Teaching Basic Writing Skills Hochman Pdf 32
Toccara Delacerda
I tried consulting the research, but, at the time, academic researchers were paying far more attention to reading than writing. So I began to experiment. I was fortunate to be at the Windward School, an independent school in New York for students with learning and language disabilities in first grade through high school. The Windward staff members and I were able to try varying approaches to writing instruction.
Seeing such dramatic gains, we decided to share what we were learning with teachers who, like myself, had no proper training in writing instruction. To that end, we founded the Windward Teacher Training Institute.
Although good writing should be clear and direct, it often involves more complex sentence structures and a more varied and precise vocabulary than spoken language. When we speak, we rarely begin sentences with words such as despite or although, but they can be extremely useful in written language. And connecting our thoughts with phrases like as a result or for example, although unnecessary in most conversational speech, can be vital in creating a fluid piece of writing.
Certainly, we want children to enjoy writing and use it as a means of self-expression. But many students produce writing so incoherent that readers are unable to respond. We need to equip children with the tools that will give them confidence as writers and enable them to express themselves in a way that others can understand. And far from feeling that practicing the mechanics of writing is drudgery, students often gain a sense of pride and mastery from learning to craft well-constructed sentences and logically sequenced paragraphs.
Once students have acquired basic sentence-level skills, TWR also provides structured support for lengthier writing. But crafting an effective sentence is a useful and important exercise, no matter the skill level of the student, and teachers should continue to assign sentence-level activities even after students have moved on to writing paragraphs and compositions.
For example, one TWR sentence-level strategy uses the conjunctions because, but, and so to encourage extended responses. The teacher gives students a sentence stem and an independent clause ending with one of the conjunctions, and asks them to finish it in three different ways, using each of the three conjunctions.
Judith C. Hochman is a former superintendent and a former head of the Windward School in White Plains, New York. She is the founder of The Writing Revolution, a nonprofit organization dedicated to teaching students how to think and write clearly. Natalie Wexler is an education journalist and blogger in Washington, D.C. This article is excerpted with permission from their book, The Writing Revolution: A Guide to Advancing Thinking through Writing in All Subjects and Grades. Copyright 2017 Jossey-Bass/Wiley.
The AFT is a union of professionals that champions fairness; democracy; economic opportunity; and high-quality public education, healthcare and public services for our students, their families and our communities. We are committed to advancing these principles through community engagement, organizing, collective bargaining and political activism, and especially through the work our members do.
Whevnever I read How To blogs for the teaching of writing, I am always concerned that we are over-compartmentalizing the writing process. Yes, students need to write sentences and paragraphs but not at the expense of critical thinking and writing. Of course this is what makes literacy such a complex process. Students learn a variety of skills over time and will learn to write if we do not replace creativity with remote writing.
I completely agree. While it is important to be grammatically correct and to have the structure of sentences and paragraphs, I have watched students shut down wonderful ideas because the teacher was more concerned about the grammar than the ideas that were being put down. Get the ideas down. In science, let them cite evidence and come up with ideas based on that. There will be time to revise and edit. The most important thing is that you get the ideas going and then you can go back and make it grammatically correct.
Handwriting
Therapist used a combination of programs which support children with written output and/or written expression difficulties using multi-sensory techniques to enhance learning.
Handwriting Without Tears a proven successful program in making legible and fluent handwriting an easy and automatic skill for all students. Handwriting Without Tears uses fun, entertaining, and educationally sound instructional methods to teach handwriting to all students from pre-k through cursive.
The Handwriting Without Tears curriculum draws from years of innovation and research to provide developmentally appropriate, multisensory tools and strategies for your classroom. The program follows research that demonstrates children learn more effectively by actively doing, with materials that address all styles of learning.
Multi-Sensory Typing
The Diana King Method for Teaching Touch-Typing
This method replied on teaching an alphabetic sequence with simultaneous oral spelling. (S.O.S.) The whole alphabet can be mastered in forty minutes, but must be followed by daily periods of practice to develop speed and accuracy.
Read-Type-To-Learn
Program teaches the children to hear the individual sounds in words and associate each sound with a letter and a finger stroke on the keyboard. This multi-sensory and motor approach helps children with different learning practice keystrokes and phonemic awareness simultaneously. For more information, please visit www.talkingfingers.com.
Study Skills
Direct, systematic instruction in organization of school subject material and studying techniques based on the students individual needs. Organizational skills are automatic and easy for some people; however, this is usually not the case with those who have learning differences or those with ADHD. The goal of the Shelton System for Organization and Study Skills is to foster independence, self-control, and success in each individual.
As a student begins to produce sentences, it is important that he learns how to vary his sentence length, structure, and type. Sentence length refers to the notion that strong writing includes both short and long sentences. Sentence structure is the way the sentence is grammatically arranged (e.g., where the subject and verb occur in the sentence). Sentence type is how a student conveys ideas in his writing, including how a student combines ideas in his sentences, or whether he uses various types of punctuation to convey meaning (such as writing questions, statements, and exclamatory statements). These interventions can be used for a beginning writer who needs support in forming complete sentences, or with a more advanced writer who is learning how to make his writing interesting. This page includes intervention strategies that you can use to support your students in this area. As you read, consider which of these interventions best aligns with your student's strengths and needs in the whole-learner domains.
Activity A: Sentence vs. Fragment
This intervention supports struggling writers who use incomplete sentences (i.e., fragments) in spoken language and in writing. Students requiring this level of intervention may communicate only partial thoughts.
Sentence activities have two primary purposes. The first goal is to enable students to write compound and complex sentences rather than only simple, active, declarative forms. This will enhance reading comprehension (Maria, 1990). The second goal is to improve revision and editing skills, which benefit critical thinking skills. Students' awareness of grammar and the functions of the parts of speech are enhanced by emphasizing sentence structure and sentence activities (Scott, 2002).
In order to write longer compositions, struggling writers need to start here, at the sentence level. It should be noted that this strategy, as well as the one that follows, can be implemented both orally and in writing with equal success. Students often use fragments (incomplete sentences) in spoken language, and they do the same when they write. The teacher must explain that far more precision is necessary in writing than in speaking. Students should be able to identify fragments in a selection that is read aloud before attempting to correct them in their own work. When teachers write fragments, they should not be capitalized or punctuated.
Activity B: Sentence vs. Run-On
An additional extension of this activity is to have the student differentiate complete sentences from run-on sentences. This intervention supports struggling writers who use run-on sentences (i.e., complete sentences that are joined within appropriate punctuation) in spoken language and in writing. Just like in Sentence vs. Fragment, in order to write longer compositions, struggling writers need to start here, at the sentence level. Students should be able to identify run-ons in a selection that is read aloud before attempting to correct them in their own work.
Activity C: Scrambled Sentences
This intervention supports struggling writers who have difficulty constructing a basic sentence. This type of struggling writer may mix up the order of his words or use improper punctuation. Scrambled Sentences provides students with all the parts of a complete sentence and asks them to build the sentence correctly. This strategy can also be used for beginning writers who are just learning the rules of sentence construction. Hochman explains that rearranging sequences of words into sentences and adding the correct punctuation and capitalization reinforces the concept of a sentence. Younger students may need to be given the first word of the sentence with the first letter capitalized.