Essential Components of a Good Writing Program
by Donna Reish
Students everywhere - in public, private, and home schools - often suffer from poor writing skills. There are many obvious reasons for this problem; two of the primary causes are
- Teachers (in home and in school) often lack the skills themselves to write well, and, thus, are unable to teach writing;
- Teachers (in home and in school) often do not have the time that is required to teach, edit, and evaluate students’ writing.
After writing myself for ten years, teaching writing to my own children and my tutoring students for fifteen years, teaching public speaking to home schooled students for four years, and writing speech and English curriculums for four years, I have found that there are several key components that constitute a good writing program. I feel it is these components that have caused me to raise three authors already with a bright future ahead for my four other “author-wannabes.” Having a good writing program will counteract both of the major causes of poor writing skills in students:
- It will train the teacher to write and edit well as it teaches the students;
- It will do as much for the teacher as possible to allow her the time she needs to teach.
A good writing program makes a clear distinction between writing (composition) and other activities.
To many people when the terms “writing” and “composition” are mentioned, they often think of things other than real writing or composition. To many, writing simply means penmanship. To others, writing means filling in one sentence answers to questions. Still others think that “composition” is simply the final “term paper” or research paper.
A good writing program has the student do just as its name suggests - write. It does not focus on penmanship. It does not focus on answering questions. It does not have a writing project scattered here and there. It is genuine, weekly, purposeful writing. Forming proper letters and answering questions have their places, but they cannot take the place of true writing.
A good writing program is a directed writing program.
A good writing program is one that teaches writing in a direct, purposeful way. It is not a writing idea book. It is not a story starter book. It is not a fill-in-the-blank book.
A directed writing program is one that instructs the student in the type of writing he will be expected to write. It explains exactly what the various types of essays are, including, but not limited to, informative, biographical, persuasive, analogies, cause and effect, instructional, friendly letters, dialogue, first person personal, story writing, poetry, and more. It should do this through sample essays and paragraphs, descriptions of the essay type, and other means by which student can see and understand the essay type he is to write.
A directed writing approach then teaches the prewriting skills needed to complete that type of writing - key word outlining, formal outlining, mapping, chronological outlining, instructional steps outlining, brainstorming, researching, skimming and scanning source material, and more. In a directed writing approach, a student is not expected to learn about the essay type, then just begin writing. A directed writing approach teaches the student how to organize his thoughts via prewriting activities. It teaches him how to narrow his topic to fit within the assignment. It teaches him how to break down his information into a format that can be plugged into his essay in an organized, cohesive manner.
A directed writing approach also takes the guesswork out of writing by helping the student know all of the expectations right up front. The student is told how many paragraphs the assignment is (as opposed to a vague, so-many-word essay). He is told how many sentences should be in each paragraph. In some instances, he is even instructed as to what type of information should go in each paragraph. (i.e. Paragraph one should contain six to eight sentences about the item you will be comparing sin to. Paragraph two should contain six to eight sentences about how that item compares to sin. Paragraph three should contain six to eight sentences contrasting and comparing the two and summing up your contrasting/comparison essay.)
Of course, not every assignment in a directed writing approach is that direct, but it should actually teach writing - and all of the steps in the writing process. It should be such that a student does not dread his next essay because he can’t think of anything to write about or does not know where to begin. It should not be an approach in which the teacher is frustrated because she has to fill in the blanks concerning the writing process for her student. It should be a directed approach!
A good writing program keeps the student writing constantly.
Most home schoolers would never consider skipping math or spelling for weeks at a time, yet we often skip writing until something reminds us of the importance of writing skills or until something in our studies jumps out at us as writing-worthy. A good writing program keeps a student in the writing process at all times. Granted, writing cannot be divided up into “thirty problems a day” or “twenty spelling words a week” like math and spelling programs can, but students should be working on writing constantly - in researching, outlining, writing rough drafts, editing, revising, or writing final copies.
There are many ways to keep students in the writing process at all times. Some programs have the steps for a writing assignment all written out in checklist format, and you, the teacher, can assign one item or more each day. Programs that have grammar and composition intermingled will often have the writing steps scattered throughout the week. These programs often keep your student in the writing process naturally as the student goes through his school week.
A good writing program connects grammar and writing.
This point could also be made in the inverse: a good grammar program connects grammar and writing. Either way, when an English program connects grammar with composition, grammar skills and composition skills are both increased.
Some educators call this the “Teach-Practice-Apply” (TPA) method of learning. Regardless of what it is called, it is unusually effective. Here is how it works: A student is taught grammar (within his language arts curriculum or in an isolated grammar program) via whatever means that program uses. Some recommend matching these grammar lessons with a student’s learning style while others that are successful use a variety of methodology for grammar learning (mnemonics, rhymes, learning the grammar item in context, etc.). Regardless of method, the student is taught the grammar concept first.
Next, the practice part of this equation is implemented. In this step, the student practices the newly-learned grammar skill. This is often done through practice sentences in which the student “underlines the verb with a double underline” or mistake-ridden paragraphs in which the student finds the grammatical errors. The practice step of grammar learning is important, and both of those means are fine ones for practicing the skill, but the problem is that most English programs stop there. There is often no apply step.
In the apply step of a good writing/English program, the student uses his newly learned (or taught!) and practiced grammar skills in real life. Now, it is true that most math programs only contain the teach and practice steps in the “Teach-Practice-Apply” model (although many have story problems, which are a type of apply for mathematics), but the skills that a child learns in math that he really needs for life are automatically built into his life. (Just think of the times in the past week in which your child had to count, add, subtract, measure, figure, work with fractions, etc. in real life!) He does not, however, have many opportunities in life to add sentence openers, use quotation marks, make his sentences concise, choose strong verbs, etc. until he is older and forced to write, such as in scholarship applications, job resumes, letters to the editor, etc. Of course, if he hasn’t already learned these skills and applied them as a student, he will not be able to adequately do them when he is older and needs to know how to do them.
It seems that some English programs offer heavy doses of grammar, including the teach and practice steps. Some composition programs involve constant writing practice, and some even expect students to apply grammar in the form of writing checklists in which the student inserts revisions into his essay; however, the student is often not taught how to punctuate and perform these revisions according to grammar rules. Either of these problems can be solved by the savvy homeschooling mom, though! Assuming you are using a grammar program you are happy with and a composition program that you can live with (minus the lack of grammar application), you can mesh the two and finish the apply portion of the TPA model for your future authors.
To connect grammar and composition in your writing program, just take the grammar skills your student has learned in the past week or so (since his last essay revision) and list them for him in a checklist format. He will then be expected to insert these grammar items into his latest rough draft essay (as much as is appropriate). This will cause him to learn his grammar more thoroughly (since he knows he will be expected to apply it, not just practice it), and it will improve his essays (since he will add sentence openers, describers, advanced sentence structures, and more).
For a younger student, this might mean that during the week that he learned strong verbs, adjectives, and compound sentences, you make him a little checklist whereby he is expected to add one of each of these to each paragraph of his essay for the week. Thus, he has learned how to do each of these grammar concepts in grammar; now he utilizes them in his essay! Moreover, you may include other checklist items that he has previously learned in grammar, too.
For a middle school student, this might mean that during the week he learned about sentence openers (including how to punctuate phrases vs. clauses at the beginning of a sentence), semicolons, and quotation marks, his writing checklist for the week will include these grammar items, and he will be expected to add one of these to each of his paragraphs that week (as well as some of the skills he learned in grammar prior to this week or school year).
Finally, an upper level student might learn similes, subordinate clause openers, and one word adverb openers vs. adverb phrase openers in his grammar during a given week. His checklist will include adding these to his paragraphs, in addition to other grammar skills he has learned in previous weeks and months.
A good writing program teaches the student to write various types of writing at the student’s level.
Many writing programs assume that since a student is only in third grade, he can only write “fluff.” Mechanical writing issues aside (spelling difficulties and penmanship problems), a student can write as much or as detailed as he can think. There is no reason a third grade student cannot write short biographies, great analogies, and detailed (albeit, short) instructional essays. If he thinks it, he can write it!
Of course, there is more to writing than thinking, though a person who can think can become an excellent writer - it’s simply the mechanics that must be worked out for that person to excel. For a student whose thinking skills are far ahead of his manual writing skills, the teacher can take dictation for the student as he “writes” aloud for her. For the student whose thinking and writing skills are above his spelling skills (a common occurrence in students who have dyslexic tendencies or spelling handicaps), the teacher can take dictation for him or he can be taught to type on the computer early - and use spell check.
A student thinks about whatever is discussed with him, read to him, or read by him. A student’s thinking abilities (and in turn, writing abilities) are increased by learning to think and being involved in discussions with people of higher thinking abilities (older siblings and parents). When we assume that third grade students can only write little, “cutsie” stories and other writings with no meat, we are not challenging them - and not developing their full potentials in writing and thinking.
A good writing program views the editing process as important as the prewriting and writing steps.
If you are using a writing program in which the student is asked to write an essay and then be done with it, you might want to consider expanding the assignments. A good writing program puts an emphasis on revising and editing, both via a grammar checklist as well as having the student and teacher partnering to find errors.
Many parents are concerned that they are unable to find the errors in a student’s essay completely, so they do not focus much attention on the editing and revising stages of writing. Anybody just starting out learning a skill (including editing students’ writing) is not necessarily good at that skill. All new skills (and especially all worthwhile skills) take time to learn. Editing and revising are no different. If we set up a time each week to meet with our students and review their writing together, we will learn with our students how to edit and revise. The more you edit, the better you become at it.
Most programs do not have built-in editing and revising steps, so you will have to come up with your own methodology for doing this. I recommend starting out with the least teacher-invasive approach, then keep adding your input as needed. In other words, start out giving him opportunities to find his errors, then move into pointing them out for him. If you begin finding them all for him, he will become totally dependent upon you from the beginning and will not see the need to find errors himself. Use the editing and revising time as “teaching time.” These exchanges should be looked at as mini-lessons, not a waste of time. There are many ways to edit and revise, but I will give you several specific tips here that I found helpful.
- Use a grammar checklist to have the student add newly-learned grammar items to his essay.
- Have the student read his essay aloud and “listen” for content errors. There are many subject-verb agreement errors, adjective in place of adverb errors, and other types of errors that “sound” wrong when read aloud that are often overlooked when read silently.
- Make marks following each paragraph that indicate how many errors you mentally found in a paragraph, so he knows how many to look for himself.
- Make a “tally list” following each paragraph of the general types of errors and how many of each are in that paragraph. For example, ______punctuation; ______grammar; __________run-ons; ________________spelling; etc. He then knows what type of error to look for in each paragraph.
- Write numbers at the end of each line of his essay to indicate how many errors each line contains. Thus, he knows, there are no errors in this line, but there are three in this line.
- Highlight all of the errors you find, and have him figure out what needs changed for that error (spelling, subject-verb agreement, etc.).
- Exchange papers with siblings and look for each others errors.
- Sit down with your student and edit his paper through a good verbal exchange. With a pencil, dictionary, thesaurus, and other reference books close by, go through sentence by sentence and read the sentence, and ask the student if he hears or sees any mistake. If he says no, read it aloud, emphasizing the error (if it is an error that is easily “heard). Through this verbal exchange, he will often find errors he would never find on his own. (For younger students, you might want to pencil in the edit for them as you go through this process.)
A good writing program does as much for the teacher as possible to free her up to do the teaching.
Time is a much-needed commodity in the homeschool. Moms simply do not have time to design their own curriculum, teach, care for the many needs of various ages of children, manage a home, and more. A good writing program will have as many of the components mentioned here as possible so as not to overburden the teacher. Even with all of these skills built into the writing program, editing, rewriting, often taking dictation, typing up final copies, and helping students revise their essays with their grammar skills are still very time-consuming jobs. A good writing program will do as much for you as possible to allow you to focus on the things that only you can do!