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Running Head: EFFECTIVE WRITING PRACTICES

Effective Writing Practices: A Literature Review

Kayleen Terrell

Seattle Pacific University

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Effective Writing Practices: A Literature Review

Writing is a complex skill in which all students need to learn. It takes a long time

to master and requires a lot of effort. Many students struggle with the writing process and

writing in general. I also believe many teachers struggle to effectively teach writing. This

is an area in which I feel I could improve upon. There are many effective practices or

strategies that can be used when teaching writing to students, and these strategies can also

be particularly helpful when teaching writing to students with disabilities. I wanted to

research these best practices and see which are deemed most effective in helping

struggling writers.

Students with disabilities often produce narrative stories that are incomplete,

disorganized and contain fewer story elements or character development than the stories

written by their peers (Montague & Leavell, 1994). Furthermore, in terms of the writing

process, students with writing difficulties are also prone to not plan or think ahead about

their writing. Often they may spend less than a minute planning when revising and

approach writing as a single process. Their papers contain limited content and they have

difficulty accessing the prior knowledge they possess (Graham, 2005). Students with

disabilities can have difficulties planning or creating a story. Sometimes even with a good

idea or plan, students can have a lack of knowledge about sentence structure or syntax

which can make creating smooth, detailed text difficult (Dunn & Finley, 2010).

In general, students become writers by following a framework, which helps guide

them from a beginner writer to a skilled writer. This framework includes changes in

students’ writing knowledge, motivation for writing, strategic writing behaviors and basic

writing skills. Knowing this framework along with evidenced-based best practices will

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help educators to teach writing effectively. There are several recommendations for

teaching writing effectively. Some of these practices include increasing student

knowledge about writing, motivating students to write, helping students become strategic

writers and using technological writing tools (Graham, 2008).

When it comes to what students know about writing, students with disabilities are

more likely to place greater emphasis on the mechanics or rules of usage such as spelling

or handwriting rather than the process or substance. This becomes apparent during the

revising stage when students may focus on fixing the mechanics of their writing and how

to make their story look neater. Even if they may be familiar with story writing, students

with learning disabilities may be unable to identify the basic elements or characteristics

(Graham & Harris, 2009). This knowledge or lack of knowledge is carried forth in the

stories that students write and basic elements of story development are not present.

There are many ways to increase students’ knowledge about writing. Through the

use of reading, students can be exposed to good models that show the characteristics of

powerful writing. They can see how the author organizes ideas, uses words to create

feelings and ability to visualize, and how to use sentence structure in order to establish a

flow to the text. Books also provide examples of different forms of writing. Engaging

students in discussion about what is read is more likely to increase their understanding of

what the author is trying to achieve and how that relates to themselves as writers

(Graham, 2008). Another way to increase student knowledge is to model specific types of

writing pieces. These can be pieces of writing published by students or stories containing

the proper elements related to the genre that is being taught.

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Motivation plays an important role when working with struggling writers. In order

to foster student interest, it is important ensure their writing assignments have a

meaningful purpose. Depending on the student, he or she may be motivated in different

ways such as needing affirmation and reinforcement from the teacher, providing self-

evaluation techniques, or opportunities to listen to and appreciate the writing of other

students may motivate students to create stories of their own (Montague, 1994). All

students need to be provided with a supportive and pleasant atmosphere, as they are more

likely to feel comfortable and encouraged in their writing efforts.

Interest is key in motivating students. Student motivation towards writing stories

can increase if the topic interests them. For example, second graders enjoy books with an

element of magic as they work through identifying the differences between reality and

fantasy. They also have a great sense of humor and a need for justice; this can be

reflected in the books they choose to read (Paratore & McCormack, 2005). Therefore, it

could be concluded that students’ interest in the types of books they like to read can relate

to the types of stories they would like to write. This connects back to using reading as a

way to increase student knowledge about types of writing. If teachers use books that are

highly interesting to students as models for writing, this could be highly motivating for

students to then create their own stories containing the same story elements.

Teacher enthusiasm affects student motivation. If the teacher is excited about

writing, this is more likely to rub off on students creating excitement for them as well.

Teachers have a big part in setting attainable goals and expectations that can be highly

motivational for students. When students are provided with just enough support to carry

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out a writing task, they can also feel a sense of ownership and accomplishment (Graham,

2008).

Another recommendation to teach writing effectively includes teaching students

to become strategic writers. Students with disabilities require more intense and explicit

instruction to master writing strategies that other students gain more easily. Therefore, it

is essential when teaching a strategy to: give additional explanations about the strategy

and its parts, teach skills in order for students to use the strategy effectively, remodel how

to use the strategy, develop visuals or charts to help students remember the steps, give

feedback to support students as they use the strategy and help students self-regulate their

use of the strategy (Graham, 2005).

There are several different writing strategies a teacher could use when working

with students with disabilities. The self-regulate strategy development model (SRSD),

allows students with disabilities to be explicitly taught how to use planning or revising

strategies and how to regulate the use of those strategies. Self-regulating includes goal

setting, self-monitoring and self-instruction or reinforcement to manage the use of their

target strategies, writing task and behavior (Graham, 2005).

There are six stages to the SRSD strategy: discuss, model, memorize, support and

independent performance. In the discussion stage, teacher and student talk about current

writing performance and the target strategy including its purpose and benefits. Students

are asked to make a commitment to learn the strategy and any negative self-talk is

addressed at this stage. In the modeling stage, teachers model how to use the strategy

while using appropriate self-talk and self-instruction such as planning, strategy use, self-

evaluation, error correction and self-reinforcement statements. Teachers can model the

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strategy more than once. In the memorization stage, students work on learning the steps

of the strategies and students’ personalized self-statements that go along with their

learning goal are memorized. The supporting stage is where students use the writing

strategy under guided practice as well as the self-statements and self-regulation. Teachers

can help in a variety of ways during this stage by directing or assisting in using the

strategy, remodeling, corrective feedback or praise. The last stage is independent

performance where students then use the strategy independently and self-monitor their

progress (Graham, 2005). Using this process when any new strategy is presented can help

students with disabilities be successful in the learning and execution of that particular

writing strategy.

Teaching students to be strategic writers involves setting up a routine where

students are expected to plan, draft, revise, edit, publish and share what they write. A type

of strategy that closely follows this routine is the Ask, Reflect, Text strategy. This

strategy was used in a summer writing workshop for struggling writers offered by

Michael W. Dunn. The strategy was presented and modeled to students daily along with

examples of writing. The Ask portion consists of students asking themselves the WWW,

W=2, H =2 questions such as who is the main character or when does the story take

place? Reflecting allows students to use art as a means of planning. Students sketch or

illustrate on paper, mold clay, or use multimedia images to display their story visually as

a means of organizing story ideas, before writing the text. Students are then ready to

write the text. They could do this using writing assistance software if needed (Dunn &

Finley, 2010).

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The strategies employed at this workshop follow along closely with Steve

Graham’s recommendations for teaching students writing. Students’ knowledge about

writing was increased through books, writing examples and modeling. They were also

motivated by having some flexibility in the writing process and were taught strategies

which included planning by asking questions or creating art, reflecting and using

technology if needed to aid in writing text.

The last recommendation for teaching writing effectively as offered by Graham

(2008) that I wish address is using technological writing tools. The most common type of

tool used is word processing. This allows for students to make revisions easily, present

their writing in a professional looking format and is an easy way of producing text for

those students with fine motor difficulties. Other technological tools include speech

synthesis, where the writer’s words are transcribed to electronic text, and word prediction

programs, which predicts the writer’s next word by use of keystrokes. These programs

help students who have difficulties with spelling and the mechanics of writing.

The use of digital storytelling is another technological option for students. To

create a digital story, students compose a story traditionally with pencil and paper, and

then scenes to match the story are sketched on a storyboard. The story is divided up into

parts to match each picture. Multimedia images can be found that match the story and

kept in a folder on the computer. Students record their voice as they tell their story. The

computer images are then put together using a video-editing program and the voice is

added in. Showing these movies to the class would be the last step of this process. This

process can help struggling writers because the components of digital storytelling help

students write more strategically. This helps with the organization of sequence of events

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and promotes writer’s awareness of audience, purpose and form (Sylvester & Greenidge,

2009). Having technological tools available to students who could benefit from them is

an important part of teaching writing effectively.

In order to help students with disabilities to progress in writing, the use of these

effective recommendations are necessary. When struggling writers are taught about types

of writing and how to become strategic writers, they are given the tools to be successful.

When students are motivated to write by interest and have technological options

available, it can create a sense of ownership and accomplishment. General education

teachers need to know these effective practices as they may have students with

disabilities in their classroom as well as others who may struggle with writing and it’s

important they know how to teach writing successfully.

For this literature review, I only read the first few chapters of Steve Graham and

Karen Harris’ book, Writing Better: Effective Strategies for Teaching Students with

Learning Difficulties, which contained a lot information on what struggles students with

disabilities have in writing and how to teach different strategies. Later on in the text,

there are more specific ways to work with students for each writing genre. For further

research, I would want to read the rest of this book or reference to it to get a deeper

understanding of what specific strategies are helpful for each genre. In my research there

was also a large devotion to having students self-regulate or self-monitor. I would be very

interested to know how this works particularly with younger students with disabilities. I

would think with the support of the teacher, explicit instruction and perhaps visual cues

or graphics, younger students could do this as well. A good starting place for me is to

make sure I have established an environment where students are expected to write each

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day and be active in the writing process. By giving students the knowledge, providing

motivation and strategies for writing, I can help them be successful and grow as writers.

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References

Dunn, M.W. & Finley, S. (2010). Children’s struggles with the writing process:

Exploring storytelling, visual arts, and keyboarding to promote narrative story

writing. Multicultural Education. 18 (1), 33-42.

Graham, S. (2008). Effective writing instruction for all students. Wisconsin Rapids, WI:

Renaissance Learning.

Graham, S. & Harris, K.R. (2009). Writing better: Effective strategies for teaching

students with learning difficulties. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes Publishing

Co.

Montague, M. & Leavell, A.G. (1994). Improving the narrative writing of students with

learning disabilities. Remedial and Special Education. 15(1), 21-33.

Paratore, J.R. & McCormack, R.L. (2005). Teaching literacy in second grade. New York,

NY: The Guilford Press.

Sylvester, R. & Greenidge, W. (2009). Digital storytelling: Extending the potential for

struggling writers. The Reading Teacher. 63(4), 284-295. doi: 10.1598/RT.63.4.3

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