RTI: Writing Interventions Jim Wright interventioncentral

1. RTI: Writing InterventionsJim Wrightwww.interventioncentral.org

2. Elbow Group Activity: When was your ‘writing breakthrough’ point? • In your group, discuss when each member felt that they reached the ‘breakthrough’ point when they felt they were competent writers. • Be prepared to share your discussion with the larger group.

3. "If all the grammarians in the world were placed end to end, it would be a good thing." • Oscar Wilde

4. Graham, S., & Perin, D. (2007). Writing next: Effective strategies to improve writing of adolescents in middle and high schools – A report to Carnegie Corporation of New York. Washington, DC Alliance for Excellent Education. Retrieved from http://www.all4ed.org/files/WritingNext.pdf

5. The Effect of Grammar Instruction as an Independent Activity “Grammar instruction in the studies reviewed [for the Writing Next report] involved the explicit and systematic teaching of the parts of speech and structure of sentences. The meta-analysis found an effect for this type of instruction for students across the full range of ability, but …surprisingly, this effect was negative…Such findings raise serious questions about some educators’ enthusiasm for traditional grammar instruction as a focus of writing instruction for adolescents….Overall, the findings on grammar instruction suggest that, although teaching grammar is important, alternative procedures, such as sentence combining, are more effective than traditional approaches for improving the quality of students’ writing.” p. 21 Source: Graham, S., & Perin, D. (2007). Writing next: Effective strategies to improve writing of adolescents in middle and high schools – A report to Carnegie Corporation of New York. Washington, DC Alliance for Excellent Education.

6. Domains of writing to be assessed (Robinson & Howell, 2008): • Fluency/Text Generation: Facility in getting text onto paper or typed into the computer. (NOTE: This element can be significantly influenced by student motivation.) • Syntactic Maturity: This skill includes the: • Ability to discern when a word string meets criteria as a complete sentence • Ability to write compositions with a diverse range of sentence structures • Semantic Maturity: Writer’s use of vocabulary of range and sophistication Source: Robinson, L. K., & Howell, K. W. (2008). Best practices in curriculum-based evaluation & written expression. In A. Thomas & J. Grimes (Eds.), Best practices in school psychology V (pp. 439-452). Bethesda, MD: National Association of School Psychologists.

7. Students must learn that writing is a process (plan, write, revise) not a static product. The Horse in Motion Eadweard Muybridge, 1904

8. Domains of writing to be assessed (Robinson & Howell, 2008): 5-Step Writing Process: (Items in bold are iterative): • Planning. The student carries out necessary pre-writing planning activities, including content, format, and outline. • Drafting. The student writes or types the composition. • Revision. The student reviews the content of the composition-in-progress and makes changes as needed. After producing an initial written draft, the student considers revisions to content before turning in for a grade or evaluation. • Editing. The student looks over the composition and corrects any mechanical mistakes (capitalization, punctuation, etc.). • Publication: The student submits the composition in finished form. Source: Robinson, L. K., & Howell, K. W. (2008). Best practices in curriculum-based evaluation & written expression. In A. Thomas & J. Grimes (Eds.), Best practices in school psychology V (pp. 439-452). Bethesda, MD: National Association of School Psychologists.

9. Elements of effective writing instruction for adolescents: • Writing Process (Effect Size = 0.82): Students are taught a process for planning, revising, and editing. • Summarizing (Effect Size = 0.82): Students are taught methods to identify key points, main ideas from readings to write summaries of source texts. • Cooperative Learning Activities (‘Collaborative Writing’) (Effect Size = 0.75): Students are placed in pairs or groups with learning activities that focus on collaborative use of the writing process. • Goal-Setting (Effect Size = 0.70): Students set specific ‘product goals’ for their writing and then check their attainment of those self-generated goals. Source: Graham, S., & Perin, D. (2007). Writing next: Effective strategies to improve writing of adolescents in middle and high schools – A report to Carnegie Corporation of New York. Washington, DC Alliance for Excellent Education. Retrieved from http://www.all4ed.org/files/WritingNext.pdf

10. Elements of effective writing instruction for adolescents: • Writing Processors (Effect Size = 0.55): Students have access to computers/word processors in the writing process. • Sentence Combining (Effect Size = 0.50): Students take part in instructional activities that require the combination or embedding of simpler sentences (e.g., Noun-Verb-Object) to generate more advanced, complex sentences. • Prewriting (Effect Size = 0.32): Students learn to select, develop, or organize ideas to incorporate into their writing by participating in structured ‘pre-writing’ activities. • Inquiry Activities (Effect Size = 0.32): Students become actively engaged researchers, collecting and analyzing information to guide the ideas and content for writing assignments. Source: Graham, S., & Perin, D. (2007). Writing next: Effective strategies to improve writing of adolescents in middle and high schools – A report to Carnegie Corporation of New York. Washington, DC Alliance for Excellent Education. Retrieved from http://www.all4ed.org/files/WritingNext.pdf

11. Elements of effective writing instruction for adolescents: • Process Writing (Effect Size = 0.32): Writing instruction is taught in a ‘workshop’ format that “ stresses extended writing opportunities, writing for authentic audiences, personalized instruction, and cycles of writing” (Graham & Perin, 2007; p. 4). • Use of Writing Models (Effect Size = 0.25): Students read and discuss models of good writing and use them as exemplars for their own writing. • Writing to Learn Content (Effect Size = 0.23): The instructor incorporates writing activities as a means to have students learn content material. Source: Graham, S., & Perin, D. (2007). Writing next: Effective strategies to improve writing of adolescents in middle and high schools – A report to Carnegie Corporation of New York. Washington, DC Alliance for Excellent Education. Retrieved from http://www.all4ed.org/files/WritingNext.pdf

12. Writing Skills Checklist

13. Writing ‘Blockers

15. Origins of the Latin Alphabet:Early Greek Alphabet Boustrophedon: ‘ox trail’: Script alternates between left-to-right and right-to-left Source:http://www.translexis.demon.co.uk/new_page_2.htm

17. "The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug." • Mark Twain

18. "Your manuscript is both good and original. But the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good." • Samuel Johnson

20. "Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs." • Henry Ford

22. "When I sit at my table to write, I never know what it’s going to be until I'm under way. I trust in inspiration, which sometimes comes and sometimes doesn't. But I don't sit back waiting for it. I work every day." • Alberto Moravia

25. Writing ‘Blockers’

26. Sentence Combining Students with poor writing skills often write sentences that lack ‘syntactic maturity’. Their sentences often follow a simple, stereotyped format. A promising approach to teach students use of diverse sentence structures is through sentence combining. In sentence combining, students are presented with kernel sentences and given explicit instruction in how to weld these kernel sentences into more diverse sentence types either • by using connecting words to combine multiple sentences into one or • by isolating key information from an otherwise superfluous sentence and embedding that important information into the base sentence. Sources: Saddler, B. (2005). Sentence combining: A sentence-level writing intervention. The Reading Teacher, 58, 468-471. Strong, W. (1986). Creative approaches to sentence combining. Urbana, OL: ERIC Clearinghouse on Reading and Communication Skill & National Council of Teachers of English.

27. Formatting Sentence Combining Examples

31. Team Activity: Use of Sentence Combining as a Writing Strategy Across Content Areas… : • Discuss the sentence-combining strategy discussed in this workshop. • Brainstorm ways that schools can promote the use of this strategy across content areas to encourage students to write with greater ‘syntactic maturity’.

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