I cnat read my language series#

Sure, there are gifted and talented writers whose artistry goes above and beyond the scope of most of ours - just as there are some basketball players who are exceptionally gifted. Literacy students saw themselves clearly in the latter group. My students would say to me, “What do they mean, more details? I wrote seven sentences!” I realized early on that these students perceived the ability to write as a magical gift that was either bestowed upon you at birth or not. But what about the student who isn’t very well read? Or the student who reads what is assigned but doesn’t understand how that writing happened? Can teachers sufficiently define and describe an effective supporting detail and commentary for these struggling readers?Īs a literacy teacher, literacy coach, and intervention coordinator, I have seen students look bewildered at their teachers’ requests for “more details,” “stronger support,” “more analysis.” These are terms that are foreign to the low-level reader. We can assume that students who are well read tend to be better writers because they have been exposed to many different types and styles of writing and therefore can mimic those constructs in their own writing. Writing programs provide tools for brainstorming and graphic organizers to show students how a paragraph has a main idea that is supported by details (and commentary), but beyond that, students’ understanding of writing has been largely inferential. The best research supports using mnemonics to help students remember the steps of the writing process (Graham & Hebert, 2010). Worse yet, writing interventions - scaffolds designed to help struggling readers - have been few and far between.

I cnat read my language series#

Writing may be taught as separate subject, as a series of discrete skills (write a thesis statement, write a topic sentence and concluding statement), or taught through a series of prompts, which inspire interesting ideas but don’t promote much skill building. For a seventh-grade student who is reading at a fourth-grade level, how will this happen?įor too long, writing instruction has been difficult, especially for teachers of adolescents.

And writing must include textual evidence, in-depth analysis, and structures appropriate to task, purpose, and audience (Writing Anchor Standard 4) (CCSS, 2010). Argument writing has been elevated to a high priority (indicated by its placement as Writing Anchor Standard 1). Students will be expected to write in all content areas, for various purposes, and over varying lengths of time (Writing Anchor Standard 10). One of the biggest instructional shifts resulting from the Common Core State Standards is the increased emphasis on writing. Hillary Wolfe recommends building strategic scaffolds to assist adolescent writing