What the Research Really Says About Teaching Writing

With so much debate and noise in the world of writing instruction, it’s hard to know what actually works. So when I had the chance to hear from the world’s most respected writing researcher, I jumped at it.

Last weekend I flew to Sydney to hear the most prolific writing researcher in the world, Steve Graham, speak at the Multilit conference. When I saw that Steve and his wife, Karen Harris (another prolific researcher), were running a pre-conference workshop in addition to their keynotes, I immediately cleared my calendar and signed up. 

I did not want to miss an opportunity to hear directly from the leading authorities on effective writing instruction. 

Steve and Karen KNOW the research inside out, not because they’ve read it, but because they’re the ones who do it! What they don’t know about writing research isn’t worth knowing.  

Their sessions didn't disappoint. In addition to providing some terrific evidence-based recommendations they managed to drop one BIG evidence-based (or, should I say ‘NON-evidence based’) bombshell… 

But let’s start with the recommendations… 

Steve Graham’s recommendations for writing 

In his keynote, Steve shared evidence-based recommendations for teaching writing across primary and secondary settings. These recommendations were drawn from 7 meta-analyses that he and his colleagues had conducted (including true experiments, single-case design studies and an analysis of exceptional literacy teachers in qualitative studies).  

In summary, if you wanted to create a really great writing program -one that results in students writing well AND enjoying writing- you would need to include the following elements: 

1. Time to write  
2. Support for students as they write 
3. Explicit instruction 
4. A classroom environment in which students thrive as writers and learners.  

1. Time to write

Steve was quick to clarify that although teachers should dedicate more time to writing lessons, providing time itself is not enough to improve the quality of students' writing. He emphasised that time for writing must be accompanied by the other three factors- support, teaching and a positive classroom environment.  

My thoughts: This factor is one that Australian teachers need to keep in mind as writing lessons are being increasingly trimmed back to make way for extended reading lessons and/or grammar lessons (particularly in PowerPoint-heavy approaches to teaching).  

2. Support for students as they write

Here, Steve talked about the importance of providing feedback to students during the writing process. He said this feedback can come from teachers and/or peers- both had positive effects in the research.  

He described feedback as being one of the oldest tools in the writing classroom, yet one that doesn’t have a lot of nuance in what we know about it in the research. One thing he did point out, though, is that it’s not necessarily a case of more equals better when it comes to delivering feedback to students. Sometimes, too much feedback can be problematic and even lead to a reluctance to write.  You must be sensitive when providing constructive feedback; keep in mind that “you’re not trying to change the world with every single paper.” 

In terms of peer feedback, this needs to be structured and explicit. Students need to be taught how to provide constructive feedback to one another, and they should be provided with specific criteria to guide them in doing so.  

Another form of ‘support’ comes in the form of the teacher providing clear goals for what they’re expecting students to achieve. In addition to having these clear goals, you must ensure you communicate them directly to your students.  

My thoughts: This is all about being crystal clear on your learning intentions and success criteria. You need to know -with total clarity- what it is you’re trying to teach your students about writing in every single lesson. This needs to be achievable (within the time frame and the capacity of your students), relevant to your students’ needs and clearly communicated throughout the lesson. You should return to this ‘teacher goal’ (learning intention and success criteria) at the end of the lesson to guide students to evaluate their progress: ‘Were you successful today?’ 

3. Explicit teaching

“If you were to say, ‘On the teaching end, where do you get your largest chunk of writing quality?’ It’s in teaching students strategies for planning, revising and editing.” 

Teaching students strategies for each stage of the writing process can include teaching them how to use graphic organisers to organise their thinking, showing them revision techniques, teaching self-regulation behaviours such as self-talk, self-monitoring and self-reinforcement.  

You should also teach students about the structures of different genres, use model (mentor) texts, analyse these texts together, look at their features and then teach students to emulate them. “Model texts are probably the second oldest trick in the book besides feedback”. 

Another key aspect of effective explicit teaching is observation. Students need to observe others as they write and also observe others as they follow your writing (e.g., if you write out a set of instructions, watch someone else try to follow them).  

My thoughts: Absolutely not surprised to hear that explicit teacher modelling, including thinking-aloud and using quality mentor texts, is still well supported in the research. That’s why all these elements are included in my Advanced Writing Traits course and in all the work I do with schools. Also pleased to hear Steve reinstate the importance of teaching students specific strategies in ALL stages of the writing process, especially revision! Ensuring that students spend time learning and applying strategies at all stages of the writing process is a missing component in reductionist approaches to writing instruction being implemented in schools at the moment. This is a concern, as the research consistently mentions it as a critical part of effective writing instruction. 

4. Classroom environment

In terms of setting up a pleasant classroom writing environment, Steve outlined seven key elements:   

1. Teachers should participate as members of the community by writing and sharing their writing 
2. Give students writing choices 
3. Praise students’ efforts and accomplishments 
4. Write for real purposes 
5. Publish students’ writing, and extend the community beyond the classroom 
6. Set realistic but challenging goals for students 
7. Adapted writing assignments and instruction so that they were appropriate to students’ interests and needs. 

Steve commented that individually, these elements may not make a big difference, but together, they contribute to an overall positive result.  

My thoughts: I did a few fist pumps upon seeing this slide. It was so refreshing to hear Steve talk about students as if they’re all real human beings capable of unique and complex thoughts, each with their own interests, motivations and challenges when it comes to writing. Steve’s discussion around this point reminded me that we can too easily get caught up in the nitty-gritty parts of writing instruction (the grammar points, the next best researched strategy etc) while forgetting the critical importance of creating a calm, positive, and supportive classroom writing environment. 

And now the bombshell… 

At the pre-conference workshop, Steve talked about introducing the skill of sentence combining (a very popular strategy with good research on its effectiveness). He suggested that once you EXPLICITLY TEACH students strategies for combining sentences by using the conjunctions ‘and’ or ‘but’ etc, you then need to give them the opportunity to APPLY this learning, including applying it to an existing piece of their own writing. 

As soon as he said this, I approached him for clarification: “I couldn’t help but notice the way you just positioned sentence combining as a skill to be taught in the revising stage of the writing process, rather than as a decontextualised grammar skill. Is this how you (and the research) suggest such skills should be taught? Should students have a larger piece of writing to return to in order to apply these sentence-level strategies? I ask this because a strong push for a ‘sentence-level first’ approach is currently circulating in our system. What does the research have to say about such an approach?” 

Here is what Steve Graham, the world’s most prolific writing researcher, had to say in response to my question:  

“There is not any evidence that would support approaching writing in that way.” 

BOOM! 

He then went on to say that he would prefer students be taught and supported to apply any sentence-level work as a part of the revising stage of the writing process. (i.e once they’ve had a go at writing an extended text in a genre, and you’re guiding them through how to strengthen their text).  

“Kids are capable, starting at a very young age -even if it’s a picture with some letters on it- they’re capable of producing texts.” 

Doubling down on his view about sentence-level work, he went on to produce this enormous statement in his keynote presentation at the conference: 

“So I understand that The Writing Revolution has gotten a good bit of press in your country. That they often cite me as being support for what they do.  

They're right in a way, as … teaching sentence construction skills makes a difference for kids. However, what they don't have evidence to suggest is that starting with a small piece of writing and moving up -like a sentence, moving up to a paragraph, then moving up to a larger text- makes any difference whatsoever. That's not been tested systematically. 

What we do know is that when you bring various aspects of writing, when you have multi-component writing instructional programs, that's where we get our effects. So, on the one hand, they could be right, they just don't have evidence to support that.” 

WOW!  

In this evidence-insisting era of education, how has this approach -and others that have based their programs on it- come to be promoted as ‘evidence-based’ and ‘best practice’!?  

How have we been sold yet another story?  

I’ll leave it there for this report from the conference. In the meantime, I’ll go back to my work in supporting schools to implement all the elements of writing instruction that DO have research to support them… building teacher content knowledge, explicit teaching, feedback, use of mentor texts, working in all stages of the writing process and creating positive writing environments. 😊 

What’s one element from Graham’s list that you could strengthen in your current writing program?

Related Blog Posts 

• 3 Reasons to Teach Writing Through Genre
• Admiring Your Students' Writing- The What, Why and How
• The Problem With Mentor Texts