Curiosities from writing practitioners: What works best from whole school to classroom?

I am first and foremost a teacher practitioner.

This means that my observation of what works best is linked to learning in the classroom and the measurement of student data against what we are implementing.

This has formed the basis of the Writing Connect Discussion group founded with Dr Nathaniel Swain & Think Forward Educators (TFE) – a space to impart the findings in a practical sense.
Reading some impressive blogs from fellow teachers demonstrates the varied approaches to whole school practice around writing. There is no one way. However, such learnings highlight that there are a few common overarching philosophies that could guide writing instruction in any school context.

This blog will focus on four aspects that came through in nearly 70 sign-up questions from participants for the next TFE Writing Connect. We will address these in more depth in our free May 26 session – however I will provide a brief overview of things educators are most curious about in their school contexts.

1.     The formation of a whole school approach according to the Science of Writing:

• Consistency

• Teacher buy-in

• Writing scope and sequence

• First steps (What to do and what not to do?)

• What does change look like? (Is it an overhaul of current practice or bit by bit?)

• Writing programs – The Writing Revolution (TWR)

We should start by breaking open the term ‘The Science of Writing’. Actually, the science is lacking, as referenced by AERO, (Australian Education Research Organisation). A quick google will demonstrate that there is not much out there.

What we do know is that the continuum of Writing has two distinct streams that thread together –

v  Transcriptive
(the act of putting words on paper requiring fluency in skills)

VERSUS

v  Generative
(the generating of ideas that translate into language requiring higher cognitive capacity)

Knowing the science behind this as a practitioner, is more linked to watching what has NOT worked in my classroom and this previous blog post explains this in detail.
Enter sentence level work.
While this is widely agreed on, one of the most useful texts to base a whole school approach on is The Writing Revolution (TWR). The good news is, the techniques—once you trial them—demonstrate short term gains even before investing in the course. This book has been instrumental in providing a greater depth of understanding about writing, which can inform the direction of a whole school approach.

2.     Aligning key terms:

• Moderation

• Differentiation

• Genre teaching

• Best practice

There were several questions from signed up participants that start with a ‘how’ and contain one of these words. My definitions of these terms in classroom practice have somewhat shifted so I will provide a brief overview of some thinking here and we can discuss further in our live session.

Moderation – Historically this practice is one that schools use to set up writing assessment using a rubric, but I advocate against this as I outlined in a Teacher Magazine article over a year ago. Moderation is useful to provide teacher clarity about a standard but it does not align with an accurate assessment of student writing (Dylan Wiliam - Embedded Formative Assessment 2018). The best process I have explored is the use of Comparative Judgement, which has made a recent emergence on the Australian education landscape and you can read about it here.

Differentiation – One of my favourite summary tweets on this belongs to Reid Smith,

‘I advocate differentiation by support rather than curriculum.’

Mary Myatt  in ‘Death by Differentiation’ states it is most effective when we prepare for the top, then offer the support to get there, rather than a ceiling view where we have already decided, going into a lesson, what students are capable of.
TWR actually provides a useful scaffold for writers at differing abilities (see p. 224). Their premise is in line with Reid and Mary: Be responsive to student mastery and provide intervention where necessary, without removing the opportunity for all to be engaged with the content and activities.

Genre teaching – Knowing about genres doesn’t equate to being able to churn them out purposefully. In my experience, leaving students to wade through this without the breakdown of skills, analysis and background knowledge of quality text types, interconnected with the hierarchical set of writing skills necessary, is cognitive overload (Just like that sentence!).
Nathaniel Swain and I wrote about genres previously here.
In the global No More Marking Comparative Judgement projects, it’s worth noting that students receive one of two options to write about in a writing stimulus – they either write a fiction or non-fiction. This is actually a really sensible way to think about a cold write because it links writing to the content and context, instead of trying to configure it to a framework that ties up student cognitive load.

Best practice – What does this mean in writing instruction?

Emina McLean in her work with AERO has collaborated on two very useful documents which compile all the evidence for best practice writing. A practical example framework of what has worked best to shift results, from both Emina’s school (Docklands PS) and mine (Templestowe Heights PS) is available here.

In summary findings from AERO include:

• Allocating more time to writing

• Consistent assessment

• Responsive feedback

• Writing about content and across all curriculum areas

• Explicit instruction in:

o   Handwriting

o   Spelling

o   Grammar

o   Punctuation

o   Complex sentences (addition of detail and use of conjunctions)

o   Knowledge of tiered vocabulary

o   Expectations across different academic disciplines eg. science

o   Sentence level work

Lastly from our participant questions –

3.     Assessment and tracking:

• Data to establish point of need

• Various forms of data

• Results

• Feedback

Writing assessment and data is the thing that defines my practitioner journey because I was not satisfied with the status quo. The evidence of student progress is actually what we are all looking for – the results tell the story and the Templestowe Heights (THPS) narrative can be found here.

Using Comparative Judgement as a standardised writing assessment has allowed us to interpret scaled scores into writing ages, therefore measuring and tracking students and cohorts. I have written about this here.
Some of the other assessment techniques we have trialed in our context include multiple choice questions which provide both summative and formative data and highlight misconceptions both for teacher and students. These are simple, useful as short assessment loops, and are easily created in the form of – ‘Choose the correctly formed sentence’ with 4 closely scaffolded choices.
Providing whole class feedback and designing lessons that address point of need are in direct response to more efficient and reliable methods of measuring students than moderation with a rubric.

I am so grateful for the opportunity TFE has provided for educators to connect in the writing space. Nathaniel and I are looking forward to seeing you this Thursday evening and discussing further, the curiosities you have raised.

If you are not yet signed up, we invite you to our Writing Connect discussion – Thursday May 26 @ 7:45pm.