Nine Strategies For Teaching Writing Across The Curriculum

Teaching Writing Across the CurriculumPattern Based Writing: Quick & Easy EssayTeaching Writing Lessons is Not Teaching WritingWhat is teaching writing? Before we look at teaching writing across the curriculum, let’s answer thissimpler question. Most teachers know the frustration of teaching grammar and writing lessons, onlyto discover that their students don’t use what they learned in those lessons in their daily writingacross the curriculum. Certainly, most teachers can teach writing and grammar lessons well enough,so what’s the problem? Well, writing and grammar lessons don’t teach writing—it’s the teacher thatteaches writing. By the end of this ebook, you will see what I mean.When I first began teaching writing, I taught lots of traditional grammar and writing lessons, andalthough the lessons improved students’ writing somewhat, they didn’t produce the results that I hadwanted or expected to see. The lessons themselves went fine, but given all the time that I hadinvested, I didn’t like what I saw in two types of independent writing:1. Daily Writing Across the Curriculum2. State and District Writing AssessmentsThat’s when I began my mission to learn how to improve student writing—i.e., teach writing.What is Teaching Writing?I’ve developed a simple and practical definition of teaching writing. My definition of teaching writingcame about primarily from my desire to get my students to write well in their daily writing across thecurriculum. For me, the esoteric theories about teaching writing didn’t capture what teaching writingreally is. Here is my definition of teaching writing: Teaching writing is the act of improving students’ independent writing.It’s that simple. Independent is the key word here, as the word independent reflects the writingskills that stick and it reflects the writing skills that students own. I have learned not to interpret thekind of writing that I can get students to produce on a writing lesson as real writing.Worth mentioning, multiple-choice standardized tests often require a different type of writingknowledge. And I do take that test-type of writing knowledge very seriously. In short, being able tospot a grammar error on a multiple-choice test requires a different kind of knowledge or skill frombeing able to write properly in daily writing across the curriculum. While they are not mutuallyexclusive, they are not the same, either.The Teaching Writing Test: Apples-to-Apples ComparisonsHow do you know if you have taught writing successfully? It’s easy. You give your students anindependent writing assignment on day one and then a few months later or at the end of the school7Pattern Based Writing: Quick & Easy Essay – Guaranteed Fast and Effective! 2018

Teaching Writing Across the CurriculumPattern Based Writing: Quick & Easy Essayyear, you give your students a similar assignment. The amount of improvement in the writing is theamount of writing that you have taught. It’s that simple.Apples-to-apples comparisons (the same amount of time and the same type of assignment) are anincredibly powerful and motivating teaching tool. With an apples-to-apples comparison, even themost reluctant and stubborn writers find that it is unacceptable not to show writing progress. Thatcreates real motivation! And the teacher doesn’t need to say a word!Apples-to-apples comparisons also let the teacher know exactly how effective their writinginstruction has been. Early in my teaching career, I created a highly effective and fast system for usingapples-to-apples comparisons to improve student writing. You can read all about it here:1. Writing Fluency: Teaching Children to Write FAST Using the Timed Writing System2. Timed Writing System: Evaluate Student Writing Growth and Achievement ObjectivelyWriting is such a complicated and complex skill that I need to see objective progress on INDEPENDENTstudent writing. This objective progress lets me know that what I am teaching and how I am teachingis effective.Writing is a Complicated and Complex SkillWriting is a complicated and complex skill. We don’t master complicated and complex skills simply bylearning a compendium of rules. Early in my teaching career, after trying to get results by teaching anendless set of writing and grammar rules, I finally grasped what the modern theory on teachingwriting was saying: Because writing is both complicated and complex, how we teach writing is moreimportant than what we teach about writing.Worth mentioning, complicated is different from complex—and writing is both. When we look at awriting or grammar lesson, we usually grasp the complicated rules and the frustrating exceptions thatexist in the content. However, when our students are facing a blank page, we often don’t grasp thecomplex task of creating a whole composition.A famous maxim in the writing world (attributed to many famous writers) is this: It takes a millionwords to reach competency. Why does it take so many words? Answer: Writing is a complicated andcomplex skill.We can think of independent writing as being composed of component parts and skills: 1) ThinkingSkills and Thought Processes, 2) Writing Knowledge, 3) Application of Writing Knowledge, 4)Understanding of Writing Beyond Knowledge, 5) Judgment, 6) Habits, and 7) Content Knowledge orPersonal Experience—i.e., Writers must have something to write about.8Pattern Based Writing: Quick & Easy Essay – Guaranteed Fast and Effective! 2018

Teaching Writing Across the CurriculumPattern Based Writing: Quick & Easy EssayPart of teaching writing is teaching lessons, but part of teaching writing is helping students developthose component parts of writing skill. How do teachers know if they are developing those skills?They monitor and track their students’ INDEPENDENT writing progress across the curriculum and onwriting assessments.When teaching writing across the curriculum, teachers may want to think about what types of writingskills students are using and developing. Here is a checklist to help guide you. It isn’t a definitive list,but it’s an excellent start. It addresses three aspects of independent writing: 1) Thinking Skills, 2)Knowledge, and 3) Application.Teaching and Improving Ten Component Parts of Writing Success1. Logical Thinking, Creative Thinking, and Critical Thinking2. Writing Judgment and Decision Making3. Knowledge of Writing Strategies, Techniques, and Concepts4. Application of Writing Strategies, Techniques, and Concepts5. Knowledge and Understanding of Writing, Genre, and Audience6. Knowledge and Understanding of the Writing Process7. Application of the Writing Process8. Understanding and Effective Use Of Grammar and Sentence Structure9. The Physical Aspects of Writing (dexterity, typing skills, etc.)10. Development of HabitsThus far, I have defined and clarified what teaching writing is and isn’t. Now let’s look at teachingwriting across the curriculum.Need help teaching beginning writers orstruggling writers?Pattern Based Writing: Quick & Easy Essay9Pattern Based Writing: Quick & Easy Essay – Guaranteed Fast and Effective! 2018

Teaching Writing Across the CurriculumPattern Based Writing: Quick & Easy EssayWhat is Teaching Writing Across the Curriculum?Teaching Writing Across the Curriculum (TWAC) has two parts:1. Teaching Writing Across the Curriculum (TWAC)2. Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC)As the two boxes below illustrate, Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) is a part of Teaching WritingAcross the Curriculum (TWAC). In other words, teachers use students’ Writing Across the Curriculum(WAC) to teach students to write better. In short, teachers find ways to teach writing skills, writingknowledge, and the writing process while students learn content across the curriculum. Quite often,teachers harness the Reading-Writing Connection to teach both reading and writing.Here is what TWAC and WAC are composed of and how they relate to each other:Teaching Writing Across the Curriculum (TWAC)1. Write: Students write across the curriculum to learn how to write. Students write to improvetheir writing skills, their writing process, and their writing knowledge.2. The Reading-Writing Connection: Students read across the curriculum and learn how to writeby analyzing the texts they read. Students learn to read like a writer.3. Teach: Teachers find teaching moments across the curriculum as students read and write.Teachers also teach mini-lessons and create writing assignments across the curriculum thatteach writing.Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC)(Subset)4. Students write to learn content.5. Students write to demonstrate learning of content.Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) is NOT a subset of TWAC if the teacher’s goal is not to TeachWriting Across the Curriculum (TWAC). If students write poorly and without a care in their dailyschoolwork, all that writing will do little to improve their writing. Of course, this kind of carelesswriting across the curriculum will still improve students’ learning of the content. That said, our focushere is on Teaching Writing Across the Curriculum (TWAC) and improving our students’ writing.10Pattern Based Writing: Quick & Easy Essay – Guaranteed Fast and Effective! 2018

Teaching Writing Across the CurriculumPattern Based Writing: Quick & Easy EssayThe Teaching Writing Across the Curriculum (TWAC) MindsetTeachers need a special kind of mindset to teach writing across the curriculum. My mindset comesdown to four components:1. “Nobody but a reader ever became a writer.” – Richard Peck – 2001 Newberry Award Winner2. “You can only learn to be a better writer by actually writing.” – Doris Lessing – 2007 NobelPrize in Literature Winner3. Maximum Writing Activity for Maximum Students4. Always be Teaching Writing – Don’t focus on writing just when it’s writing time. Keep one eyeon writing when reading with students. Also, when students write in daily schoolwork acrossthe curriculum, keep one eye on subject content (correct answers) and the other eye onwriting.Why Do We Want to Teach Writing Across the Curriculum? A Fifth GradeEssay That Has No Capital Letters!When I was in fifth grade, I arrived home with a paper that didn’t have any capital letters. In shockand disgust, my mom (who was an English major in college) cried out, “What’s going on here?” Ireplied, “My teacher doesn’t care.” My mom, in turn, bellowed, “Well I do! I don’t ever want to see apaper like this again!”A few things confuse me about that story. I’ll admit, it does sound like me in fifth grade, and it doessound like many fifth grade students who I have met. But it doesn’t sound like my fifth-grade teacher.She was a strict disciplinarian and taskmaster with a military background. So it makes me wonder:What was going on with her writing instruction? Was this particular paper just an anomaly? Or didshe not care? Or did she find it difficult or impossible to hold fifth-grade students accountable forusing proper writing skills across the curriculum?Of course, teaching writing was quite different back in 1975. In fact, today’s popular models forteaching writing didn’t even exist back then. I’ve also heard it said that my generation wasn’t eventaught how to write. In short, I don’t know what was going on back in my fifth-grade classroom, butthat story does reveal a great deal about the many challenges of teaching writing that exist today.Takeaways From a Fifth Grade Student Who Didn’t Use Capital Letters:1. Monitoring Writing: Monitoring student writing is hard work for the teacher. If students writeas much as they are supposed to write across the curriculum, the teacher can’t scrutinize everysingle piece of writing. And students will produce pieces of writing that are less than perfect. Howdo we want to handle all of these pieces of paper? Teachers need systems.11Pattern Based Writing: Quick & Easy Essay – Guaranteed Fast and Effective! 2018

Teaching Writing Across the CurriculumPattern Based Writing: Quick & Easy Essay2. Setting Standards: Teachers need to set the standard for the quality of writing that isacceptable across the curriculum. No capital letters on a piece of paper is always unacceptable. Itdemonstrates gross negligence and carelessness. If the teacher does not make it clear that grossnegligence and carelessness is unacceptable, students will think it is acceptable.3. Make It Stick: Failure to set and maintain high expectations in daily writing across thecurriculum means that many of the grammar and writing skills that students learn don’t stick. The Problem: “Decades of research (Elly, 1979, Hillocks, 1986, Freedman, 1993, Freedmanand Daiute, 2001) have shown that instructional strategies such as isolated skill drills fail toimprove student writing.” The Solution: Teachers need to hold their students accountable for the writing skills theyteach them (using isolated skill drills) in their daily writing across the curriculum if theywish to make the skills stick.4. Communicate What’s Important: Students care about the things that the teachercommunicates is important. If it’s important to the teacher, it will be important to the students. Ifthe teacher has not communicated that something is important, students will think it is notimportant.5. Sometimes We Are Lazy or Careless: Students (and people in general) are sometimes lazyor careless. We don’t always try to do our best. Sometimes we only do what is required, andsometimes we try to get away with doing less than is required. To be our best, most people needsomeone to help them be their best. This need for guidance is why we have bosses, coaches, andteachers, and why we join groups and take classes. All of these people help us to be our best andstrive for greatness. In short, students need teachers to help them become the writers that theyare capable of being.6. Low-Stakes Writing is Not No-Stakes Writing: A certain amount of student writing acrossthe curriculum is low-stakes writing, and the research says that low-stakes writing is an importantcomponent of teaching writing. But even in low-stakes writing, I don’t encourage carelessness.Writing that has no capital letters is always unacceptable. Low-stakes does not mean no-stakes.A highly intelligent fifth-grade student (he says modestly) comes home from school with an essay thathas no capital letters. How can that be? Answer: If we let students write that way—many studentswill write that way. To teach writing effectively, we must think about writing across the curriculum.Let’s examine how to do that!It’s Time! Pattern Based Writing: Quick & Easy Essay!12Pattern Based Writing: Quick & Easy Essay – Guaranteed Fast and Effective! 2018

Teaching Writing Across the CurriculumPattern Based Writing: Quick & Easy EssayTWAC Section 2: Nine Strategies for TeachingWriting Across the Curriculum (TWAC)TWAC Strategy #1: Connect the Writing Skills That You Teach Your Students in Explicit Grammarand Writing Instruction to Current Learning Across the Curriculuma. Create Assignments Across the Curriculumb. Use the Reading/Writing Connection and Literary Analysis Across the CurriculumTWAC Strategy #2: Hold Your Students Accountable for Using Proper Writing Skills in DailyWriting Across the Curriculuma. TWAC Strategy #9: Rubrics, Checklists, and Assessment Sheets (RCAs)b. Evaluation and Feedback by Grading Papers and Providing Written Feedbackc. Evaluation and Feedback by Walking Aroundd. Probability and Possibility: Spot Checks, Exit Tickets, Popsicle Sticks, etc.e. Writing With-it-nessf. Illusion and MysteryTWAC Strategy #3: Assess Writing Across the Curriculum: 1) Content/Correct Answers, and 2)WritingTWAC Strategy #4: Teach New Writing Skills, Concepts, Strategies, and Techniques Across theCurriculuma. Create Assignments Across the Curriculumb. Use the Reading/Writing Connection and Literary Analysis Across the CurriculumTWAC Strategy #5: Use the Reading/Writing Connection and Literary Analysis to Teach Writinga. Pedagogy and Cognitive Theory vs. Practical Applicationb. Use Writing to Teach Readingc. Use Reading to Teach WritingTWAC Strategy #6: Use the Subject Content / Writing Connection to Teach WritingTWAC Strategy #7: Foster Student Ownership of Writing: Rethink the Red PenTWAC Strategy #8: Work to Create a Classroom Full of Writersa. Three Tools: 1) The Timed Writing System, 2) TWAC Strategy #9, and 3) At Least One OtherPersonb. Creating a Classroom Full of Writers: The Tipping Pointc. A Classroom Full of Writers: Signs and GoalsTWAC Strategy #9: Use Rubrics, Checklists, and Assessment Sheets (RCAs) to Teach WritingAcross the CurriculumPlease read the ebook—coming soon!13Pattern Based Writing: Quick & Easy Essay – Guaranteed Fast and Effective! 2018

Teaching Writing Across the CurriculumPattern Based Writing: Quick & Easy EssayNine Strategies for Teaching Writing Across theCurriculum (TWAC)Teaching writing across the curriculum is active—so teachers need techniques and strategies. Belowyou will find nine TWAC strategies. But before we look at the Nine Strategies, I want to make thingsvery simple: It all comes down to reading and writing.Reading and Writing: We have two ways to teach writing across the curriculum: 1) Reading,and 2) Writing. Everything that students learn about writing across the curriculum involves readingand writing. Teachers teach writing across the curriculum with 1) Reading, and 2) Writing. Students learn writing across the curriculum by1) Reading, and 2) Writing.Here are the specific verbs that teachers and students use: write, read, teach, analyze, evaluate,discuss, explain, compare, question, apply, assign, grade, think, fix, check, practice, memorize, review,reinforce, monitor, and make connections. TWAC truly is this simple!Now, let’s look at the Nine Strategies. You’ll notice that I placed the strategies in the form of achecklist. Ask yourself this question: How many strategies can I check off on a daily basis?Nine Strategies for Teaching Writing Across the CurriculumPresented by: Pattern Based Writing: Quick & Easy EssayTWAC Strategy #1: Connect the Writing Skills That You Teach Your Students inExplicit Grammar and Writing Instruction to Current Learning Across the CurriculumTWAC Strategy #2: Hold Your Students Accountable for Using Proper Writing Skills inDaily Writing Across the CurriculumTWAC Strategy #3: Assess Writing Across the Curriculum: 1) Content/ CorrectAnswers, and 2) WritingTWAC Strategy #4: Teach New Writing Skills, Concepts, Strategies, and TechniquesAcross the CurriculumTWAC Strategy #5: Use the Reading/Writing Connection and Literary Analysis toTeach WritingTWAC Strategy #6: Use the Subject Content / Writing Connection to Teach WritingTWAC Strategy #7: Foster Student Ownership of Writing: Rethink the Red PenTWAC Strategy #8: Work to Create a Classroom Full of WritersTWAC Strategy #9: Use Rubrics, Checklists, and Assessment Sheets (RCAs) to TeachWriting Across the Curriculum14Pattern Based Writing: Quick & Easy Essay – Guaranteed Fast and Effective! 2018

Teaching Writing Across the CurriculumPattern Based Writing: Quick & Easy EssayTWAC Strategy #1: Connect the Writing Skills That You Teach YourStudents in Explicit Grammar and Writing Instruction to CurrentLearning Across the CurriculumTeachers have two ways to apply this strategy:1. Create Assignments Across the Curriculum2. Use the Reading/Writing Connection and Literary Analysis Across the CurriculumMost teachers use some kind of curriculum to help them teach grammar and writing. Additionally,most reading curriculums also instruct students on various skills that relate to writing. In short, mostteachers and most curriculums do their best to teach students how to write. Unfortunately, a greatdeal of the instruction fails to improve student writing. Here’s why: Much of it is isolated skill drills,and “Decades of research (Elly, 1979, Hillocks, 1986, Freedman, 1993, Freedman and Daiute, 2001)have shown that instructional strategies such as isolated skill drills fail to improve student writing.”What the research fails to address is the fact that few people are truly qualified to teach grammarand

TWAC Strategy 3: Assess Writing Across the Curriculum: 1) Content/Correct Answers, and 2) Writing TWAC Strategy 4: Teach New Writing Skills, Concepts, Strategies, and Techniques Across the Curriculum a. Create Assignments Across the Curriculum b. Use the Reading/Writing Connection and Literary Analysis Across the Curriculum