As a third grade teacher, I feel a great sense of responsibility in laying the foundation for my students to enjoy writing and for them to experience success in this challenging task. The standards for writing in the fourth grade increase substantially in comparison to the third grade and I want my students to feel prepared for rigorous writing expectations that lie ahead. As a result of this desire, I have focused a lot of time and energy on the study of teaching expository writing to students in the primary grades. I have been reviewing literature surrounding this topic and I have interviewed and surveyed other elementary educators regarding their teaching practices in this area.
Through this research I have found that there is a trend in teaching expository writing. Teachers tend to either take a process based, or a product based approach to writing instruction. Product based instruction is a teacher-led method that uses model pieces of writing and specific assignments that require students to imitate a pattern or rule. Much of the writing process is carried out by the teacher in the form of class discussion and direct instruction and when the student’s written product is complete, the teacher provides written feedback. In this traditional instructional approach, teachers expect students to effectively apply the new knowledge to their writing. Writing is defined as students having knowledge about the structure of language, and writing development is defined as students successfully imitating the model text provided by the teacher. While this structure offers students guidelines on how to create a piece of writing, they do not have the opportunity to write for authentic audiences and experience the writing process.
Research done on writing instruction in the 1970s and 1980 gave way to a shift in writing instruction from a focus on product to process. Researcher teachers such as Donald Graves advocated for a process approach that emphasizes the cognitive processes and strategies used by effective writers by encouraging students to plan and revise, providing feedback during conferences, creating learning communities where students assist one another, and delivering process-oriented instruction through mini-lessons. This teaching model can produce more original student writing that is not mechanical and the use of free writing, without traditional remediation instruction, is effective because it increases students’ writing fluency. .
I have struggled to combine the strengths of both the process and product based approaches to teaching expository writing in my classroom. When using the process based approach to writing instruction, I found that I was not effective in providing my students with clear enough guidelines about the different genres of writing. There writing was unorganized and lacked the clarity it needed to have focus, yet I firmly believe in the principals of the process approach. I just needed a way to make it work for me.
This year I had the opportunity to attend the Step Up to Writing workshop on expository writing. I felt that what I learned at the workshop truly complemented the research that I had been doing and gave me the tools to implement a curriculum that emphasizes the importance of both the process and the product in our classroom. The Step Up to Writing curriculum focuses on teaching students how to write topic sentences and creating a plan, or an outline, for their writing before they begin to compose. The students receive direct instruction about how to create a plan, and how to turn that plan into an organized piece of writing. They also have the opportunity to go through the entire writing process, with a true understanding of the purpose of their writing while writing in the content areas.
I truly enjoyed implementing this curriculum in my classroom this year. I found that my students’ writings were more fluent, comprehensible, and organized than in the years past. The outline that the students created before they wrote was very helpful for multiple reasons. Primarily, it provided the students with a structure and organization that they had been lacking, but it was also very helpful for those students that were struggling with writing incomplete and run on sentences. The outline helped them to distinguish complete thoughts from incomplete and run on thoughts.
Another huge benefit that I noticed using this curriculum was that the students were very excited about writing and they were very engaged in the process. I think that primary reason for this excitement was that the curriculum teaches the students to plan their writing using three different colors of pens. They use a green pen for their main idea or topic sentence, they use a yellow pen for their subtopics, and they use a red pen for the supporting details. The students were so enthusiastic about using the colored pens that they seemed to forget that making an outline was laborious. I thought that the novelty of using the pens would quickly wear off, but it did not seem to. The students also enjoyed writing in the content areas because they were writing about topics that they knew a lot about. Their rich prior knowledge and enthusiasm about the topics they had been studying helped them to feel uninhibited about getting their ideas on paper.
I experienced great success with this curriculum, but there are some aspects of this teaching method that I do not like and I hope that I can improve upon. Although I originally believed that this curriculum would provide the students with the perfect balance between process and product, after seeing the results of using the curriculum for a year I now see that it relies more heavily on the product approach. The curriculum is very formulaic. The students are taught transition words, concluding words, and are given a very constricting way to plan their writing. Sometimes I would go through a stack of papers in which ten students had used the closing statement, “All in all” while the remaining students used the words, “As you can see.” Although the organization and readability improved, their writing was unoriginal and the student’s voice was lost. In order for them to be prepared for the fourth grade I need to foster more original sounding writing. I would like to work on helping students to use this structure, but still find their original voice in their writing.
Another way that I would like to improve my use of this curriculum is to spend time determining where I can integrate expository writing into all of the content areas. I think that this type of writing can provide an excellent way for students to demonstrate what they have learned in a unit of study or in their expository reading. I consistently find that I do not spend enough time on expository writing and I think that finding ways to integrate it into other curricular areas will help me to make writing a priority.
One of the greatest gifts of this profession is that each year you get a fresh start. With reflection and innovation you can improve your practice with each new group of students. Participating in the Redwood Writing Project Summer Institute offered me the perfect forum for reflection and inquiry about writing instruction and I feel inspired devote myself to making this curriculum my own in the coming school year.
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