Teaching Writing in the United States
Encyclopedia
Teaching Writing in the United States has progressed through several approaches during the history of education in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

.

Background

At its most basic level, writing is how we keep track of the thoughts that are important to us. From the ancient Egyptians
Egyptians
Egyptians are nation an ethnic group made up of Mediterranean North Africans, the indigenous people of Egypt.Egyptian identity is closely tied to geography. The population of Egypt is concentrated in the lower Nile Valley, the small strip of cultivable land stretching from the First Cataract to...

, to the monks of the Middle Ages, to Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom , the third President of the United States and founder of the University of Virginia...

's Declaration of Independence
Declaration of independence
A declaration of independence is an assertion of the independence of an aspiring state or states. Such places are usually declared from part or all of the territory of another nation or failed nation, or are breakaway territories from within the larger state...

, writing has been used to capture thought, from the mundane to the profound. In schools, writing serves not only to record, but to refine and synthesize thinking . As school effectiveness researcher Doug Reeves discovered, "The association between writing and performance in other academic disciplines [is] striking, and gets to the heart of the curriculum choices teachers must make."

Early writing instruction

Early academic instruction in writing centered almost exclusively on mechanics, commonly referred to today as conventions
Convention (norm)
A convention is a set of agreed, stipulated or generally accepted standards, norms, social norms or criteria, often taking the form of a custom....

. Emphasis was placed on handwriting, grammar, punctuation and spelling. Papers were more likely to be graded on the precision of these conventions and accuracy of content than on style or creative expression of ideas. Historically, instruction in writing has focused on a narrow pool of concrete, easily definable skills.

Writing process approach

Research conducted in the late 1970s by Donald Graves, Janet Emig and others led to a focus on the process, rather than solely the product, of writing. The writing process
Writing process
The Writing process is both a key concept in the teaching of writing and an important research concept in the field of composition studies.Research on the writing process focuses on how writers draft, revise, and edit texts...

 approach rests on the premise that writing is a complex and individualized task which can be described through a series of recursive
Recursive
Recursive may refer to:*Recursion, the technique of functions calling themselves*Recursive function, a total computable function*Recursive language, a language which is decidable...

 stages. These stages, commonly including pre-writing, writing, editing and revision, and the concepts of craft within them, can be modeled and taught to students. This allows the teacher to identify the difficulties students are having with writing and to provide appropriate instruction and support. The writing process approach helps students to understand what writers actually do when they write, providing multiple models and individual feedback on writing pieces in progress.Students are encouraged to choose their own topics and purposes for writing, and to write to real audiences. This approach has been widely adopted in schools throughout the United States.

Writing Across the Curriculum

During the 1980s and 1990s, new approaches to teaching writing emerged, as teachers realized that in order to be effective, a piece of writing should be tailored to a specific purpose and audience. Prominent among these was the British-based movement which came to be known as Writing Across the Curriculum
Writing Across the Curriculum
The Writing Across the Curriculum movement is a subfield of writing studies and composition studies that asserts students acquire proficiency in writing through instruction and practice in a variety of courses and fields...

. This approach rests on the premise that all teachers, not just language arts
Language arts
Traditionally, the primary divisions in the language arts are Literature and Language, where language in this case refers to both linguistics, and specific languages....

 teachers, must be teachers of writing. Designed to ease the separation between literacy
Literacy
Literacy has traditionally been described as the ability to read for knowledge, write coherently and think critically about printed material.Literacy represents the lifelong, intellectual process of gaining meaning from print...

 and content knowledge, this approach emphasizes the connection between writing and cognitive development, and students are taught to write in a variety of genres, specific to purpose and discipline. Writing Across the Curriculum teachers often emphasize two basic pedagogical strands: Writing to Learn, informal writing done to prompt students to more deeply understand concepts; and Writing in the Disciplines, in which students are taught writing skills and conventions necessary to participate in specific academic discourse.

Writing for Understanding

Writing for Understanding, a 21st century approach, adapts the principles of backward design
Backward Design
Backward design is a method of designing curriculum by setting goals before choosing activities or content to teach. The idea is to teach towards those goals, which ensures that the content taught remains focused and organized, promoting a better understanding for students...

 to teach students to write effectively. Writing for Understanding grew out of a recognition that most students require explicit instruction in both the knowledge and the structures that they need to construct meaning in writing. Oral processing and the extensive use of models and modeling are core teaching methodologies in this approach. The Writing for Understanding Approach rests on three pillars: Backward Design, Understanding and Direct Instruction. Students are given focused, intentional instruction and practice in:
  • developing a knowledge and understanding which can be articulated in spoken and written language
  • identifying an appropriate focus for thinking about and synthesizing that knowledge and understanding
  • choosing a structure through which to clearly develop and present that knowledge and understanding
  • establishing control over conventions.


Writing for Understanding teachers intentionally design instruction to enable students to appropriately generalize and transfer their skills to multiple contexts . The Vermont Writing Collaborative http://www.vermontwritingcollaborative.org/index.html serves as a clearinghouse for information about Writing for Understanding and provides professional development, instructional materials and other supports for educators.

2009-present

In 2009, the National Governors Association
National Governors Association
The National Governors Association , founded in 1908 as the National Governors' Conference, is funded primarily by state dues, federal grants and contracts and private contributions. NGA represents the governors of the fifty U.S. states and five U.S. territories The National Governors Association...

 Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) and the Council of Chief State School Officers
Council of Chief State School Officers
The Council of Chief State School Officers is a non-partisan non-profit organization of public officials who head departments of elementary and secondary education in the U.S. states, the District of Columbia, the Department of Defense Education Activity and five U.S. territories. CCSSO provides...

 (CCSSO) assumed the coordination of a state led effort called The Common Core State Standards Initiative in which "Governors and state commissioners of education from 48 states, 2 territories and the District of Columbia committed to developing a common core of state standards in English-language arts .." This effort is ongoing and is certain to have a profound effect nationwide on writing curriculum and pedagogical practice over the next decade. It is clearly time for American public education to take up the challenge issued by the National Commission on Writing "to teach all students to write effectively, clearly and thoughtfully."

See also

  • Education in the United States
    Education in the United States
    Education in the United States is mainly provided by the public sector, with control and funding coming from three levels: federal, state, and local. Child education is compulsory.Public education is universally available...

  • Four Square Writing Method
    Four Square Writing Method
    The Four Square Writing Method is a simplified graphic organizer for teaching writing to children in school. While primarily used to teach persuasive writing, it has also been used to help teach deconstruction. The method was developed by Judith S...

  • Literacy in the United States
    Literacy in the United States
    Rates of literacy in the United States depend on which of the various definitions of literacy is used. Governments may label individuals who can read a couple of thousand simple words they learned by sight in the first four grades in school as literate...


External links

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