Ways to Improve Student Writing

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Reading is an exercise for the mind. It helps kids calm down and relax, opening doors of new knowledge to enlighten their minds. Kids who read grow up to have better cognitive skills.
Reading is good for everyone, not only children or young adults. On the internet you will find many lists with up to 30 reasons why reading is important. Here I limit myself to 15 thoroughly substantiated reasons.

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Importance of reading | Young Readers Foundation

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There are many reasons why reading is good for everyone and especially necessary for young people. Reading is an exercise for the mind. It helps kids calm down and relax and opening doors of new...

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For years, the field of reading education has been engaged in thinking about best practices. The term "best practice" is generally used to describe those instructional approaches and techniques that improve children's reading development. In short, these practices have acquired evidence over time that if used with fidelity, children are likely to become proficient in reading. The National Reading Panel Report (2000), now over a decade old, was perhaps the most ambitious effort to synthesize this literature in reading, highlighting key best practices in the field.

Best practices, as most of us recognize, however, are not necessarily easy to implement in day-to-day instruction. Consider for a moment the best practice of explicit phonics instruction. Effective implementation of this best practice can get complicated pretty quickly on several levels: It requires teachers to know a good deal about the sound structure of our language, about students' abilities to segment and blend a word's phonemes beyond the first sound. It also requires access to high-quality instructional materials and the ability to differentiate instruction to those children who may need it. Finally, it demands good pacing and classroom organization carefully calibrated to maximize the use of instructional time. If any these requirements break down, the best practice may no longer become best practice. Consequently, another key feature of best practice is that it needs to be implemented well with considerable intention, deliberate practice, and reflection for teachers to be successful at it.

Drawing on current research and professional wisdom, we identify a number of best practices seen from our own research perspective. Certainly, they are not all inclusive. Rather, our efforts here are to highlight a set of practices that have amassed a significant body of work to demonstrate their usefulness in improving children's motivation for learning to read, proficiency in reading, and their likelihood to become lifelong readers and writers.

Children need explicit instruction in vocabulary development

As most reading professionals recognize, vocabulary plays a fundamental role in learning to read. As learners begin to read, they map the printed vocabulary encountered in texts onto the oral language they bring to the task. Understanding text, therefore, depends on being able to translate letter-sound correspondences into known words and comprehensible concepts (Kamil, 2004). Consequently, word knowledge (e.g., oral language) seems to occupy an important middle ground in learning to read. It makes a critical contribution to beginning readers' transition from oral to written forms and is crucial to the comprehension processes of a skilled reader (Beck & McKeown, 2007). Numerous studies (Stahl & Nagy, 2006) have shown that the size of a student's word knowledge is strongly related to reading proficiency both in the primary and later grades (Cunningham & Stanovich, 1997).

Vocabulary, or the labels that we use, are merely the tip of the iceberg. Rather, these words relate to a network of concepts that children develop early on. For example, teaching the word kiwi and identifying as a "kind of fruit" helps the child begin to develop an understanding of the category in which it belongs. Categories are essential to concept building (Neuman, Newman, & Dwyer, 2011; Neuman & Wright, 2013). They enable children to build knowledge networks-connections between concepts that are meaningful and enduring in their longer-term memory and are primary in comprehension development. They become the background knowledge that we know needs to be activated when children are trying to make sense of new ideas. Teaching words in meaningful semantic clusters enhances children's reading development.

Children need to develop knowledge through text

Early in our years in the reading profession, we used to hear the common phrase, "I don't care what the child reads, as long as he or she reads." But now we know that this is a bit of a misnomer. We do care what children read. Having children engage in books of high quality introduces them to new words, ideas, and events outside of their daily experience. Even in the very early years, children gain a tremendous storehouse of knowledge through their interactions with books.

Related to the Common Core State Standards, efforts to increase children's exposure to information texts has now taken center stage. Studies suggest that the information genre may elicit more cognitively demanding teaching interactions around vocabulary than narrative. Pellegrini and his colleagues (1990), for example, reported significantly more utterances of high cognitive demand during expository texts reading (16%) compared with reading storybook texts (4%). Similarly, children have been reported to use a greater numbers of initiations, book-relevant responses to questions, and text-external response (e.g., text to life) with expository texts than storybook reading. Therefore, given the substantial differences in the accumulation of words among low- and middle-income children's vocabulary before school entry, information books could serve as a potential resource for promoting vocabulary development.

Although we applaud the attention to information books, it would be wrong to discount the enormous amount of information that children acquire through narrative and storybooks as well. Conveyed through rich characters, events, and plots sequences, these stories can often convey information in ways that spark children's imagination and thought processes not possible through information texts. Therefore, it is important to consider multiple genre and how these different genres may contribute to children's knowledge and desire to learn.

Rereading helps children to reinforce, deepen, and consolidate learning from reading

More rigorous English language arts standards worldwide are revitalizing the longstanding but too often overlooked instructional technique of rereading. An integral part of the directed reading lesson, rereading typically occurred toward the end of the lesson for the purpose of extending comprehension of content. Students were guided to reread excerpts for new purposes, such as investigating a concept, generalizing, and thinking critically or creatively, after reading and discussion. When Ms. Wilson says, for example, "Reread the section on eating disorders and, based on the facts, decide which one is most dangerous," she sets a new purpose different from that established in the before-reading phase-read to learn facts about eating disorders.

Today's version of rereading is focused on intensive reading or close reading, which involves multiple readings for purposes of text analysis during and after reading (Shanahan, 2012). This is no cursory return to the text for a different purpose, but rather a careful consideration of how the text works to communicate concepts, principles, themes, arguments, and so forth. Students reread to develop an aggressive, probing, analytical approach to what the text says and how it says it-the function of details, for example, or logical order and relationships in text organization. When Mr. Madrid asks his third graders to first reread to identify topic sentences in a set of related paragraphs, then to examine how supporting details clarify the topic within and across them, next to search for any inconsistencies in the information, and finally to discuss how the paragraphs are ordered to build a chain of reasoning (temporal order, spatial order, or some other system), he is engaging them in close reading.

Two primary sources of evidence support the instructional technique of rereading as intensive reading. One is the research base, which shows the benefits of rereading for increasing comprehension. Research shows, for example, that rereading improves meta-comprehension accuracy, that is, the ability to monitor and assess one's own comprehension in learning new material - a critical strategy when reading to learn complex material (Rawson, Dunlosky, & Thiede, 2000). The other is expert opinion based on scholarly thought and work. This is well illustrated in the classic text, How to Read a Book, by Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren (1972; first published in 1940), in which the authors explain how to be a demanding reader who rereads to "x-ray" a text and determine the author's message. How to Read a Book is a teacher's manual no teacher should be without when implementing rereading as close reading in best practice.

Children's motivation to read is enhanced through digital texts

Make no mistake about it, the transition from paper textbooks to digital textbooks is at full throttle. It is unstoppable and will advance at a swift pace into the immediate future (Colaner, 2012). Know this from the start: A digital textbook is not the static version of a print book. Rather, as currently defined, it is "an interactive set of learning content and tools accessed via a laptop, tablet or other advanced device" ( The Digital Textbook Playbook, 2013, p. 5). A digital textbook is lightweight (literally), Internet connected, and personalized. It enables collaboration and provides instantaneous feedback to student and teacher. It changes how students read.

Research evidence is mounting that digital textbooks give students a reading edge. Studies report that reading in a digital learning environment is an incentive in younger and lower performing students and that feedback in e-books and apps plays a powerful role for staying engaged and motivated (Grinshaw, Dungworth, McKnight, & Morris, 2007; Zucker, Moody, & McKenna, 2009). Digital features like animation, hotspots, and audio facilitate comprehension and aid recall of story plots and content information (Shamir & Korat, 2009; Verhallen, Bus, & de Jong, 2006). Most promising are built-in tutors or virtual assistants that focus attention and provide on-the-spot teaching of reading skills, such as decoding and word meanings (Smeets & Bus, 2013).

Using digital textbooks in reading instruction, therefore, is no longer an if-no-maybe proposition. It is a best practice that can personalize student learning, increase relevant instructional time, and support differentiation to meet students' specific needs. Digital textbooks provide teachers with opportunities to apply proven practices (the best ones) more often with all students that in turn increase student opportunities to engage in meaningful and appropriate learning experiences.

Because teachers have access to timely data (embedded in digital textbooks), the ability to connect students with the content and activities that meet their individual learning styles and needs, they can personalize learning for more students at any given time and ensure that all students are reaching their full learning potential. That's revolutionary!

Children need to pay attention to syntax to strengthen comprehension

Grammar is back! Attention to syntax or sentence structure has not been a high-priority best practice for many years, although parsing sentences as an aid to comprehension has a long history in reading instruction. To read complex, challenging texts, students must become familiar with increasingly complex sentences of written language. They need to cultivate a syntactic awareness of sentence structures used in the more formal language of books. Written text requires more words than talk; it uses more conventions; it is more precise; it is more abstract. The wording of writing is learned through reading, even as its comprehension depends on the oral language the reader brings to the task (Adams, 2011).

Research reveals the strong link between students' syntactic awareness and their reading achievement. Better readers, in brief, demonstrate higher syntactic awareness than poorer readers (Tunmer & Bowey, 1984) and also possess more grammar knowledge that supports comprehension than their less skilled peers (Waltzman & Cairns, 2000).

Reviving the close inspection of sentences is a new priority in reading instruction - reading punctuation, locating core parts and modifiers, keeping track of pronouns, reading for sentence meaning, and the like. Consider this rather dense sentence: "Since many lakes and waterways in this country are unfit for recreational or practical use, the federal commission responsible for them recently drafted critically needed water pollution control measures, which may, if they become law, force major polluters to clean up some of the mess they have made" (Niles, Fitzgerald, & Tuinman, 1977, p. 159). To comprehend its full meaning, students need to (a) keep track of when measures were drafted, by whom, and what must happen for them to be effective and (b) track the referents for the pronouns them and they or run the risk of confusing the "what" (lakes and waterways) and "who" (polluters) at the heart of the sentence's meaning.

The even denser sentence that follows further makes the point about the need to directly instruct students in how to read a sentence for meaning. "His eyes were black and piercing, their sharpness, the rapidity and keenness with which they darted from one object to another, taking in apparently everything with a few lightning-like glances, signaling cunning, remorselessness, and selfishness to an extreme degree" (Anderson, 2013, p. 91). Here the punctuation (many commas) along with the unusual word order makes the sentence difficult to understand and demands readers to parse it to visualize those black and piercing eyes.

Drawing students' attention to the sentence structures and conventions of written language and illuminating differences between speech and writing helps them to grasp the elaborated structures of written language and learn from reading. Teaching students how to parse sentences for meaning is not a new instructional technique, but doing so more deliberately with greater intensity and frequency definitely is, thus affirming its enduring worth in best practice.

Final words

In this column, we have attempted to highlight a number of best practices in reading that either are or should be implemented in the classroom. Clearly they reflect our own biases and research perspectives. Kathy, in most recent years, has worked closely with teachers in professional development to bring e-books and technology to the classroom, recognizing the enormous potential that these books can have on children's motivation to read. Susan has focused on vocabulary development and its linkage to conceptual development and comprehension. Both of these areas, as you will surely recognize, are well represented in our preceding list of best practices.

Our goal in writing this column, however, is not to create a static list of best practices. Rather, we wish to engage you in the reading community to consider best practices, and how we may promote their uses, with high fidelity in classroom instruction. We see this list as dynamic, ever growing, and based on powerful evidence of children's achievement as we continue to grapple and to improve reading instruction for all in the 21st century.

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Best Practices in Reading: A 21st Century Skill Update

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For years, the field of reading education has been engaged in thinking about best practices. Explicit instruction in vocabulary, rereading and using digital textbooks to motivate children's reading are among some of these updated best practices. Those in the reading community are urged to consider best practices, and how we may promote their uses, with high fidelity in classroom instruction.

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Reading & Its Effect on Academic Performance 

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Reading & Its Effect on Academic Performance 

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The Power and Importance of...READING! | Luke Bakic | TEDxYouth@TBSWarsaw

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What Happens To You When You Read Every Day

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Using Literacy Instruction in All Content Areas 

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Using Literacy Instruction in All Content Areas 

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How to Work Literacy Instruction Into All Content Areas

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Instead of a one-size-fits-all approach to literacy practices across content areas, there are small, but effective shifts teachers can make to get students practicing the domain-specific skills they need.

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Reading Instruction Improving Math Learning 

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Reading Instruction Improving Math Learning 

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Teacher question: My question is regarding comprehension as it relates to solving math word problems. I have observed almost all word problems begin with presenting the data first (We ate five apples...) then asking the question (How many apples...?) I have noticed when I ask the question first, it seems to narrow their working memory on the relevant detail (s) and I am noting marked improvement in 1) understanding what it is they need to do, 2) extracting the relevant details and 3) employing the correct operations. Your thoughts on the order in which questions are posed.
Part 2: Are there studies showing how increasing reading ability (Science of reading) impacts math abilities especially in primary students? It seems logical that since testing is generally reading based across subject areas, scores would improve but has this been measured? Shanahan's response:
The relationship between reading and math has long been of interest to scholars. For a long time, the data were pretty confusing.

They found reading ability to be an important precursor to better math performance (hooray, hooray). But they also reported the reverse - better math skills presaged reading improvements. That, of course, makes little sense.

While reading arguably would enable students to do story problems or to read the directions on a math test, why would being nimble with long division increase one's ability to decode words or comprehend stories?

Research on those issues has gotten more astute - and better and more extensive data sets have been brought to bear on the issue (Bailey, et al., 2020).

One reason math and reading may have looked so interdependent in older studies could be the result of the influence of common underlying abilities or enabling conditions. Being smart, industrious, careful, motivated, and having a good memory could play a role in learning anything, including both math and reading. Likewise, supportive parents, good nutrition, sufficient sleep, and the availability of high-quality teaching might benefit reading and math.

A recent example of this kind of analysis was a study that found that first-grader's executive functioning was implicated in later improvements in both reading achievement and mathematics (ten Braak, Lenes, Purpura, Schmitt, & Størksen, 2022).

As data sets have improved, more complex and well controlled studies have provided deeper insights into the direct relations between reading and math. These newer studies have offered some valuable insights. For instance,

Reading and math do co-develop during the elementary school years, but reading ability was found to promote higher math achievement - not the reverse. This study of 355,883 students tracked development in children across the ages 5-12 (Hübner, Merrell, Cramman, Little, Bolden, & Nagengast, 2022). The researchers concluded that "acquiring good reading skills is highly relevant for developing mathematics skills."

A study of 46,373 students (ages 5-19) also found that reading comprehension had a significant impact on math learning across the grades (Grimm, 2008). Reading achievement had an impact on conceptual understanding of math and the application of math knowledge (both the kinds of skills involved in story problems), but not on computation. Controlling for differences in earlier math skills, reading performance enabled more rapid improvement in later math learning.

In a third study, reading comprehension mattered in the mathematics performance of fourth-grade students, but only for the low and average performing students (Chang & Ko, 2012). Reading apparently played little role in the performance of the highest achieving math students (with them math knowledge and other mathematical abilities are most important). According to the authors, "reading ability appears to be a critical foundation for the lower-mathematics performance group."

I mentioned earlier that factors like poverty may have a general impact on all kinds of academic achievement. While that may be generally true, research has found poverty to exercise a greater impact on reading achievement than on math (Eamon, 2002). This should not be surprising - we learn more language at home - stimulating home language environments are an important factor in literacy learning; math is more often relegated totally to the school, which means home environment won't matter as much.

Another important separation between reading and math is their impact on the learning of other subjects. A study of 12,058 students explored the role that these foundational subjects play in science learning (Zhu, 2022). The analysis showed that both math and reading mattered in this regard, but that reading was much more influential, and that reading should be accorded greater attention in science instruction.

These studies (and dozens more cited by each of these) reveal the importance of reading in math development - particularly in the application of math knowledge in problem solving and for the lowest achieving students.

Here's a particular pregnant example from the Zhu, 2022 study (p. 3):

Many researchers have shown that there is a close correspondence between student performance in reading and mathematics (Adelson et al., 2015; Harlaar et al., 2012; Kyttälä & Björn, 2014). Language-related factors, particularly students' reading ability, can affect their performance on mathematics assessments (Ajello et al., 2018; Isphording et al., 2016; Trakulphadetkrai et al., 2020; Walker et al., 2008). As a result, reading can be used to predict the outcomes of math tests (Beal et al., 2010; Codding et al., 2015; Foster et al., 2019).

Reading comprehension can also account for 'a considerable proportion of the variance in mathematics performance (Ding & Homer, 2020). Some researchers even found that children with dyslexia were '5.60 times and 8.54 times more likely than other children to experience deficits in fact fluency and operations, respectively' (Vukovic et al., 2010). Furthermore, some recent studies analysed this topic in detail. They reported that it was syntax and early written language skills predicted mathematics performance, rather than vocabulary or phonological awareness (Birgisdottir et al., 2020; Chow & Ekholm, 2019). In a word, prior reading skills are important for students to learn mathematics (Erbeli et al., 2021; Grimm, 2008).

So, indeed, reading contributes to math development (even in the primary grades) - and, at least in part, this contribution is channeled through story problems. As with studies of the relationship of math and reading development, there have been valuable recent advances in this area of research, too.

In fact, Lynn Fuchs and her colleagues (2010, 2014, 2018, 2021, 2022) have published several studies in the past year or so that go right to the heart of your question. Though there is long history of research on story problems, I think this newer work is admirable both in its clarity and rigor, but also in its careful consideration of knowledge drawn from past research - and it focuses on young readers particularly.

Without going into too much detail these studies have found that it is beneficial to teach students to recognize the structure of story problems (are they asking for the combination, comparison, or changes of quantities), and then to translate that structure into a diagram or equation that maps onto the "story."

The studies have found it efficacious to teach those structures and to include relevant reading comprehension instruction that helps students to make sense of the language of the problems. For instance, they are taught the vocabulary alternatives they might confront in story problems of different types (in all or altogether in combination problems, or more, fewer, than, and -er words for comparison problems).

These scientists were quick to point out that they did more than teaching students to recognize these key words but guided them to interpret those words embedded in the story problem language. The students were not just searching for comparison words but were guided to read the entire problem to identify the problem type and they spent a lot of time re-analyzing the language to see why they may have ended up with the wrong operations or the wrong numbers. In other words, as mentioned earlier the language challenge in math is more rooted in making sense of the sentence syntax than in isolated vocabulary.

Fuchs and company provide from past research a helpful example of the importance of language and structure in the interpretation of story problems (Hudson, 1983). These two story problems were posed to young children. The second version resulted in a whopping 83% performance improvement, which reveals the difficulty to be more with the language than the computation.
There are 5 birds and 3 worms. How many more birds were there than worms? There are 5 birds and 3 worms. How many birds won't get a worm?
The students obviously failed to recognize that these problems required the same mathematical operations. Teaching them to recognize the equivalence of the language in these versions and giving them tools for translating that language into diagrams or equations made a big learning difference.

So, indeed, early reading development plays an important role in later progress in math. Students need to learn how to understand and operate effectively on math language.

Despite recent popular claims that reading comprehension depends solely on decoding ability and knowledge of the social and natural world, this research illustrates the importance of knowing how to interpret language when it comes to comprehension.

Knowledge is important (you can't get these story problems right without an understanding of computation), but that is not enough for success. To solve these problems, students must develop a rich relevant vocabulary along with the syntactic skills that allows them to make sense of the relations among the words in the problem and of their connection with students' math knowledge.

Lynn Fuchs and company are improving students' ability to "do math" by teaching young students to comprehend a particular type of language. More of that should be occurring in primary grade reading and math classes.

References

Bailey, D.H., Oh, Y., Farkas, G., Morgan, P., & Hillemeier, M.M. (2020). Reciprocal effects of reading and mathematics? Beyond the cross-lagged panel model. Developmental Psychology. doi.org:10.1037/ dev0000902.

Chang, C., & Ko, H. (2012). The relationship between mathematics achievement and reading comprehension: TIMSS 2003 and PIRLS 2006 test items as measuring instruments. Bulletin of Educational Psychology, 44(1), 95-116.

Eamon, M. K. (2002). Effects of poverty on mathematics and reading achievement of young adolescents. Journal of Early Adolescence, 22(1), 49-74. doi.org/10.1177/0272431602022001003

Fuchs, L. S., Fuchs, D., Sterba, S. K., Barnes, M. A., Seethaler, P. M., & Changas, P. (2022). Building word-problem solving and working memory capacity: A randomized controlled trial comparing three intervention approaches. Journal of Educational Psychology. doi.org/10.1037/edu0000752

Fuchs, L. S., Gilbert, J. K., Fuchs, D., Seethaler, P. M., & Martin, B. N. (2018). Text comprehension and oral language as predictors of word-problem solving: Insights into word-problem solving as a form of text comprehension. Scientific Studies of Reading, 22(2), 152-166. doi-org:10.1080/10888438. 2017.1398259

Fuchs, L. S., Powell, S. R., Cirino, P. T., Schumacher, R. F., Marrin, S., Hamlett, C. L., . . . Changas, P. C. (2014). Does calculation or word problem instruction provide a stronger route to pre-algebraic knowledge? Journal of Educational Psychology, 106, 990-1006. doi.org/10.1037/ a0036793

Fuchs, L. S., Seethaler, P. M., Sterba, S. K., Craddock, C., Fuchs, D., Compton, D. L., . . . Changas, P. (2021). Closing the word-problem achievement gap in first grade: Schema-based word-problem intervention with embedded language comprehension instruction. Journal of Educational Psychology, 113(1), 86-103. doi.org:10.1037/edu0000467

Fuchs, L. S., Zumeta, R. O., Schumacher, R. F., Powell, S. R., Seethaler, P. M., Hamlett, C. L., & Fuchs, D. (2010). The effects of schema broadening instruction on second graders' word-problem performance and their ability to represent word problems with algebraic equations: A randomized control study. The Elementary School Journal, 110, 446-463. doi.org/10.1086/651191

Grimm, K. J. (2008). Longitudinal associations between reading and mathematics achievement. Developmental Neuropsychology, 33(3), 410-426. doi.org/10.1080/ 87565640801982486

Hübner, N., Merrell, C., Cramman, H., Little, J., Bolden, D., & Nagengast, B. (2022). Reading to learn? The co-development of mathematics and reading during primary school. Child Development. doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13817

Zhu, Y. (2022). Reading matters more than mathematics in science learning: An analysis of the relationship between student achievement in reading, mathematics, and science. International Journal of Science Education, 44(1), 1-17. doi.org/10.1080/09500693.2021.2007552

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Can Reading Instruction Improve Math Learning in the Primary Grades? | Reading Rockets

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Teacher question: My question is regarding comprehension as it relates to solving math word problems. I have observed almost all word problems begin with presenting the data first (We ate five apples...) then asking the question (How many apples...?)

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5 Reasons Reading is So Important for Student Success 

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5 Reasons Reading is So Important for Student Success 

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Insights from the School of Education and Social Policy at Merrimack College

It seems so simple. Of course, students should learn to read. That's been understood for generations. No one is going to argue against the importance of student literacy.

However, many don't understand just how important student literacy and reading are to student development, starting at a very young age. The American Pediatrics Association reports that reading when young - even infants being read to by their parents - increases academic success down the road.

However, many children enter kindergarten without the skills needed to read well. Helping students bridge that skills gap falls to those who have trained to become elementary school teachers. They play a significant role in the development of young minds in this vital area.

How important?

Here are some of the ways student literacy impacts a young mind.

Self Esteem

This might be the most important area of all. The sooner students develop reading skills, the more they gain ground in the areas listed below. That leads to more assurance in how they speak and write, as well as giving them the confidence of an expanded knowledge base. When students start at an early age to read about diverse people, distant places, and historical events, they become more creative and open. Also, those who have read a lot will naturally be asked to answer more questions - another confidence builder for a young student.

Improved Concentration

An emphasis on reading and student literacy helps develop higher levels of focus and concentration. It also forces the reader to sort things out in their own mind - including topics that might not be familiar to them at all (Paris at the end of World War II, for example, or another planet in a science fiction novel). This type of concentration on one topic - rather than trying to do many things at once - leads to better focus even after the book is put down.

Critical and Analytical Thinking Skills

The classic here is when a young reader becomes absorbed with a mystery book - Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew were examples for generations of Americans - and manages to solve the mystery in her head before the books reveal it. That's a simple example of how reading helps students develop better critical and analytical skills, something that carries over even after they have put the book down.

Stronger Memory Skills

Think about reading. Even an elementary age child with a relatively simple book must keep in mind a group of characters, the setting, and past actions. Reading helps to strengthen memory retention skills. That's a powerful tool for young students - and older adults, as well.

Expanded Vocabulary

How many times do we all search for just the right word to express what we're trying to say? Readers do that less. They have a larger vocabulary, and the words that young readers learn in a book will eventually make their way into their speech.

These are some of the most powerful ways that reading is important for student success. For those who have decided to teach children at the elementary school level, the impact they make on students in this vital area can resonate throughout the rest of their lives.

These are some of the most powerful ways that reading is important for student success. For those who have decided to teach children at the elementary school level, the impact they make on students in this vital area can resonate throughout the rest of their lives.

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5 Reasons Reading is So Important for Student Success

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Insights from the School of Education and Social Policy at Merrimack College It seems so simple. Of course, students should learn to read. That's been understood for generations. No one is going to argue against the importance of student literacy.

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4 Vocabulary Graphic Organizers That Can Be Helpful to Students

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Vocabulary graphic organizers can make learning new words fun and easy on upper elementary students in the classroom.

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Reading comprehension is a flexible and ongoing cognitive and constructive process. It is asserted that there are both conceptually driven (top-down) and data-driven processes (bottom-up) that contribute to the construction of a situation (mental) model of text ideas. It is a two-way process that integrates information from the text together with information from prior knowledge .

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Graphic Organizers To Help with Reading Comprehension 

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Graphic Organizers To Help with Reading Comprehension 

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How to use graphic organizers to improve reading comprehension

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While many struggling readers have difficulties decoding text, others struggle with understanding what they’ve read. Reading comprehension, or the ability to understand text, is a critical skill

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"Strategies that Work: Teaching Comprehension for Engagement, Understanding, and Building Knowledge" by Stephanie Harvey & Anne Goudvis

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"Strategies that Work: Teaching Comprehension for Engagement, Understanding, and Building Knowledge" by Stephanie Harvey & Anne Goudvis

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"In this third edition of Strategies That Work, authors Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis provide practical critical-thinking strategies designed to teach students comprehension skills that build knowledge and lead to engaged, thoughtful, independent readers."

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Strategies That Work, 3rd edition: Teaching Comprehension for Engagement, Understanding, and Building Knowledge, Grades K-8 | Classroom Learning Book | Strategies for Reading Comprehension

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Amazon.com: Strategies That Work, 3rd edition: Teaching Comprehension for Engagement, Understanding, and Building Knowledge, Grades K-8 | Classroom Learning Book | Strategies for Reading Comprehension: 9781625310637: Harvey, Stephanie, Goudvis, Anne: Books

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Socratic Seminar Discussions to Build Comprehension 

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Socratic Seminar Discussions to Build Comprehension 

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Social Emotional Learning Site for Educators

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Reading Workshop to Build Comprehension 

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Reading Workshop to Build Comprehension 

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Reading Instruction with Gifted & Talented Readers 

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Reading Instruction with Gifted & Talented Readers 

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Promoting Reading Comprehension in Students with Learning Disabilities 

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Promoting Reading Comprehension in Students with Learning Disabilities 

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Promoting Reading Comprehension in Secondary Students with LD

Prepared by Marcia Kosanovich,Ph.D.
Network of Educators, LLC
(Revised August 2013)

Reading comprehension is "the process of simultaneously extracting and constructing meaning through interaction and involvement with written language" (Snow, 2002, p.11). Extracting meaning from text is to understand what the author has explicitly or implicitly stated. Constructing meaning is to interpret what the author has written based on the reader's background knowledge, experiences, capabilities, and abilities.

Why is reading comprehension important for secondary struggling readers?

Students in Grades 4-12 spend the majority of their days in content-area classes. As students advance in school, researchers suggest reading instruction should become more disciplinary (tied to content areas), reinforcing and supporting students' academic performance (Shanahan & Shanahan, 2008). All content-area instruction (e.g., English language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies) utilizes literary or informational text in some manner, so students must comprehend specific texts and grasp the concepts being communicated in them. This is a particular concern as the texts students are asked to read become increasingly complex with unique linguistic and cognitive features that are not necessarily shared across disciplines.

What is the goal of reading comprehension instruction for secondary students with learning disabilities?

The goal of reading comprehension instruction is to help students understand written language. Students who comprehend well monitor their understanding as they read and use fix-up strategies, such as re-reading or summarizing, when understanding breaks down. Self-monitoring also helps students relate new information to their prior knowledge, fostering better understanding. However, many adolescents struggle to comprehend text due to a lack of background knowledge, an inability to relate content to prior knowledge, an inability to read text fluently, difficulty decoding words, an inability to attend to meaning while reading, an inability to use comprehension strategies, deficits in metacognition (often not aware they are not comprehending), or difficulty understanding the meanings of words (Boardman et al., 2008; Pressley, 2006; Reed & Vaughn, 2010).

We teach comprehension so that all students "can read a variety of materials with ease and interest, can read for varying purposes, and can read with comprehension even when the material is neither easy to understand nor intrinsically interesting" (Snow, 2002, p. xiii). This is particularly true for adolescent readers who increasingly need to gain meaning from conceptually dense texts, as well as to remember and use the information (Biancarosa & Snow, 2004; Perfetti, Landi, & Oakhill, 2005).

What are comprehension research-based guidelines and strategies to implement with secondary students with learning disabilities?

In Improving Adolescent Literacy: Effective Classroom and Intervention Practices (Kamil et al., 2008), the panel describes elements important for those adolescents who need more support in reading comprehension. Students' learning needs should be identified through the use of an initial screening test or a threshold score on a required reading test and subsequent use of a diagnostic reading test administered, scored, and interpreted by a specialist. Then, the selection of a supplemental, intensive, and individualized reading intervention needs to be made. The intervention program or approach should provide an explicit instructional focus targeted to meet the learners' needs. The intervention should be provided by a reading specialist or teacher who has participated in thorough training in the use of the program or approach. Teachers or reading specialists should also have professional development to increase their understanding of adolescent struggling readers. Other elements for effective interventions noted by the panel include:

Word level interventions (e.g., systematic training in metacognitive decoding skills, such as subsyllabic segmentation)

Explicit instruction, with scaffolding and feedback, of approaches that help students become more active, strategic readers

Student collaboration in comprehension strategies (relies on teacher guidance)

Reciprocal Teaching

Graphic organizers to assist in understanding relationships among key concepts represented in texts

Specific instruction on text structures, organizational patterns, and linguistic conventions commonly found in expository text

Work in small groups or individually to increase intensity.

An increased amount of time and frequency working with students who are struggling.

Progress monitoring to determine if interventions are effective and to make instructional adjustments.

Most students demonstrate improved reading achievement when their teachers incorporate the following components of effective comprehension instruction before, during, and after reading (Edmonds et al., 2009; Snow, 2002):

purposeful and explicit teaching,

classroom interactions that support the understanding of content area texts,

instruction in the skills and strategies used by expert readers, and

content-area texts that are appropriately matched to students' abilities and the specific strategy being implemented.

These instructional practices usually can be implemented class-wide in any content area. In fact, comprehension strategies work best when taught and practiced in meaningful contexts, so using authentic material in core academic classes makes sense.

Before Reading

Teach students how to activate their background knowledge in connection with the topic to be read. Students better understand, think about, and retain new information when they are familiar with or taught background knowledge of a topic before reading. Activate prior knowledge by previewing text before reading:

1. Use specific strategies to activate prior knowledge, such as previewing headings or key concepts, or making a prediction and confirmation chart.

2. Prepare and guide previewing activities to support and focus the connections students make.

3. Use graphic organizers to introduce important information, solicit prior knowledge from students, and make predictions.

4. Avoid soliciting guesses from students without guidance or feedback.

5. Keep it short. Previewing should not take longer than 5 minutes, especially if a teacher has limited time with students.

6. Revisit after reading to assist in reviewing, confirming, or refuting predictions, summarizing, and making connections.

Explicitly teach key specialized vocabulary related to the topic.

Teach and have students practice how to set a purpose for reading.

Use an anticipation-reaction guide to help students link new and prior knowledge and activate students' interest and curiosity for the topic, promoting motivation and engagement.

During Reading

Explicitly teach students to ask and answer questions about text.

1. Teach students to ask and answer specific types of questions, such as questions whose answers are explicitly stated in the text and those that require students to make inferences based on what they have read (e.g., Question-Answer Relationship).

2. Use question generation on its own or as part of multi-strategy (e.g., Reciprocal Teaching) instruction.

3. Provide students with strategies to evaluate teacher-generated questions. For example, it is important to know if the answer will be found in the text or if it should be inferred.

Use graphic organizers which are visual representations that help students identify, organize, and remember important ideas from what they read. Adapt graphic organizers to text type (e.g., Venn diagram for compare/contrast informational text; story grammar map for literary text). Explicitly teach the use of graphic organizers to

1. represent and discuss connections,

2. confirm or refute predictions, and

3. record important information.

Explicitly teach comprehension monitoring strategies, or fix-up strategies when comprehension breaks down such as

1. Re-reading,

2. Asking someone questions about the text,

3. Considering relevant background knowledge, and

4. Examining the graphics more carefully

After Reading

Teach students how to use self-questioning strategies to reflect on what they have read.

Explicitly teach students to summarize the main ideas of what they read:

1. Teach students to summarize small amounts of text such as a short paragraph before summarizing longer sections.

2. Provide modeling, feedback, and many opportunities to practice summarization rules such as:

1. Selecting a topic sentence or inventing a topic sentence if one is not explicitly stated;

2. Using one word to replace a list of related items;

3. Deleting trivial and redundant information; and

4. Re-reading to make sure your summary makes sense.

3. Teach students how to use graphic organizers to write summaries.

4. Provide examples and non-examples of summaries to help students recognize and produce summaries that contain only key ideas.

Explicitly teach the use of graphic organizers to

1. write summaries,

2. review information, and

3. make connections

What are some guidelines for English-language learners (ELL)?

Francis et al., (2007) outline recommendations to guide the planning and implementation of any instructional approach or academic intervention to promote ELLs' reading ability:

ELLs need early, explicit, and intensive instruction in phonological awareness and phonics in order to build decoding skills.

K-12 classrooms across the nation must increase opportunities for ELLs to develop sophisticated vocabulary knowledge.

Reading instruction in K-12 classrooms must equip ELLs with strategies and knowledge to comprehend and analyze challenging narrative and expository texts.

Instruction and intervention to promote ELLs' reading fluency must focus on vocabulary and increased exposure to print.

In all K-12 classrooms across the U.S., ELLs need significant opportunities to engage in structured, academic talk.

Independent reading is only beneficial when it is structured and purposeful, and there is a good reader-text match.

What materials can be used to teach reading comprehension to struggling secondary students?

Any other text such as magazines, newspaper articles, Internet sources, library books, all of which can supplement content area learning. These sources need to be of high interest to and appropriate for secondary students.

Ways for students to monitor their reading such as graphic organizers, study guides, note-taking charts, reading logs, timelines, checklists, cloze activities, journals.

Sticky notes, index cards, or any type of paper for students to write summaries, predictions, questions, and unknown words as they read sections of text.

Informative posters, definitions, charts, maps, and graphs on the walls in the classroom to reinforce concepts and vocabulary.

References

Biancarosa, G., & Snow, C. E. (2004). Reading next-A vision for action and research in middle and high school literacy: A report to Carnegie Corporation of New York. Washington, DC: Alliance for Excellent Education.

Boardman, A. G., Roberts, G., Vaughn, S., Wexler, J., Murray, C. S., & Kosanovich, M. (2008). Effective instruction for adolescent struggling readers: A practice brief. Portsmouth, NH: RMC Research Corporation, Center on Instruction. http://www.centeroninstruction.org/files/Practice%20Brief%2DStruggling%20Readers%2Epdf

Edmonds, M. S., Vaughn, S., Wexler, J., Reutebuch, C., Cable, A., Tackett, K. K., & Schnakenberg, J. W. (2009). A synthesis of reading interventions and effects on reading comprehension outcomes for older struggling readers. Review of Educational Research, 79, 262-300.doi: 10.3102/0034654308325998

Francis, D. J., Rivera, M., Lesaux, N., Kieffer, M., & Rivera, H. (2006). Practical guidelines for the education of English language learners: Research-based recommendations for instruction and academic interventions. Portsmouth, NH: Center on Instruction, RMC Research Cooperation.

Kamil, M. L., Borman, G. D., Dole, J., Kral, C. C., Salinger, T., and Torgesen, J. (2008). Improving adolescent literacy: Effective classroom and intervention practices: A Practice Guide (NCEE #2008-4027). Washington, DC: National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. Retrieved from http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc.

Perfetti, C. A., Landi, N., & Oakhill, J. (2005). The acquisition of reading comprehension skill. In M. J. Snowling& C. Hulme (Eds.), The science of reading: A handbook (pp. 227-247). Oxford, UK: Blackwell.

Pressley, M. (2006). Reading instruction that works: The case for balanced teaching (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Guilford.

Reed, D. K., & Vaughn, S. (2010). Reading interventions for older students. In T. A.Glover & S. Vaughn (Eds.), Response to intervention: Empowering all students to learn, a critical account of the science and practice (pp. 143-186). New York, NY: Guilford Press.

Shanahan, T., & Shanahan, C. (2008). Teaching disciplinary literacy to adolescents: Rethinking content-area literacy. Adolescent Literacy, 78(1), 40-59.

Snow, C. E. (2002). Reading for understanding: Toward an R & D program in reading comprehension. Santa Monica, CA: Rand.

Recommend Readings

Alfassi, M. (2004). Reading to learn: Effects of combined strategy instruction on high school students. The Journal of Educational Research, 97(4), 171-184.doi: 10.3200/JOER.97.4.171-185

Almasi, J. F. (2003). Teaching strategic processes in reading. New York, NY:Guilford.

Armbruster, B. B., Lehr, F., & Osborn, J. (2001). Put reading first: The research building blocks for teaching children to read. Jessup, MD: National Institute forLiteracy.

Blanchowicz, C., & Ogle, D. (2001). Reading comprehension: Strategies for independent learners. New York, NY: Guilford.

Brown, A. L., & Palinscar, A. S. (1984). Reciprocal teaching of comprehension: Fostering and monitoring activities. Cognition and Instruction, 1, 117-175.

Bryant, D. P., Vaughn, S., Linan-Thompson, S., Ugel, N., Hamff, A., & Hougen, M. (2000). Reading outcomes for students with and without reading disabilities in general education middle school content area classes. Learning Disability Quarterly, 23, 24-38.doi: 10.2307/1511347

Chin, C. (2007). Teacher questioning in science classrooms: Approaches that stimulate productive thinking. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 44(6),815-843.doi: 10.1002/tea.20171

DiCecco, V.M.,& Gleason, M.M. (2002). Using graphic organizers to attain relational knowledge from expository text. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 35(4), 306-320.doi:10.1177/00222194020350040201

Flick, L. B., & Lederman, N. G. (2002).The value of teaching reading in the context of science and mathematics. School Science and Mathematics, 102(3),105-106.

Gersten, R., Fuchs, L. S., Williams, J. P., & Baker, S. (2001). Teaching reading comprehension strategies to students with learning disabilities. Review of Educational Research, 71, 279-320.doi: 10.3102/00346543071002279

Gersten, R., & Jimenez, R. (1998). Promoting learning for culturally and linguistically diverse students. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Jitendra, A. K., Hoppes, M. K., & Xin, Y. P. (2000). Enhancing main idea comprehension for students with learning problems: The role of a summarization strategy and self-monitoring instruction. The Journal of Special Education, 34(3), 127-139.doi: 10.1177/002246690003400302

Kosanovich, M. L., Reed, D. K., & Miller, D. H. (2010). Bringing literacy strategies into content instruction: Professional learning for secondary-level teachers. Portsmouth, NH: RMC Research Corporation, Center on Instruction. Retrieved from http://www.centeroninstruction.org/files/Bringing%20Literacy%20Strategies%20into%20Content%20Instruction%2Epdf

Klingner, J. K., Vaughn, S., & Boardman, A. (2007). Teaching reading comprehension to students with learning difficulties. New York, NY: Guilford.doi: 10.1177/002246690003400302

Lovett, M.,& Steinbach, K. (1997). The effectiveness of remedial programs for reading disabled children of different ages: Does the benefit decrease for older children? Learning Disability Quarterly, 20(3), 189-210.doi: 10.2307/1511308

Mastropieri, M. A., Scruggs, T. E., Spencer, V., & Fontana, J. (2003). Promoting success in high school world history: Peer tutoring versus guided notes. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 18(1), 52-65.doi: 10.1111/1540-5826.00057

McKeown, M.B., Beck,I.L., & Blake, R.G.K. (2009). Rethinking reading comprehension instruction: A comparison of instruction for strategies and content approaches. Reading Research Quarterly, 44(3) pp. 218-253. doi: 10.1598/RRQ.44.3.1

National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. (2000). Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction: Reports of the subgroups. (NIH Publication No. 00-4754).Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Raphael, T. E., & Au, K. H. (2005). QAR: Enhancing comprehension and test taking across grades and content areas. Reading Teacher, 59, 206-221.doi: 10.1598/RT.59.3.1

Shanahan, T., Callison, K., Carriere, C., Duke, N. K., Pearson, P. D., Schatschneider, C., & Torgesen, J. (2010). Improving reading comprehension in kindergarten through 3rd grade: A practice guide(NCEE 2010-4038). Washington, DC: National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. Retrieved from whatworks.ed.gov/publications/practiceguides.

Spencer, V. G., Scruggs, T. E., & Mastropieri, M. A. (2003). Content area learning in middle school social studies classrooms and student with emotional orbehavioral disorders: A comparison of strategies. Behavioral Disorders, 28(2),77-93.

Taylor, B. M., Pearson, P. D., Peterson, D. S., & Rodriguez, M. C. (2005). The CIERA school change framework: An evidence-based approach to professional development and school reading improvement. Reading Research Quarterly,40(1), 40-69.doi: 10.1598/RRQ.40.1.3

Taboada, A., & Guthrie, J. (2006). Contributions of student questioning and prior knowledge to construction of knowledge from reading information text. Journal of Literacy Research, 38(1), 1-35.doi: 10.1207/s15548430jlr3801_1

Torgesen, J. K., Houston, D. D., Rissman, L. M., Decker, S. M., Roberts, G.,Vaughn, S., & Lesaux, N. (2007). Academic literacy instruction for adolescents: A guidance document from the Center on Instruction. Portsmouth, NH: RMCCorporation, Center on Instruction.

Trabasso, T., & Bouchard, E. (2002). Teaching readers how to comprehend text strategically. In C. C. Pressley & M. Pressley (Eds.), Comprehension instruction: Research-based best practices (pp. 176-200). New York, NY: Guilford.

Van Garderen, D. (2004). Reciprocal teaching as a comprehension strategy for understanding mathematical word problems. Reading & Writing Quarterly, 20,225-229.doi: 10.1080/10573560490272702

Vaughn, S., Klinger, J. K., & Bryant, D. P. (2001). Collaborative strategic reading as ameans to enhance peer-mediated instruction for reading comprehension and content area learning. Remedial and Special Education, 22(2), 66-74.doi: 10.1177/074193250102200201

Vaughn, S., & Klinger, J. K. (1999).Teaching reading comprehension through collaborative strategic reading. Intervention in School and Clinic, 34, 284-292.doi: 10.1177/105345129903400505

Williams, J., Stafford, K., Lauer, K., Hall, K., & Pollini, S. (2009). Embedding reading comprehension training in content area instruction. Journal of Educational Psychology, 101(1), 1-20.doi: 10.1037/a0013152

Wilder, A.A., & Williams, J.P. (2001). Students with severe learning disabilities can learn higher order comprehension skills. Journal of Educational Psychology, 93(2), 268-278.doi: 10.1037/0022-0663.93.2.268

Suggested Resources

Kosanovich M. L., Logan, T., Magill, K., & Weinstein, C. (2007). Fourth and Fifth Grade Student Center Activities. Florida Center for Reading Research. http://www.fcrr.org/curriculum/studentCenterActivities45.shtm

Kosanovich, M. L.,& MaGill, K. (2007). Teacher Resource Guide (with professional development DVD) to accompany the Fourth and Fifth Student Center Activities. Florida Center for Reading Research. http://www.fcrr.org/curriculum/studentCenterActivities45.shtm

Murray, C. S., Wexler, J., Vaughn, S., Roberts, G., Tackett. K. K., & Kosanovich, M. (2008). Effective instruction for adolescent struggling readers: Professional development module. Facilitator's guide. Portsmouth, NH: RMC Research Corporation, Center on Instruction. http://www.centeroninstruction.org/files/EIASR%20FG%202nd%20Ed%2E.pdf

Note: The first edition of this InfoSheet was prepared by Diane Pedrotty Bryant, Judy Englehard, and Linda Reetz.

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Promoting Reading Comprehension in Secondary Students with LD

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Promoting Reading Comprehension in Secondary Students with LD Prepared by Marcia Kosanovich,Ph.D. Network of Educators, LLC (Revised August 2013) Reading comprehension is "the process of simultaneously extracting and constructing meaning through interaction and involvement with written language" (Snow, 2002, p.11). Extracting meaning from text is to understand what the author has explicitly or implicitly stated.

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Reading Comprehension Strategies for ELLs 

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Reading Comprehension Strategies for ELLs 

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Calderón, M. & L. Minaya-Rowe (2004). Expediting Comprehension for English Language Learners (ExC-ELL): Teachers Manual. Baltimore, MD: Center for Data-Driven Reform in Education, Johns Hopkins University.

Calderón, M. & L. Minaya-Rowe (in press). Teaching Reading, Oral Language and Content to English Language Learners - How ELLs Keep Pace With Mainstream Students. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Echevarria, J., Vogt, M. E., & Short, D. J. (2000). Making content comprehensible for English language learners: The SIOP model. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

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Reading Comprehension Strategies for English Language Learners

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Calderón, M. & L. Minaya-Rowe (2004). Expediting Comprehension for English Language Learners (ExC-ELL): Teachers Manual. Baltimore, MD: Center for Data-Driven Reform in Education, Johns Hopkins University. Calderón, M. & L. Minaya-Rowe (in press). Teaching Reading, Oral Language and Content to English Language Learners - How ELLs Keep Pace With Mainstream Students.

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Using Song to Teach Reading Comprehension Strategies 

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Using Song to Teach Reading Comprehension Strategies 

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Sing Those Strategies!:  Engaging Students in Reading Comprehension Strategies

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Why reading matters | Rita Carter | TEDxCluj

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Teaching Fluency with Accuracy and Phrasing

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Teaching Fluency with Accuracy and Phrasing

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How to Teach Fluency  with Accuracy and Phrasing

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Fluency: Instructional Guidelines and Student Activities

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Fluency: Instructional Guidelines and Student Activities

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Fluency: Instructional Guidelines and Student Activities

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The best strategy for developing reading fluency is to provide your students with many opportunities to read the same passage orally several times. To do this, you should first know what to have your students read. Second, you should know how to have your students read aloud repeatedly.

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"Teaching Information FluencyHow to Teach Students to Be Efficient, Ethical, and Critical Information Consumers" By Carl Heine & Dennis O'Connor 

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"Teaching Information FluencyHow to Teach Students to Be Efficient, Ethical, and Critical Information Consumers" By Carl Heine & Dennis O'Connor 

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"Teaching Information Fluency describes the skills and dispositions of information fluency, adept searchers. Readers will receive in-depth information on what it takes to locate, evaluate, and ethically use digital information."

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Teaching Information Fluency describes the skills and dispositions of information fluency adept searchers. Readers will receive in-depth information on what it takes to locate, evaluate, and ethically use digital information.

The book realistically examines the abilities of Internet searchers today in terms of their efficiency and effectiveness in finding online information, evaluating it and using it ethically. Since the majority of people develop these skills on their own, rather than being taught, the strategies they invent may suffice for simple searches, but for more complex tasks, such as those required by academic and professional work, the average person's performance is adequate only about 50% of the time.

The book is laid out in five parts: an introduction to the problem and how search engine improvements are not sufficient to be of real help, speculative searching, investigative searching, ethical use and applications of information fluency. The intent of the book is to provide readers ways to improve their performance as consumers of digital information and to help teachers devise useful ways to integrate information fluency instruction into their teaching, since deliberate instruction is needed to develop fluency. Since it is unlikely that dedicated class time will be available for such instruction, the approach taken embeds information fluency activities into classroom instruction in language arts, history and science.

Numerous model lessons and resources are woven into the fabric of the text, including think-alouds, individual and group search challenges, discussions, assessments and curation, all targeted to Common Core State Standards as well as information fluency competencies.

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Teaching Information Fluency describes the skills and dispositions of information fluency adept searchers. Readers will receive in-depth information on what it takes to locate, evaluate, and ethically use digital information. The book realistically examines the abilities of Internet searchers today in terms of their efficiency and effectiveness in finding online information, evaluating it and using it ethically.

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21st Century Skills and the Path to Fluency - Oxford University Press

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Kathleen Kampa and Charles Vilina are American ELT authors and teacher-trainers who have taught young learners in Japan for 25 years. They are co-authors of Magic Time, Everybody Up, and Oxford Discover, courses for young learners published by Oxford University … Continue reading →

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Do you want to be a fluent writer? We’ll explain what fluency in writing entails and how to strengthen these skills.

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What is Reading Fluency & Why is It Important 

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What is Reading Fluency & Why is It Important 

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Reading fluency is the ability to read accurately, smoothly and with expression. Fluent readers recognize words automatically, without struggling over decoding issues. When reading silently, in addition to recognizing words automatically, fluent readers group words rapidly to help gain meaning from their reading, which then translates into their understanding of the text. When reading aloud, fluent readers sound natural, as if they're speaking. Non-fluent readers read slowly and sound choppy. Fluency is important because it builds a bridge between word recognition and comprehension. It allows students time to focus on what the text is saying. They are able to make connections between what they are reading and their own background knowledge. Therefore, they are able to concentrate on comprehension. On the other hand, non-fluent readers have to spend more time decoding, leaving less time for comprehending the text. Due to mistakes made when reading, they will often have to read the same passage over several times to attain comprehension. In addition, non-fluent readers often do no read with expression.

Even when students recognize words automatically, they are not fluent if they don't read with expression. To read with expression a student should be able to divide a word into chunks, using proper phrasing. Not paying attention to punctuation often changes the meaning of the text. For example:

The children, without their toys, feel sad.
or
The children without their, toys feel sad.

Fortunately, reading fluency can be taught. It is important for adults to read aloud to children, modeling what good readers do. Show children how you pause for punctuation and change your voice to make text more meaningful. Children should be read to by their teachers, by their parents, and by their relatives. The more models of fluent reading children hear the better.

Next, it is important for children to practice, engaging them in repeated reading. Text should be easy to read and relatively short. There are several ways children can practice fluent reading;

Child/adult reading - The adult models, then the student practices.

Choral reading - reading in unison.

Assisted reading - reading along with a recorded text.

Partner reading - reading along with another child

Reader's Theatre - playing characters, as in a play.

Assessing progress is easy and most children think it's fun. Children love when you take out a stop watch and time them. Pick a passage on the proper reading level, time for 1 minute and graph the results. After several practices on the same text, time again. The children see immediate progress and become motivated to become more fluent readers.

In conclusion, reading fluency is the ability to read accurately and quickly. It is important because fluent readers comprehend better. It can be developed by modeling and practice.
By Fran Nieporent, Private Tutor

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What Is Reading Fluency? And why Is It Important?

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Reading fluency is the ability to read accurately, smoothly and with expression. Fluent readers recognize words automatically, without struggling over decoding issues.

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"Rain, Steam, and Speed: Building Fluency in Adolescent Writers" by Gerald Fleming 

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"Rain, Steam, and Speed: Building Fluency in Adolescent Writers" by Gerald Fleming 

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"This book shows how adolescent students at all skill levels, including English learners, can be engaged in systematic writing practice, enabling them to communicate quickly, confidently, and thoughtfully on a variety of topics."

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Rain, Steam, and Speed: Building Fluency in Adolescent Writers

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Rain, Steam, and Speed: Building Fluency in Adolescent Writers [Fleming, Gerald, Pike-Baky, Meredith] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Rain, Steam, and Speed: Building Fluency in Adolescent Writers

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On a given day, how much time do your students spend working on their fluency? At the elementary level, hours are devoted to reading and speaking fluency. In middle and high school, students read aloud, deliver oral presentations, and write in a variety of formats to improve upon their language fluency. And yet, while we devote a significant portion of every school day to a student's reading, writing and language fluency, how much time is devoted to the development of their technology fluency?

Defining Fluency

When defining the concept of fluency, we first look at "speed, accuracy, ease and comprehension" (@shfarnsworth). A student who reads with fluency uses inflection, demonstrates appropriate pacing and accurately decodes content. Similarly, a student with technology fluency navigates programs or apps quickly, completing tasks correctly and deliberately.

In school, we consider a student fluent when they read and speak the language as well as write it. With technology fluency, a student not only navigates within a single environment, but also begins to "demonstrate an ability to make effective choices and use the tools to advance their understanding and communication" (@toddacurtis).

Not only can a truly fluent student speak, listen, write and comprehend, but he or she can also make inferences and construct new meaning. Likewise, the ultimate sign of technology fluency is the "ability to manipulate, transform and move information across various media and platforms" (@ShawnMcCusker).

As I'm writing this, it is Computer Science Education Week. Schools across the country have embraced the Hour of Code initiative, but can a student be fluent without knowing how to code? In graduate school, I took courses in HTML and Flash. I can't remember the last time I wrote a web site in straight HTML, nor do I remember object-oriented programming. However, I understand the development process, the iterative cycle, and enough to troubleshoot a variety of other programming languages. While I certainly do not have any mastery of the mechanics of coding, I do have enough fluency to work with speed, ease and accuracy; to make effective choices; and to manipulate information across various media and platforms.

For schools that do make the choice to introduce coding, does it necessarily lead to fluency? A non-fluent student may be proficient in a single program or app, but not automatically see the connections to other content areas or different contexts. This student might be an expert in the mechanics of Garageband or Audacity, but might not see the connections to moviemaking or podcasting. While it is possible to acquire a specific set of skills from tutorials and checklists, this could lead to a compartmentalized understanding of procedures. How can we help our students develop fluency so that they can construct new objects beyond what was outlined in the directions and learn how to become true digital learners?

3 Strategies for Building Technology Fluency

1. Flip Your Lessons

When you ask students to independently acquire content knowledge via video, audio or text, they have to take ownership of their learning process. I realized this while teaching in a computer lab. Using whole-class, direct instruction to introduce new skills or processes made it too easy for my students. Instead of thinking about the process, they simply waited for my next set of instructions. To challenge even my youngest students, I started posting a screencast or detailed set of directions on my class blog, and then asking them to apply those resources in order to solve a related problem. This allowed me to provide additional support to struggling students, enrich others, and build a reference library for later use, as well as to help my students learn how to learn.

2. Create Scaffolded Challenges

If my students needed to complete a multi-step process, I provided only partial instruction -- either in person or via my blog. These steps gave them enough scaffolding to get started and then teach themselves how to finish the project. While I did have the occasional mutiny and group protest for "the answer," most of the time my students would collaborate among themselves to navigate the rest of the challenge. By not providing students with specific steps, they learned to read menu items, access help, search for tutorials and become effective problem solvers, taking critical steps towards fluency.

3. Empower Student Leaders

When a student has a solution, empower him or her to share it! I once sat at the back of the room while two sixth graders ran their class and taught their peers how to write formulas in a spreadsheet. Not only does this provide an intrinsic reward for the students who lead the class, but it also prepares them for the participatory culture in which we all live. Consider it digital citizenship subterfuge. Within the context of completing a seemingly unrelated task, you also gain an opportunity to address critical questions such as "How could we best share this?" or "What would be the best way to promote what we accomplished?"

Future Forward Learning

Technology fluency transcends devices, apps and programs. It implies that a student can quickly, accurately and deliberately communicate, collaborate and create across platforms. In Thomas Friedman's book The World is Flat, he made it abundantly clear that we are currently preparing students for jobs that do not yet exist. If we think about it, they will also need to employ technology that has not yet been created. By supporting the development of students' technology fluency, we are preparing them to become digital learners who are able to construct new tools and objects, communicate ideas and solve new problems.

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Building Technology Fluency: Preparing Students to be Digital Learners

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On a given day, how much time do your students spend working on their fluency? At the elementary level, hours are devoted to reading and speaking fluency. In middle and high school, students read aloud, deliver oral presentations, and write in a variety of formats to improve upon their language fluency.

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"The Word Collector" by Peter H. Reynolds 

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"The Word Collector" by Peter H. Reynolds 

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"A New York Times BestsellerNamed an Outstanding Literary Work for Children by the NAACP Some people collect stamps. Some people collect coins. Some people collect art. And Jerome? Jerome collected words . . . In this extraordinary new tale from Peter H. Reynolds, Jerome discovers the magic of the words all around him -- short and sweet words, two-syllable treats, and multisyllable words that sound like little songs. Words that connect, transform, and empower.From the creator of The Dot, I Am Human, and Happy Dreamer comes a celebration of finding your own words -- and the impact you can have when you share them with the world."

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The Word Collector [Reynolds, Peter H., Reynolds, Peter H.] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. The Word Collector

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When several of Megan Kelly's sixth-grade social studies students kept stumbling over vocabulary words she assumed they already knew, she discovered a blind spot in her teaching practice. "Why should they know these words if I'm not being intentional about teaching them?" Kelly asks in an article for MiddleWeb. Aware that regular exposure to rich, varied vocabulary would bolster her students' long-term academic success, she set out to find smart strategies "to incorporate vocabulary into small pockets of time in class."

Traditional vocabulary instruction can be a passive exercise, says literacy specialist Rebecca Alber, an instructor at UCLA's Graduate School of Education-but "copying definitions from a dictionary," isn't ultimately an effective strategy, Alber argues. Instead, students need "multiple and various exposures to a word before they fully understand that word and can apply it," research shows, and in order to be truly memorable, vocabulary needs to be learned in context, she adds, not as "standalone lists that come and go each week." Kids also need opportunities to revisit words they've learned throughout the year: "Keep an ongoing list displayed in the classroom of all the words you have 'owned' as a class," Alber suggests. "Periodically revisit and challenge students to use them, for example, in a one-minute essay or a quick write."

Meanwhile, given the constraints of time and curriculum sequencing, vocabulary instruction often gets short shrift, observes veteran teacher and education consultant Marilee Sprenger in another MiddleWeb post. But dedicating entire lesson blocks to vocabulary isn't necessary because even "brief encounters with words"-Sprenger says 10 minutes or even as little as 2 minutes-can be surprisingly effective, as long as they're woven into lessons regularly. "If we explicitly teach about 300 words per year to our students, it can make a big difference in their vocabularies," Sprenger writes. "Some students will learn about 3,000 or 4,000 words per year due to the literacy that surrounds them, while others have limited access and will only learn 1,000. Imagine how much you will be helping those students who have limited outside access to greater vocabulary."

Here are six quick, engaging classroom strategies-sourced from Kelly and Sprenger and from our Edutopia archives-for weaving vocabulary into your curriculum without disrupting your regular classroom flow.

Sing or rhyme it: Ask students to create a short song or poem that includes a chosen vocabulary word and its definition, suggests Sprenger. Students can work in pairs to develop the song or rhyme. "A jingle for the word clarify might be: 'clarify and shed some light, explain with details and say it right,' or 'clarify to avoid confusion, explain clearly for the right conclusion,'" Sprenger writes. Later, as kids transition to another activity, or line up, or get out of their seats to get new materials, ask them to sing or recite their jingle.

Let students choose their own words: "One of the biggest mistakes we teachers make in vocabulary instruction is selecting all the words for the students and not giving them a say in the matter," says Alber. Ask students to skim the first chapter or passage of a text you're reading together, for example, and select their own words, marking them as "know it," "sort of know it," or "don't know it at all." Then, before looking up the actual definition, ask them to propose a definition for the words they know and kind of know, and use this data as a gauge to guide your vocabulary work.

Pick three: Choose three words to focus on that day, and post the words and their definitions prominently in class. "Ask students to set a goal with a partner for how many times they will use the words. Then, really ham it up with the word usage," says Kelly. As her students played a board game about creating a civilization, for example, Kelly used the day's words- thrive, surplus, and impact -as often as possible while giving directions, and then "made a big deal whenever I heard a student say one of our goal words," which in turn encouraged students to find ways to incorporate the words as much as possible as they played the board game.

Act it out: In small groups or pairs, have students briefly act out one of the week's vocabulary words, says Sprenger. Research shows that the body often remembers what the mind forgets: When researchers asked 8-year-olds to mimic the words they were learning in another language by using their hands and bodies to act out the word's meaning-spreading their arms and pretending to fly while they learned the German word for airplane, for example-the students were 73 percent more likely to recall them, even two months later.

Think of what it's not: Learning new words doesn't need to feel like work, says Rebecca Givens Rolland, an oral and written language specialist at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. In fact, "students can be more engaged when they're allowed and encouraged to play with language," which can deepen their understanding of new words, she writes.

One playful strategy is to challenge students to "Ask not just, 'What does this word look or function like?' but also, 'What does it not look or function like?'," says Givens Rolland. So when students are defining an acute angle, they might say "it looks sharp, but "it does not look curvy, or wavy, or square." For every word your class discusses, be sure that students are specific about the difference between the original word and the things it is not. "This process of description will help build their vocabularies and strengthen their abilities to make connections between one topic and the next," she explains.

Draw it: For a novel take on drawing to remember, provide each student with a whiteboard and marker and then "ask students to balance the whiteboard on their head and then draw the vocabulary word in a set amount of time (40-50 seconds keeps the game moving)," Kelly suggests. "Once finished, they should explain their drawing to a partner." Or, for a less giggle-inducing approach, have students draw the vocabulary words quickly-on paper on their desks-and explain their drawing to a partner. A 2018 study revealed that, even for fledgling or indifferent artists, drawing what they learned doubled retention rates, when compared to kids who wrote or read the same material.

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When several of Megan Kelly's sixth-grade social studies students kept stumbling over vocabulary words she assumed they already knew, she discovered a blind spot in her teaching practice. "Why should they know these words if I'm not being intentional about teaching them?" Kelly asks in an article for MiddleWeb .

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5 Ways to Support Students Who Struggle with Reading Comprehension 

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5 Ways to Support Students Who Struggle with Reading Comprehension 

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These strategies can help students who are able to decode well but have difficulty understanding what they read-and they're beneficial for all students.

monkeybusinessimages / iStock

When we think of reading issues, we often imagine children who struggle to decode the letters in text and turn them into spoken language. This type of struggling reader has a very difficult time figuring out what many of the words are and has poor phonological (speech-sound) skills. However, there are also many students who sound like they're reading beautifully but have difficulty with understanding vocabulary and figurative language, inferencing, verbal reasoning, grammatical development, and oral expression.

As children get older, if they are decoding text well we assume they are reading well. Once a person learns to decode, reading comprehension becomes more about language comprehension and focus. At this transition, starting around third grade, teachers may begin to notice some students who decode text fluently but are not understanding.

Since this type of struggling reader is less noticeable than ones who have difficulty decoding, they often slip under the radar until they begin to fail standardized state comprehension tests. Even then, their issues may go undetected for a long time, resulting in middle and high school students who sound like they're reading but understand nothing that they have read.

These struggling readers should be targeted for remediation-the earlier the better. However, remediation consisting of practice passages and questions may be ineffective as it focuses too narrowly on text-based skills.

Supporting Students Who Struggle With Comprehension

Here are five strategies to try out with students who read fluently but struggle to comprehend what they're reading.

1. Target overall comprehension of language: Recent research reveals that reading comprehension difficulties may stem from an underlying oral language weakness that exists from early childhood, before reading is even taught. It turns out that students who have poor reading comprehension also often understand fewer spoken words and less of what they hear, and have worse spoken grammar. So, to address reading comprehension deficits effectively, educators may have to use an approach that teaches vocabulary, thinking skills, and comprehension first in spoken language and then in reading and written language.

2. Teach vocabulary: Because students with poor comprehension often have poor vocabulary skills and understand less of what they hear, it's helpful to teach the meanings of new words through the use of multisensory strategies like graphic organizers, pictures, and mnemonics. Improving their overall language skills increases the likelihood that they will understand the words they encounter in written text. Since it is impossible to know every word one might encounter, students should be taught about the different types of context clues and how to use them to determine the meaning of unknown words.

Discussing or activating prior knowledge,

Developing questions while reading,

Connecting what they are reading to another text, something they have seen, or something they have experienced,

Visualizing or picturing what they are reading,

Making predictions about what will come next in the text,

Looking back for keywords and rereading in order to clarify or answer questions, and

Thinking aloud to model the strategies and thought processes needed for comprehension.

3. Teach thinking strategies: Once students have the vocabulary to be able to make it through a text, they often struggle with the complex thinking or sustained attention required to keep up with all of the important details and to access information that is implied but not directly stated. Teachers can instruct students on cognitive strategies they can use. Many common text reading strategies-such as annotation, SQ3R, and the KWL chart -make use of these thinking strategies, including:

Students can learn and then use the strategies that work best for them depending on the text they're reading. Pulling deeper meaning out of text through the use of thinking strategies can be beneficial not just to reading comprehension but also to writing.

Questioner, who poses questions about parts of the lesson, discussion, or text that are unclear or confusing, or to help make connections with previously learned material.

Summarizer, who sums up each important point or detail from the lesson, discussion, or text.

Clarifier, who tries to address the Questioner's issues and make sure that parts they found confusing are clear to others.

Predictor, who makes a prediction about what will happen next based on what was presented, discussed, or read,

4. Have students practice reciprocal teaching: Once taught, cognitive strategies can be consistently practiced and implemented through the use of reciprocal teaching, which encourages students to take a leadership role in their learning and begin to think about their thought process while listening or reading. Teachers can use reciprocal teaching during class discussions, with text that is read aloud, and later with text that is read in groups. The students should rotate between the following roles:

5. Directly teach comprehension skills: Students should be directly taught comprehension skills such as sequencing, story structure using the plot mountain, how to make an inference and draw a conclusion, and the different types of figurative language. Students should have the opportunity to first use the skills with text that they hear the teacher read aloud, and then later with text that they read independently at their own level.

The comprehension skills and strategies listed above can be used with the whole class, as they closely align with reading and language arts standards for elementary and middle school students. Teachers can help students select reading material with vocabulary that matches their current ability levels so that within a classroom, students are reading text and working on vocabulary at levels that are accessible for each of them.

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5 Ways to Support Students Who Struggle With Reading Comprehension

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These strategies can help students who are able to decode well but have difficulty understanding what they read-and they're beneficial for all students.

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Using Games (Kahoot!) to Improve Vocabulary Acquisition and Retention 

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Using Games (Kahoot!) to Improve Vocabulary Acquisition and Retention 

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The effects of Kahoot! on vocabulary acquisition and retention of

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​Vocabulary is an important focus of literacy teaching and refers to the knowledge or words, including their structure (morphology), use (grammar), meanings (semantics), and links to other words (word/semantic relationships).

Oral vocabulary refers to words that children can understand or use while speaking and listening. Oral vocabulary is closely related to their reading vocabulary, which is the words that children can recognise and use in their reading or writing.

Words all have:

meaning, which can vary according to context

phonology - that is, sounds

morphology - that is, word parts

syntax, that is, the way in which words are arranged to form phrases or sentences

uses, which may be multiple, depending on context.

On this page

Children need to have a rich vocabulary that continually grows through language and literacy experiences, in order to comprehend and construct increasingly complex texts, and engage in oral language for a variety of social purposes.

Focussing on vocabulary is useful for developing knowledge and skills in multiple aspects of language and literacy. This includes helping with decoding (phonemic awareness and phonics), comprehension, and also fluency.

Learning vocabulary is a continual process of language and literacy development, which begins in the early years of life, and continues through schooling and beyond. Sinatra, Zygouris-Coe, and Dasinger (2011) note that:

Kno​​​​wledge of vocabulary meanings affects children's abilities to understand and use words appropriately during the language acts of listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Such knowledge influences the complexities and nuances of children's thinking, how they communicate in the oral and written languages, and how well they will understand printed texts. (p. 333)

It is crucial that children have explicit and robust instruction in vocabulary, to support their verbal and written communication. The explicit teaching of vocabulary allows students to access academic language and discourse, and facilitates their comprehension of increasingly complex texts.

Vocabulary plays an important role in oral language development and early literacy (Hill, 2012). Paris (2005) identifies vocabulary as one of the unconstrained skills, meaning that it is a skill that we continue to develop over our life span. Konza (2016) notes the importance of explicit teaching of vocabulary to support students to become confident in a word's meaning and use in context so that it will become part of their own repertoire.

Effective ways teaching of vocabulary involve the following main components (Sinatra, Zygouris-Coe, & Dasinger 2011):

explicit teaching of appropriate vocabulary words (see tier 2 vocabulary below)

multiple exposures to same words in varying contexts (speaking/listening, reading, writing)

working with a partner or small group to analyse words

story retelling using key vocabulary from texts

use of props or concrete objects to explain vocabulary

explicit discussion of comprehension together with vocabulary

ensuring vocabulary instruction is embedded across the curriculum.

Supporting EAL/D learners to develop vocabulary

Increasing EAL/D learners' vocabulary is crucial in developing school literacies and participating in learning activities across the curriculum. EAL/D learners may already have the words to describe a known concept from their prior learning or past experiences. This knowledge can be transferred to English by using translation as a learning process.

Some strategies for translating vocabulary in the classroom include:

using printed bilingual dictionaries or home language picture dictionaries

using online translation tools or dictionaries

creating a 'translation' or 'home language' column on vocabulary or spelling lists

displaying multilingual word walls or vocabulary lists in the classroom

checking translated vocabulary lists with family members, same language peers or Multicultural Education Aides.

Translation alone is not a sufficient strategy to help students learn how to use new vocabulary. Students require ongoing support to infer the meaning of words using contextual clues, and to break words into morphemes and understand how each part relates to the meaning of the word.

Developing translation and vocabulary learning skills and strategies also helps EAL/D students continue to develop their home language and literacy, which in turn supports learning in English. During the translation process, students may notice gaps in their vocabulary, and become aware of the differences of meaning between words and grammatical structures in different languages.

Additional ways of supporting EAL/D students' vocabulary development include:

identifying and teaching key vocabulary in context across all subject areas

providing opportunities to reuse key vocabulary in a range of texts and situations

providing displays of vocabulary and concepts, with illustrations and/or translations in the classroom. The teacher might need to demonstrate how the students could use the displays in their learning

explicitly teaching comprehension strategies for inferring and checking the meaning of new words that are encountered in reading, listening and viewing

playing word games such as I spy, Hangman or Bingo to reinforce vocabulary

discussing techniques and tools for recording and remembering vocabulary such as Apps or personal dictionaries

using graphic organisers to classify words into definitions and characteristics, with examples, non-examples and notes in English and/or home languages.

Multilingual graphic organisers, word walls or cognate charts scaffold EAL/D students' understanding of English words and make other languages visible in school spaces. Students who speak English as a first language may be able to use these strategies with the vocabulary that they are learning in school.

The 'form, meaning, and use' (Larsen-Freeman & Celce-Murcia, 2016) model can also be used to help EAL/D learners understand:

the 'form' (the word parts, the spelling, the sound of the word)

the 'meaning' (the concept of the word)

the 'use' (how the word is used in a sentence).

If EAL/D students are literate in their home language, they may include the 'form, meaning and use' model alongside drawings, images or known phonetic symbols to develop their academic vocabulary in both English and their home languages. If a teacher or a support staff shares some of the home languages of the students, they will be able to check students' translations for accuracy. Otherwise, the teacher can ask students to identify and explain any differences between their languages and English.

Foundation

Reading

Speaking and listening

Understand the use of vocabulary in familiar contexts related to everyday experiences, personal interests and topics taught at school (Content description VCELA167)

Level 1

Reading

Speaking and listening

Understand the use of vocabulary in everyday contexts as well as a growing number of school contexts, including appropriate use of formal and informal terms of address in different contexts (Content description VCELA202)

Writing

Level 2

Reading

Understand that nouns represent people, places, things and ideas and include common, proper, concrete or abstract, and that noun groups/phrases can be expanded using articles and adjectives (Content description VCELA216)

Learn some generalisations for adding suffixes to words (Content description VCELA217)

Analyse how different texts use nouns to represent people, places, things and ideas in particular ways (Content description VCELY223)

Speaking and listening

Understand the use of vocabulary about familiar and new topics and experiment with and begin to make conscious choices of vocabulary to suit audience and purpose (Content description VCELA237)

Writing

Understand how texts are made cohesive by the use of resources, including word associations, synonyms, and antonyms (Content description VCELA224)

Level 3

Reading

Recognise most high-frequency words, know how to use common prefixes and suffixes, and know some homophones and generalisations for adding a suffix to a base word (Content description VCELA250)

Speaking and Listening

Writing

Understand that verbs represent different processes (doing, thinking, saying, and relating) and that these processes are anchored in time through tense (Content description VCELA262)

Level 4

Reading

Read different types of texts for specific purposes by combining phonic, semantic, contextual and grammatical knowledge using text processing strategies, including monitoring meaning, skimming, scanning and reviewing (Content description VCELY287)

Writing

Level 5

Reading

Understand how to use banks of known words, syllabification, spelling patterns, word origins, base words, prefixes and suffixes, to spell new words, including some uncommon plurals (Content description VCELA312)

Writing

Understand the use of vocabulary to express greater precision of meaning, and know that words can have different meanings in different contexts (Content description VCELA325)

Level 6

Reading

Investigate how vocabulary choices, including evaluative language can express shades of meaning, feeling and opinion (Content description VCELA325)

Writing

Understand how ideas can be expanded and sharpened through careful choice of verbs, elaborated tenses and a range of adverb groups/phrases (Content description VCELA351)

Investigate how vocabulary choices, including evaluative language can express shades of meaning, feeling and opinion (Content description VCELA352)

Understand how to use banks of known words, word origins, base words, prefixes, suffixes, spelling patterns and generalisations to spell new words, including technical words and words adopted from other languages (Content description VCELA354)

Pathway A

Speaking and listening
Level A1

Understand that texts are meaningful (VCEALA035)

Recognise some familiar words in context (VCEALL048)

Recognise and use words from lexical sets related to immediate communicative need, interest or experience (VCEALL026)

Level A2

Reading and viewing
Level A1

Select books to look at or read independently (VCEALA038)

Use simple dictionaries and word charts (VCEALA040)

Rely on content words to understand the main idea in a text (VCEALL045)

Recognise familiar words and phrases (VCEALL046)

Level A2

Understand how different types of images in texts contribute to meaning (VCEALA116)

Select suitable books to read (VCEALA120)

Locate words in a bilingual dictionary or in class word lists (VCEALA121)

Focus on both content and functional words to understand the main idea in a text (VCEALL126)

Use developing knowledge of English to predict some words or phrases (VCEALL127)

Writing
Level A1

Write some high-frequency words related to personal experience and school context (VCEALL076)

Contribute ideas, words or sentences to a class or group shared story (VCEALA062)

Clarify the meaning of a word in home language and ask for the word to be written so it can be copied (VCEALA066)

Level A2

Use high-frequency words encountered in classroom activities (VCEALL155)

Use some curriculum or content area vocabulary (VCEALL156)

Contribute to shared writing activities (VCEALA142)

Use a range of resources to find words or phrases for own writing (VCEALA146)

Pathway B

Speaking and listening

Use words from sets related to immediate communicative need, interest or experience (VCEALL180)
Level BL
Level B1

Use, in speech, vocabulary and structures learnt from spoken and written texts (VCEALL341)

Use simple forms of modality (VCEALL338)

Level B2

Level B3

Use simple dictionaries and word charts (VCEALA196)

Sequence words to make simple sentences (VCEALL203)

Use simple present and past tense verb forms to talk about ongoing, current and past actions (VCEALL204)

Use some high-frequency adjective-noun and verb-adverb combinations (VCEALL205)

Recognise some common words or phrases (VCEALL206)

Build a vocabulary that draws on words of interest, learnt words and sight words (VCEALL207)

Reading and viewing
Level BL

Experiment with using a picture or simple English dictionary and/or a home language-English bilingual dictionary to find words (VCEALA276)

Read sentences that use basic subject, verb and object patterns, where content and vocabulary are familiar (VCEALL283)

Identify simple present and past tense verbs (VCEALL284)

Use knowledge of base words to read new forms (VCEALL285)

Read some familiar words and phrases (VCEALL286)

Build a vocabulary that draws on words of interest, topic words and sight words (VCEALL287)

Level B1

Use a simple English dictionary or class word list to find words, and/or check home language-English bilingual dictionary for meanings (VCEALA357)

Read texts that contain compound and complex sentences (VCEALL364)

Use knowledge of simple tense and negation to interpret the meaning of written text (VCEALL365)

Use knowledge of sentence structure to predict words or self-correct (VCEALL366)

Read some common words or familiar phrases (VCEALL367)

Level B2

Use an accessible English dictionary to check the meaning of new words, and/or check meanings in a home language-English bilingual dictionary (VCEALA436)

Follow the meaning of complex sentence patterns (VCEALL443)

Interpret the meaning of written text that uses a range of tenses and negation (VCEALL444)

Use knowledge of sentence structure to predict words and self-correct (VCEALL445)

Use knowledge of sentence structure and content to deduce the meaning of unfamiliar words (VCEALL446)

Level B3

Writing
Level BL

Level B1

Level B2

Level B3

Word Classes and Grammatical form and function

Words are categorised into grammatical forms or word classes including the commonly known nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, as well as determiners, prepositions, conjunctions. Different word classes have different functions in terms of their grammar (including morphology, and syntax).

Students need to develop understandings of different types of words, as part of their metalinguistic awareness (knowing how language and literacy works, and the words that describe these phenomena).

When introducing vocabulary it is crucial for students to know the type (or class) of word it is. If ever students are unsure, they can be encouraged to check a paper or online dictionary, which will always provide the word class in the listing.

Below is a table which summarises each word class (or form), including their function, examples, and any inflectional or derivational morphemes that attach to these.

Word Class

Function

Examples

Inflections

Derivations

Noun (incl Proper Noun)

person, place, thing, typically objects (concrete and abstract)

junk idea rainbow reaction debate earthquake

Plural (-s, -es)

Possessive (-'s)

e.g. -ance -ion
-dom -ness
-ment -ity -ism
-er

Pronoun

stand in for nouns or noun phrases

I you they him she this these some their his myself ourselves each other

n/a

n/a

Determiner

specifies the noun. e.g. whose noun it is or which noun is meant

the a an
her their our
those this that
many more neither
another

n/a

n/a

Adjective

words which typically modify a noun, denoting qualities or states (answer question such as Which one? What kind? How many? Whose?)

long pointy childish imaginary sisterly

comparative (-er)

superlative (-est)

-ish -ary -able
-ly -y -ful

Verb

generally denote actions, states, processes and events

run play determine sorted synchronising thinking

third person singular
present tense
e.g. (she) walks
(he) eats

past tense (-ed)

-Ify -ate -ize -en

Adverb

modifies (adds meaning) to verbs adjectives, and other adverbs

slowly foolishly very mostly

n/a

-ly

Prepositions

provide additional information by specifying location or space
i.e. they tell us about the relationships between events and things

in, at, on, off, into, onto, towards, to, about, as, with

n/a

n/a

Conjunctions

used to join words, phrases, or sentences together

and or but because whenever after before

n/a

n/a

When using personal dictionaries (where new vocabulary is added progressively as students learn new words), students should be encouraged to record the word type in their entries. Adding an example sentence can also be useful. These strategies help develop students' independence in their understanding and use of new vocabulary.

Word Morphology

Morphology is the study of words and their parts. Morphemes (like prefixes, suffixes, and base words) are defined as the smallest meaningful units of meaning.

All words can be broken down into their morphemes:

Some words have also 1 morpheme

system

system

(1)

Some have 2 morphemes

systematic

system+atic

(2)

Or 3 morphemes

unsystematic

un+system+atic

(3)

Or 4 morphemes

unsystematical

un+system+atic+al

(4)

Or more!

unsystematically

un+system+atic+al+ly

(5)

Other examples of words with multiple morphemes are: roll+er driv+ing under+stand+able class+ic+al

Morphemes are important for vocabulary, as well as phonics (reading and spelling) and comprehension. Teaching morphemes is useful because they help to analyse the parts of words, often have a consistent purpose and/or meaning, and are often spelt the same across different words (even when the sound changes).

For more information, see: Word morphology

Word/Semantic Relationships

Teaching vocabulary is also about how words relate to other words. Semantics is the study of word meanings, and includes semantic relationships (how words are related to other words).

Here are some examples of types of word/semantic relationships:

Categories

Antonyms

Synonyms

Connotations

Homophones & Homographs

Homonyms (words with Multiple Meanings)

The most effective way to teach vocabulary is to show how new words relate to other words, especially ones that students already know. It is important to explicitly teach the relationships between words.

For more information about word/semantic relationships, including Categories, Antonyms, Synonyms, Connotations, Homophones & Homographs, see: Word/Semantic Relationships (docx - 233.6kb)

Choosing Words to Teach - Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3

Vocabulary Words that we explicitly teach should also be as functional as possible, so that students have multiple opportunities to comprehend and use these words. Beck and McKeown (1985) have categorised words according to three Vocabulary Tiers:

For more information, see: Choosing Words to Teach - Tier 1, 2, 3 Vocabulary (docx - 209.43kb)

Word Etymology

The origins of words and morphemes, and their meanings, is a crucial part of exploring the richness of vocabulary, and how words connect with one another.

Identifying word types

Identifying morphemes

Building words, breaking words down

Finding word meaning(s)

Semantic/Word Webs or Maps Flow charts and visual organisers for words

How well do you know a word?

Recognition

Recall

Familiarity

Use for one context/purpose

Use of multiple contexts/purposes

Example Activities

As well as embedding Vocabulary teaching within the various teaching practices, there are numerous activities that introduce students to concepts of Vocabulary.

Beck, I. L. & McKeown, M. G (1985). Teaching vocabulary: Making the instruction fit the goal. Educational Perspectives, 23(1). 11-15.

Beck, I. L., McKeown, M. G., & Kucan, L. (2002). Bringing words to life: Robust vocabulary instruction. New York: Guilford.

Hill, S. (2012). Developing early literacy: assessment and teaching (2nd ed.). South Yarra, Vic. Eleanor Curtain Publishing.

Konza, D. (2016). Understanding the process of reading: The big six. In J. Scull & B. Raban (Eds), Growing up literate:Australian literacy research for practice (pp. 149-175). South Yarra, Vic. : Eleanor Curtain Publishing.

Larsen-Freeman, D., & Celce-Murcia, M. (2016). The grammar book: Form, meaning, and use for English language teachers (3rd Ed.). Boston: National Geographic Learning.

Nation, P. (2001). Learning vocabulary in another language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Nation, P. (2005). Teaching vocabulary. The Asian EFL Journal, 7(3), 47-54.

Paris, S. (2005). Reinterpreting the development of reading skills. Reading Research Quarterly, 40 (2), 184-202.

Sinatra, R, Zygouris-Coe, V & Dasinger, S 2011, Preventing a vocabulary lag: What lessons are learned from research, Reading & Writing Quarterly, 28(4), pp. 333-334

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​Vocabulary is an important focus of literacy teaching and refers to the knowledge or words, including their structure (morphology), use (grammar), meanings (semantics), and links to other words (word/semantic relationships). Oral vocabulary refers to words that children can understand or use while speaking and listening.

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5 Research Based Ways to Teach Vocabulary for Students with Special Needs 

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5 Research Based Ways to Teach Vocabulary for Students with Special Needs 

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Did you know that typically, only 5% to 10% of instructional time is devoted to vocabulary instruction, yet students, especially struggling students and English learners (ELs), need between 12 and 14 exposures to words and their meanings to fully learn them (Durkin, 1978/79; Roser & Juel, 1982; Scott, Jamieson, Noel, & Asslin, 2003)? Teaching the meanings of important words before learning new content activates students' background knowledge and prepares them for learning and comprehending. In other words, teaching vocabulary provides the "Velcro" for new information to "stick to."

What Research Says About Effective Vocabulary Instruction

Vocabulary instruction must be explicit. Explicit vocabulary instruction includes an easy-to-understand definition presented directly to students along with multiple examples and nonexamples of the target word, brief discussion opportunities, and checks for understanding.

Vocabulary instruction must include multiple practice opportunities for using words within and across subjects. That is, instruction must be extended over time with opportunities for students to hear, speak, read, and write words in various contexts. This builds students' breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge.

Vocabulary should be taught schoolwide and across all subject areas. Each subject has a unique set of vocabulary terms, and students need to know their meanings and how to use them in various contexts.

Word Selection

Instructional time is precious, and teachers are not able to address every unknown word students might encounter, so careful word selection is key. When deciding which words to target for explicit instruction, consider words that are

essential to understanding the main idea of the text or unit,

used repeatedly or frequently encountered across domains, and

not part of students' prior knowledge.

ELs may require even more careful word selection and extensive vocabulary instruction because they may be learning conversational language and academic language at the same time. Colorín Colorado provides additional information about selecting vocabulary words to teach ELs.

Some of Our Favorite Vocabulary Instructional Activities for ALL Content Areas

The five activities described below are effective ways to teach vocabulary for all students, but especially for struggling students, students with learning disabilities, and ELs.

1. Essential Words Routine

Teachers use a simple graphic organizer to preteach the meanings of important words in about 5 minutes per word. During this routine, teachers introduce target words with definitions, visual cues, and examples. Students engage in immediate practice using the words through collaborative student turn-and-talk activities.

Resources

2. Frayer Model

One way to have students extend their knowledge of important words is through a Frayer model. This graphic organizer builds vocabulary and conceptual knowledge across content areas. The strategy requires students (not the teacher) to define a vocabulary word and then list its characteristics, examples, and nonexamples. Frayer models can be completed in collaborative groups using textbooks and other subject-matter materials while the teacher circulates around the classroom and assists students.

Resource

Online module, examples, and templates from the IRIS Center

3. Semantic Mapping

Semantic maps visually display and connect a word or phrase and a set of related words or concepts. Implementing semantic map activities in your classroom will help students, especially struggling students and students with learning disabilities, recall the meanings of words and understand how multiple words or concepts "fit together." Teachers will find that using a semantic map, combined with explicit instruction and practice opportunities, is an effective way of expanding students' vocabulary and supporting their content knowledge.

Resources

4. Vocabulary Review Activities

Multiple opportunities to practice using new words is an important part of vocabulary instruction. In previous TCLD research studies, brief review activities were built into novel unit lesson plans to help students practice (and remember) the meanings of important words. Each of these activities takes 5 to 10 minutes and is easy to prepare.

Partner Review Routine: Partners work together to quickly review words learned the previous day.

Sentence Review Routine: Partners create sentences using words assigned by the teacher.

Examples and Nonexamples: The teacher tells students scenarios or shows pictures and students respond chorally to each scenario, indicating whether it is an example or nonexample.

What Word Fits? The teacher asks a question and student partners hold up an index card with the word that fits or answers the question.

Resource

Each activity is described in more detail beginning on page 33 of the TCLD booklet Reading Instruction for Middle School Students: Developing Lessons for Improving Comprehension

5. Morphemic Analysis Routine

Explicit instruction of words is important, but it is impossible to teach all the unfamiliar words students will encounter. One way to help students develop strategies for approaching unfamiliar vocabulary is to teach morphemes (prefixes, roots, and suffixes). Students can be taught the following morphemic analysis routine to help them engage in independent word study.

Resource

Learn more about the morphemic analysis routine by reviewing this online learning module from the Texas Adolescent Literacy Academies.
Have questions? Feel free to drop us a line!

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Texas Center for Learning Disabilities: Five Research-Based Ways to Teach Vocabulary

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The Texas Center for Learning Disabilities (TCLD) website disseminates resources on learning disabilities to parents, teachers, and researchers.

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"Prodigy English is a whole new way for kids to develop reading and language skills. Join the adventure and start building a world of your own today!"

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Prodigy English and Prodigy Math are both adaptive, engaging, game-based learning platforms designed to help students love learning. And all of Prodigy Math and Prodigy English's educational content is free!

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Prodigy English and Prodigy Math are both adaptive, engaging, game-based learning platforms designed to help students love learning. And all of Prodigy Math and Prodigy English's educational content is free! In Prodigy English, players answer reading and writing questions to gain energy that allows their in-game character to build their own world.

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References

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August, D., Calderón M., & Carlo M. (2002) The Transfer of Skills from Spanish to English: A Study of Young Learners. Center for Applied Linguistics, Washington, D.C.

Biemiller, A. (2001). "Teaching Vocabulary: Early, direct, and sequential." American Educator. Spring 2001.(25)(1): 24-28, 47.

Calderón, M., August, D., R. Slavin, A. Cheung, D. Durán & N. Madden (2005). Bringing words to life in classrooms with English language learners. In Hiebert, A & M. Kamil (eds.) Research and development on vocabulary. Nahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Hiebert, A & M. Kamil (eds.) (2005) Research and development on vocabulary. Nahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

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Click the "References" link above to hide these references. August, D., Calderón M., & Carlo M. (2002) The Transfer of Skills from Spanish to English: A Study of Young Learners. Center for Applied Linguistics, Washington, D.C. Biemiller, A. (2001). "Teaching Vocabulary: Early, direct, and sequential." American Educator. Spring 2001.(25)(1): 24-28, 47.

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Dr. Anita Archer - Vocabulary Instruction

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Frayer Model and Collaborative Structure for Word Analysis 

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Frayer Model and Collaborative Structure for Word Analysis 

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Engaging Vocabulary Instruction in a Middle School Classroom