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Empowering Writers A Balanced and Proven Approach to the Teaching and Learning of Writing for Students Receiving Special Education Services Supporting Theory and Research
In order to nurture students’ growth, Empowering Writers believes we must recognize that since children know more than they can articulate we must model vocabulary that empowers self-­‐
expression. Finding the Middle Ground: A Brief History of Research on the Teaching and
Learning of Writing
Over the past four decades those interested in education, and specifically the role of writing
instruction, have studied the process of learning to write and its application in the classroom.
This research has caused a shift in instruction from what has become labeled as a traditional style
of teaching writing focused on product (Parson, 1985), often including workbook based grammar
and mechanics lessons, to a student-driven curriculum focused on process (Kamehameha
Schools, 2007). Research has repeatedly shown that writing taught with a focus on process
produces higher student achievement than writing taught with a focus on product (Amiran &
Mann, 1982; Cotton, 1988; Hillocks, 1984, 1986; Holdzkom, et al. 1982; Keech & Thomas,
1987; Goldstein & Carr, 1996; Parson, 1985; Wesdorp, 1983).
Completing an entire story is often overwhelming for many students, but particularly for students
with a language disability. By focusing on one skill area within writing, the task becomes less
daunting. The Empowering Writers materials focus on lessons and practice related to one skill
area within writing at a time, effectively breaking the process down for teachers and their
students. The focus on a particular skill and repeated recognition and modeling of that skill in
conjunction with practice allows students with disabilities to gain confidence in skill application.
Walk into any school and ask a teacher or student from second grade up about the process of
writing and you are likely to hear something about the steps in the writing process – prewriting,
drafting, revising, editing, and publishing (Cotton, 1988; Faigley, 1986; Kamehameha Schools,
2007; Tompkins, 2000). This process follows the basic activities used by authors in creating a
piece of work, whether a casual letter or a dissertation (Tompkins, 2000). Recursively moving
through this cycle with intermittent feedback, however, is not all there is to learning to write.
This is clearly evident in the candid response of one fourth grade student at a school where
students move freely through the writing process. When he was asked what writing was all
about, he responded, “it is all about putting a lot of words on your paper, all your thoughts and
ideas and never worrying about spelling or stuff. Then someday the teacher will call you to their
table and tell you how to change what you did to make it good. You do that and she puts it up on
the bulletin board with a sticker. Then you can start all over again.”
The 1996 National Center for Education Statistics report on process writing states that, “The
focus of process-oriented writing instruction is to stimulate students to think about their writing
and reflect on their ideas” (Goldstein & Carr, 1996). Teachers and researchers alike have become
aware that students must develop a cohesive set of authentic skills used by writers to stimulate
them to think about their writing and reflect on their ideas. This should include techniques such
as learning to visualize, plan, and think critically about what is included in their writing in
addition to learning to move recursively through the process of writing (Kamehameha Schools,
2007). This realization is certainly not a return to the traditional style of teaching focused heavily
on mechanics, grammar, and spelling. It is, rather, the seeking out of the middle ground – a
balance of cohesively organized skills, strategies, and techniques with understanding and
practice of the writing process. Research has repeatedly shown that students need both
organized, focused instruction on the skills, techniques, and strategies used by authors in crafting
a piece of writing and a chance to openly express their own thoughts and ideas (Dudley-Marling,
1996; Dudley-Marling & Dippo, 1991; Duffy & Roehler, 1991; Freppon & Headings, 1996).
Still, in many classrooms writing is often taught at the ends of the spectrum, either with a narrow
focus on skills practice with no real application, typical of the traditional approach (Applebee,
1981; Holbrook, 1984), or entirely open and student driven, with students independently working
through the writing process with very little feedback or cohesive skills instruction. These
methods leave students and teachers either bored by writing with the first approach or constantly
involved in guesswork as to what writing is all about in the second.
Scripted writing curricula, following the traditional method, have been found to have limited
benefit and applicability in authentic writing. This is because skills taught in a workbook style
are for the most part not applied by students when they move to independent writing. The use of
these methodologies often causes students to dislike writing and feel constricted in their written
work.
Writing workshops, following the second approach, have brought both praise and criticism.
Praise for the authenticity of process and the freedom of expression. Criticism for the intensive
level of classroom management required (Kates, 1977), the level of difficulty of effective
implementation, the questionable content of students' freely selected work (Lensmire, 1994), the
often slow growth and development of students' writing skills, the inconsistency of informal
assessment, and the lack of consistency and assured writing instruction across classrooms and
grade levels.
The questions then are, what occurs within the process, beyond the bare mechanics? What are
the specific techniques, strategies, and skills that authors utilize within the framework of the
writing process? How can these elements be effectively taught in the classroom setting? Feeling
the need to find answers to these questions within their own classrooms and school, author and
teacher Barbara Mariconda and her co-teacher Dea Auray worked to break the craft of writing
down in a way that makes authors' thinking strategies and skills organized, logical, and
transparent, formulating a balanced approach to the teaching and learning of writing called
Empowering Writers. By pairing a well-structured curriculum of applicable writing skills and
strategies that build over time with opportunities to work in the real-world format of process
writing, teachers using Empowering Writers balance skill instruction with creative expression
and writing process to effectively enhance their students' writing abilities. The materials are
teacher and student friendly and present a balanced approach to writing instruction that has solid
support in research and theory on writing development, language attainment, and learning.
In one of the most comprehensive studies on methodologies of teaching writing, Hillocks (1984,
1986) boiled down twenty years of research on the teaching of writing and identified three
distinct “instructional modes,” which he termed the presentational mode, the natural process
mode, and the environmental mode. Briefly, the presentational mode consists of lecture and
teacher-led discussion of objective focused writing concepts to be learned, followed by the study
of models illustrating the concepts, specific student assignments for practicing these patterns and
rules, and finally teacher feedback. This mode of teaching writing is equated with the
“traditional” style writing instruction earlier. Though it was found by Hillocks to be the least
effective form of writing instruction, it is the most commonly used in the classroom (Cotton,
1988, Hillocks 1984, 1986). The natural process mode consists of free writing on student
selected topics with only very general guiding objectives for an audience of peers who provide
feedback, followed by opportunities for student revision. This mode can be equated with
teaching methodologies such as writers workshop. The natural process mode was found to be
fifty percent more effective than the presentational mode. Finally, the environmental mode is
characterized by clear and specific teaching and learning objectives aligned with activities and
topics selected to engage students in the specific processes important to the particular aspect of
writing (Hillocks 1986, p 122). The Empowering Writers curriculum and methods of instruction
and learning fall within the environmental mode. This mode was found to be more than four
times as effective as the presentational mode and three times as effective as the natural process
mode. Because it emphasizes the importance of clear objectives, calls for guided and
independent practice of skills and concepts, and requires giving students practice tasks that
match and illustrate the concept taught, the environmental mode is consistent with other research
on effective instruction and aligns with growing standards of instruction in leading states
(Cotton, 1988).
Teachers and administrators who have consistently implemented the use of Empowering Writers
in their classrooms and schools attest to the significant growth in their students' writing abilities.
Standardized test results reveal gains in the percentages of students passing assessments at
schools using Empowering Writers, in some cases as much as 45 percentage points over five
years. Passing rates on one assessment reached 98.5% after only three years of implementation.
Not only did passing rates increase, but the percentage of students receiving the highest marks
also significantly increased. Meanwhile, average exemplary scores for other schools in the
testing area dropped (Empowering Writers, 2004). Data such as these highlight the success of
Empowering Writers methods in helping high achieving students write more proficiently, while
also increasing the ability of students who struggle with writing.
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Empowering Students receiving Special Education Services
Many students with learning disabilities find writing a daunting task that evokes anxiety, stress
and sometimes even tears. The idea of writing a story or piece of writing can be so
overwhelming to some students that they begin to shut down and may even refuse to write.
Difficulties accessing language and forming ideas into cohesive, language-rich sentences can be
extremely challenging for students with special needs.
Steve Graham, a Professor of Literacy at Vanderbilt University and senior editor of What Works
for Special Needs Learners, suggests that teachers be very organized in their instruction. "Be
systematic and explicit. Give a model. Talk about it, show it, and do it."
The Empowering Writers curriculum supports consistent, assured writing experiences, built upon
one another in a logical, sequential fashion. Graham and Dolores Perin, researcher and Professor
of Psychology and Education at Teacher's College, Columbia University, endorse multiple
writing interventions to help struggling students. Teaching effective writing strategies,
summarization, writing for content learning, specific product goals, sentence combining,
and inquiry activities are some of the writing interventions that Graham and Perin support that
are embedded in Empowering Writers methodology, strategies and lesson plans.
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Teaching Effective Writing Strategies through Empowering Writers
Methodology: Recognition, Modeling, Practice
Successful writing programs, such as Empowering Writers, provide appropriate instructional
strategies that address concrete writing needs and the teacher student interaction necessary to
meet them (Amiran & Mann, 1982). The Empowering Writers methodology is based on a
powerful teaching sequence introducing students to the particular writing strategy or skill
through the use of age-appropriate texts, modeling the application of that same skill through
teacher-led collaborative writing where the teacher thinks out loud as an author and calls for
student input, followed by focused guided practice of the skill (Fountas & Pinnell, 1996). *
These focused segments of writing are frequently revised, edited, and published by students.
After learning to functionally apply a number of strategies and skills in this manner, the class or
a small group then takes a full piece of writing through the writing process from prewriting to
publishing. This allows the teacher to focus feedback and assessment of full process pieces on
the application of the skills, strategies and structures that have been taught.
Empowering Writers encourages the introduction and teaching of specific writing skills
following an organized curricular path, scaffolding students' learning, while ensuring that all
students develop comprehensive writing ability. This type of direct instruction on writing skills
and strategies is important for all students, especially those who are struggling as writers
(Dudley-Marling, 1996; Freppon & Headings, 1996).
*View Appendix 1 for sample lessons on detailed generating questions
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Teaching Summarization Techniques by Using a Reading and Prewriting
Framework
At Empowering Writers, we believe that every reading experience should also be a prewriting
experience. Teaching students how to use our summarizing frameworks every time they read to
summarize what's been read, emphasizes the organizational strategy that shapes writing.
Summarizing also helps students identify genre and author's purpose. Graham and Perin state,
"Summarization involves explicitly and systematically teaching students how to summarize
texts." * Students also improve their reading comprehension skills when they have a focus for
reading. Empowering Writers gives teachers the tools and lesson plans to instruct students how
to summarize text into simple, yet organized frameworks. In Writing to Read: A Meta-Analysis
of the impact of Writing and Writing Instruction of Reading, by Steve Graham and Michael
Hebert, evidence supports that writing about material read and teaching students how to write
improves their reading comprehension, reading fluency, and word reading." Empowering Writers
explicitly teaches the underlying structure and framework on which good writing is built, and
into which creativity is poured.
*View Appendix 2 for sample lessons on summarizing texts and structure of texts
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The Effectiveness of Writing as a Means to Improve Reading
Writing is a powerful tool for reflecting on, clarifying, reviewing, reiterating, and assimilating
information and experience. Writing about content material helps students comprehend and learn
it. * Graham and Perin recommend teachers use writing as a tool for learning content matter. The
very act of writing is one that requires the author to sort, organize, and sequence information in
logical ways. * While science topics can be interesting vehicles for writing activities, the process
of writing itself can enhance comprehension, understanding, and the grasp of the scientific
concepts, content, and processes. Students' educational success depends on their abilities to read
and critically analyze information presented in textbooks and other classroom materials (Berman,
2009; Klein, 1999). Empowering Writers endorses writing across content areas to:
• supply students with opportunities to reflect on what they know
• encourage students to wonder about what they still need to know
provide a framework to organize, categorize, and make meaning of information
• apply science vocabulary in a meaningful context
help students assimilate and clarify what they know by articulating their knowledge to
others
• reveal where gaps in understanding might be
• increase strategic reading skills and reinforce writing skills
•
•
*View Appendix 3 for sample lessons on writing across content areas and sorting information
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Empowering Writers Focuses on Specific Product Goals Through Building of
Writers’ Skills, Strategies, and Techniques
Specific product goals involve assigning students specific, reachable goals for the writing they
are to complete (Graham & Perin, 2007). The Empowering Writers curriculum supports students
in the attainment strategies and skills that include all facets of writing ranging from wide in
scope, such as formulation of an idea or topic and selection of the structure, form, and audience
of an entire piece, to narrow focus on elements such as sentence structure and punctuation. * For
example, Empowering Writers provides teachers with specific inquiry activity lessons like
missing the main idea, and pick/list/choose. In addition, other strategies like combining sentences
and flip the sentence help students recognize redundant sentences.
The Empowering Writers sequence of instruction is based on creating the elemental sections that
are the essential building blocks of a particular genre of writing. For example, when teaching
narrative writing, instruction flows from study of overall narrative structure through each of the
building blocks – beginnings, elaboration, suspense, main events, and endings. Each of the
building blocks is the focus of the instructional methodology sequence for multiple cycles as
students begin to master the strategies related to the craft. Great attention is given to building
student understanding and use of clear text structures that align with the particular genre –in
narrative writing this form is a diamond shape representing the typical flow and emphasis on
main event of a narrative story; in expository and persuasive writing this form is a pillar with
main expository ideas or supporting persuasive arguments as the shaft. As students learn how to
effectively structure their writing they are able to produce more cohesive and well thought-out
written works. As Amiran and Mann write in their report Written Composition, "writing is
essentially an act of structuring experience" (1982, p.46). Empowering Writers gives students the
support and structure to be able to effectively and fluently move their thoughts and experiences
into written form.
*View Appendix 4 for sample lessons on developing main idea, elaboration, and using sentence
starters
References on Writing Development and Instruction for Students Receiving
Special Education Services
Berman, I. (2009, February 25). Supporting adolescent literacy achievement. Issue Brief, 1-15.
Graham, S. and Hebert, M. (2011). Writing to Read: A Meta-Analysis of the Impact of Writing
and Writing Instruction on Reading. Harvard Educational Review, v81 n4 p710-744.
Graham, S., & Perin, D. (2007). Writing next: Effective strategies to improve writing of
adolescents in middle and high schools (Carnegie Corporation Report). Washington, DC:
Alliance for Excellent Education.
Graham, S. & Perin, D. (2007). A meta-analysis of writing instruction for adolescent
students. Journal of Educational Psychology, 99 (3), 445-476.
Klein, P. (1999). Reopening inquiry into cognitive processes in writing-to-learn. Educational
Psychology Review, 11 (3), 203-270.