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More Better Writing

Edtech tools are helping educators everywhere discover new possibilities for writing instruction. Teachers are happier. They’re reading student work that’s more thoughtful, properly revised, and well researched, and they’re able to give efficient, effective feedback to each student. The teetering stacks of papers waiting to be graded are gone. Trees are happier. And writing students at every level who are inspired by engaging prompts and able to share, collaborate, and access support and informative texts are happier too.

OVER TWO MILLION WORDS IN FOUR WEEKS

At Milton (MA) Public Schools last February, 758 fourth- and fifth-grade students engaged in a four-week collaborative story writing experience. They wrote for a total of 78,873 minutes and produced 2,245,621 words. The first annual BoomWriter Writing Bee, in collaboration with Jeff Cohen (aka “Chunk” from the Goonies), coincided with standardized testing season. “We saw a huge improvement in our students’ ability to write effectively and to type efficiently,” says curriculum coordinator Amy Gale. “It was an authentic and fun way for students to prepare for the state tests without even realizing that they were!” Teachers reported that 100 percent of participating students were “engaged” or “extremely engaged.” As a sequel to last year’s success, students are busy completing a four-chapter book with Diary of a Wimpy Kid author Jeff Kinney.

INVESTMENTS IN TEACHER TRAINING AND TECH

The key backstory here is Milton Public Schools’ larger commitment to writing instruction across grade levels and subject areas. “All of our teachers have had ample professional development in writing process and pedagogy, which helps to provide a strong knowledge base around the most effective practices,” says Gale. The district is seeing great results from its investment in technology-based tools and in training teachers to use them. Students are using Google Classroom, BoomWriter, Reach for Reading, and other tools across the curriculum. “Our goal is to provide ample opportunities for students to develop strong writing skills across genres, in response to reading and in on-demand tasks,” Gale says. Gale calls the online program BoomWriter “perhaps the most impactful technology based tool that we’ve used to support writing instruction.” Teachers in grades three through five utilize BoomWriter in math, science, ELA, and social studies, as it reinforces grade-level content, builds typing skills and stamina in revising and editing, and engages students. BoomWriter’s rubrics and grade book feature simplify the process of grading and tracking student growth, and its peer review component helps students to reflect on their work and to continually strive for quality.

TOOLS THEY USE
MILTON PUBLIC SCHOOLS

IMMERSION IN THE GENRE

Stephen Samuels’ fifth-grade ELA students at Mosaic Preparatory Academy in Manhattan (NY) benefit from a total-immersion experience in each genre—whether they’re studying, reading, or writing narrative fiction or informative writing. “This provides a structural understanding of the genre and provides mentor texts that students can use as models for their own writing,” Samuels says. With online reading resources (from myON, for example), he adds, teachers can devise complete research and writing assignments and students can access text and write on one device.

Samuels also teaches students how to dictate on Google Drive, which integrates with Lucy Calkins’ Teachers College Reading and Writing Project “Writing in the Air” (rehearsing what you want to write by saying it out loud). “This process enables students to dictate their flash drafts, which are the most difficult part of writing,” Samuels says. Once they have a draft, Samuels finds his emerging writers are more motivated and willing to make major revisions because online tools make revising so easy. Google Drive also enables Samuels to have more frequent and effective virtual conferences with every student.

MAKING WRITING GREAT

In conjunction with Black History Month, Samuels’ students read a diary of a free African- American woman who lived during post-Civil War Reconstruction, then they rewrote portions of it from the point of view of a Caucasian person during that same time period. His special ed class researched how people, mostly women and African-Americans, helped make America great. All of these tools and resources, including grade-level texts on myON, enable “savvy teachers to curate interdisciplinary projects that are accessible to all students within a classroom,” says Samuels.

TOOLS THEY USE
MOSAIC PREPARATORY ACADEMY

MAKING WRITING A PRIORITY

How can eighth-grade students at Oriole Park School (IL) deconstruct a complex text about Shakespeare? Thanks to a cross-curricular writing plan and a focus on writing instruction at this pre-K through 8 school in Chicago, all students are learning to think, and write, critically. In the primary and intermediate grades, says principal Tim Riff, teachers employ the Writer’s Workshop model. Students write in different genres, in each discipline except for math, and enjoy dedicated writing time, instruction, and conferences with teachers. With tools like Google Docs, students can work on their writing “at school, at home, and in between,” Riff says, and “while the use of fonts and pictures can seem ancillary, these aspects of writing increase engagement through individual creativity and allow students to feel ownership.” Making writing a priority is difficult work, Riff says. Teams of teachers meet monthly to examine student writing samples. “This analysis informs our progress towards our year-end goals and helps us to identify skills for remediation and enrichment,” he says.

FOR THE SAKE OF ARGUMENT

Because of departmentalization at the middle-school level, writing has to be intentionally taught and practiced in each classroom. “Think CERCA has been an invaluable tool for us to align writing instruction and bring consistency to expectations and language when teaching and talking about writing,” Riff says. “The CERCA framework (claim, evidence, reasoning, counterargument, audience) supports students to organize their thoughts and include of all the necessary elements of an argumentative piece.” One measure of success is seeing students utilizing this framework, and being mindful about including evidence, when they’re writing independently of the online platform. When they can use the elements of a claim to clearly communicate ideas, they have “real-world, practical strategies for communication.”

TOOLS THEY USE
ORIOLE ELEMENTARY

STARTING AT THE VERY BEGINNING

Once her students learned to read, says JaLynn Tuckett, special education teacher at Raft River Schools in Cassia (ID) School District 151, “I knew everything else would open up to them.” But her students, in this small rural community with many English language learners, migrant students, and lower income families, were so far behind that they hated reading. The district has a limited budget for technology, so Tuckett found Reading Horizons and began with direct instruction only. She soon discovered, however, that students weren’t even able to verbalize sentences that made sense. “So,” she says, “we started there.” Students’ reading levels began to improve as they engaged in decoding activities and memory and matching games. When Tuckett purchased high-interest/low-reading-level books, she says, “they actually started reading!” Using Epic! for Educators, students began listening to stories they couldn’t master yet and fell in love with books. Tuckett was then able to purchase the online Reading Horizons program, which boosted students’ reading levels still further, in addition to helping them with vocabulary, spelling, and grammar.

TOOLS THEY USE
RAFT RIVER SCHOOLS

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