Teaching Basic Writing Skills Hochman Pdf 32
Dallas Whitmoyer
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.
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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.
Our elementary and middle school students learn writing through a research-based approach called the Hochman Method. It focuses on the idea that effective writing can be taught by breaking down the writing process into discrete, manageable components, such as sentence structure, outlining, paragraph development, and compositions.
This method also emphasizes summarizing and revising. Students are better equipped to produce well-structured, well-organized writing that effectively communicates their ideas by focusing on fundamental skills.
We introduce the Hochman Method to our third- and fourth-grade students in Little School. Trained in this writing approach, homeroom teachers and our Lower School librarian, Cindy Cohrs-Brandt, help students with sentence structure. They learn how to identify the different parts of a sentence, combine sentences, and use other sentence structures for various purposes. They also learn about grammar rules, such as subject-verb agreement and pronoun usage. As students move through Little School, they advance from sentences to paragraphs. Teachers provide constant practice by embedding writing activities throughout subjects, an approach found to boost learning.
When students reach Morrow House, they are well-versed in the basics of sentence structure and single paragraphs and begin writing multi-paragraph compositions. They practice organizing their thoughts into paragraphs, using transitions to connect their ideas, and writing clear and concise topic sentences.
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In 2017, Judith Hochman and Natalie Wexler published The Writing Revolution (TWR): a book outlining a new way of thinking about and teaching writing. A key feature that sets TWR apart from other approaches is its suggestion that school students should only focus on sentence-level writing until this is mastered (i.e., the purposes and structures of written genres should only be added after a lot of work on sentences).
Metis Associates were interested in TWR writing assessment outcomes, outcomes from external standardised writing assessments, and student attendance data. They compared the writing outcomes of students at partner schools with the outcomes of children at other schools. Teacher attitudes were also captured in end-of-year surveys.
Teachers at partner schools reportedly found the TWR training useful for their teaching and got the most value from the online TWR resource library. School leaders liked being able to reach out to the TWR team for support if necessary. Some teachers wanted more independence from the strict sequence and focus of TWR activities. Most though found the approach had helped them to teach writing more effectively.
When only looking at partner school outcomes, the picture looks positive. The report shows percentages of students performing at Beginning, Developing, Proficient, Skilled, and Exceptional levels at the beginning and end of the year. At each partner school, percentages are all heading in the right direction with many more proficient and skilled writers at the end of the evaluation.
It also suggests that careful attention should be paid to the specific TWR strategies that dominate classroom instruction if students are to get the most out of it. If you are using the TWR approach, my advice would be not to spend a disproportionate amount of time on basic sentence work from the middle primary years, since well-supported approaches like SRSD and genre pedagogy have shown students can (and should?) be writing simple texts that serve different purposes from a young age.
Speaking of research, you may be interested to know that there is now an ongoing research project into the impact of TWR in the U.S., designed and carried out by a highly respected third-party organization called Mathematica. So stay tuned for the results, in time.
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.