A Guide to Effective Writing Instruction

In this blog post, Dr. Gary Troia explores the world of effective writing instruction, linking structured literacy practices with the art of teaching writing effectively to provide valuable insights for educators. Throughout this post, readers will gain a deep understanding of the essential elements of effective writing instruction and how to seamlessly incorporate them into the structured literacy classroom.

Table of Contents

• Understanding Structured Literacy
• The Writing Rope by Joan Sedita
• Characteristics of Effective Writing Curriculum
• References and Further Reading

Introduction to Structured Literacy

Understanding Structured Literacy and Its Role in Reading and Writing Education

In structured literacy classrooms in which principles associated with the science of reading are employed, teachers use comprehensive, systematic, and explicit instruction to address the fundamental building blocks of successful reading—phonological awareness, phonics patterns, reading fluency, vocabulary knowledge, and reading comprehension (which is addressed primarily through the development of topic and discourse knowledge). Of course, reading is only one aspect of literacy that requires teachers’ expertise and focus; writing development and instruction also benefit from a structured literacy approach. However, many teachers may be unfamiliar with teaching writing using this approach, in part because most teachers have little preparation to teach writing and because there has been a dearth of high-quality writing curricula and instructional materials available for teachers to use. 

The Writing Rope by Joan Sedita

The Essential Components of Writing Instruction

The Writing Rope by Joan Sedita (2022) offers a convenient way of remembering the critical building blocks of writing in a structured literacy classroom. These are: (1) transcription skills, namely spelling, handwriting, and keyboarding; (2) text structures, including types of writing genres and their main structural elements (e.g., narratives have a setting, a plot with a climax, and character reactions), varied discourse patterns within genres (e.g., compare-contrast versus cause-effect, flashbacks, and flashforwards, haiku versus sonnet), paragraph organization, and vocabulary used to signal linkages and transitions between ideas; (3) syntax, which includes awareness and use of appropriate grammatical structures to most effectively convey meaning; sentence elaboration and combining; and punctuation used to signal syntactic elements; (4) writing craft, namely precise and varied word choice, literary devices (e.g., allusion, symbolism, onomatopoeia), and awareness of task, audience, and purpose; and (5) critical thinking, which includes gathering information through reading source materials and/or performing their own investigations, generating and organizing ideas (i.e., planning), drafting text by hand or through digital means in manageable segments, and revising and editing a text for communicative effectiveness.

Characteristics of Effective Writing Curriculum

All these building blocks in the structured writing classroom must be thoughtfully coordinated to form a comprehensive writing program for students, which is necessary across grades and across disciplines taught in schools to help all students become competent writers. An exemplary writing program also will typically have the following characteristics (see Troia, 2013 for more information):

• Meaningful writing experiences and authentic writing tasks that promote personal and collective expression, reflection, inquiry, discovery, and social change whenever possible to motivate students.      

• A sense of community in which risks are encouraged, children and teachers are both viewed as and engage as writers, personal ownership is expected, and collaboration is a cornerstone so that students are willing to experiment with their writing. 

• Predictable routines that involve both explicit instruction (i.e., modeling with teacher think-aloud, guided collaborative practice with feedback, and independent practice opportunities with feedback) and sustained student practice; in kindergarten, at least 30 minutes daily is recommended, while beyond kindergarten at least one hour daily is recommended, with half the time allocated to explicit instruction (see Graham et al., 2012).     

• A common language for shared expectations and feedback regarding writing quality, which might include the use of traits (e.g., organization, ideas, sentence fluency, word choice, voice, conventions, and presentation).

• Procedural supports such as anchor charts, student-teacher and peer conferences, graphic organizers, checklists for revision/editing, “booster” lessons to help students attain mastery, and computer tools for removing transcription barriers when necessary.

• Integration of writing instruction with reading instruction and content-area instruction (e.g., use of touchstone or mentor texts to guide genre study used for all literacy activities, use of common themes across the curriculum, maintaining learning notebooks in math and science classes as source material for writing, teaching decoding and spelling of the same phonics patterns, teaching letter formation while introducing letter-sound correspondences).

• Intentional adjustments to emphasis on teaching the writing process, form, and meaning to meet learners’ needs.          

• Differentiated instruction for struggling learners, multilingual learners, and advanced learners.

• Resident writers and guest authors who share their expertise, struggles, and successes so that children and teachers have positive role models and develop a broader sense of writing craft.

• Opportunities for teachers to upgrade and expand their own conceptions of writing, the writing process, and how children learn to write, primarily through professional development activities but also through being active members of a writing community (e.g., the National Writing Project).

? Blog Post: Read “11 Science of Reading Resources Every Educator Should Know About” blog post here! Our literacy specialists curated a list of 11+ NEW resources for educators who wish to further their knowledge about the Science of Reading.

Empowering Writers Through Self-Regulation

To assist students with navigating all the complex aspects of writing, teachers should consider the role of self-regulation in writing, as successful writers are highly aware of themselves as writers, of factors that influence their writing performance, and of how to use diverse strategies to manage these factors effectively. Self-regulation in writing includes at least three coordinated components: (1) goal setting, (2)self-talk, and (3) self-evaluation. Incorporating self-regulation components in writing instruction has been shown to positively affect both strong and weak writers’ composing abilities (e.g., Graham, Harris, & Mason, 2005; Graham & Perin, 2007).

The Power of Goal Setting in Writing

Setting goals enhances attention, motivation, and effort and facilitates strategic behaviors (e.g., planning before drafting) through the valuation of goal attainment. In other words, if a goal is sufficiently important, a student will do all that is necessary to attain it. Research has demonstrated that goal setting improves writing skills (e.g., De La Paz, 2007; Page-Voth & Graham, 1999). For goals to have the most beneficial impact on writing behavior and performance and to encourage the student to marshal sufficient effort, they should be challenging (i.e., just beyond the student’s current level of writing skill), proximal (i.e., attainable within a short period of time), concrete, and self-selected or collaboratively established (because real or perceived control boosts achievement motivation). Goals can focus on a writing process (e.g., “I will use my graphic organizer to help me write”; “I will have my writing partner check my paper for mistakes before I put it in my portfolio”) or an aspect of the product (e.g., “I will be sure to have at least three main ideas and, for each idea, two supporting details in my informative paper”; I will include at least five action helpers, descriptive words, or transition words to improve my word choice”).

The Magic of Self-Talk for Young Writers

Self-talk (instructions, questions, affirmations, or exhortations directed to oneself) helps orient attention to relevant information, organize thoughts, plan actions, and execute behaviors. In addition, self-talk helps one cope with anxiety, frustration, self-doubt, and impulsivity, which tend to plague struggling writers and even those who are more accomplished writers. Self-talk has been widely investigated for several decades by researchers in many areas of psychology—sports, counseling, psychotherapy, and education—with promising results (e.g., Dobson, 2010; Manning & Payne, 1996). With respect to teaching young writers to use self-talk, it is most effective when (1) the content is tailored to the demands of the task and the individual’s needs; (2) it is rehearsed aloud to automaticity and then used as a form of “inner speech” to control thoughts, feelings, and actions; and (3) it is monitored for fidelity of use by the teacher. Examples of self-talk include, “Have I used my revising checklist to check my work?,” “This is hard, but I can do it if I try my best,” “I am good at coming up with ideas, so I will turn in a good paper,” and “Keep concentrating so you do not get distracted!”

Encouraging Self-Evaluation and Growth in Young Writers

Self-evaluation consists of self-monitoring and self-recording behavior and can be used to assess attention, strategy use, and task performance. Frequently, self-evaluation is accomplished through the graphic representation of a target behavior’s occurrence with a goal (thus, these two aspects of self-regulation are functionally interdependent). For instance, students might quantify their use of story structure elements in fictional narratives produced over time on a chart with the maximum score at the top (the goal). Likewise, students can track how many words they have written per time interval, with the goal of increasing their productivity by 25% over baseline. Self-evaluation has been found to positively affect behavior and academic performance (e.g., Lloyd, Bateman, Landrum, & Hallahan, 1989; Maag et al., 1993). Self-evaluation helps students establish worthwhile goals because the concrete data collected during this process provide feedback on their status relative to an external benchmark or a personal goal.

Fostering Writing Skills with Mentor Texts

Several other practices based on empirical research and informed professional practice can help teachers foster writing development (see Graham & Perin, 2007). The examination of touchstone or mentor texts for attributes that students can mimic in their own writing (e.g., a strong lead for an informative article, the use of dialogue to advance the plot in a story, applying onomatopoeia to create vivid sensory details, the use of punctuation and capitalization to mark and build cadence in a poem) helps them internalize a mental model for the written product and identify rhetorical goals. It thus gives students a focus for their planning and revising efforts. The use of mentor texts is enhanced when strong models of particular aspects of writing are contrasted with weak examples. A related instructional practice involves activities to develop genre and topic knowledge. Again, such knowledge can help students acquire internal frames of reference or performance benchmarks for planning and making meaningful revisions to their writing. In many cases, knowledge about a genre is appropriated through immersion in texts that exemplify the canonical genre traits (e.g., story structure) and discussion of (1) how the genre reflects a unique way of communicating ideas within specific contexts (its purposes and functions) and (2) how the genre is embodied in the structure of the text (its form). Explicit and systematic instruction in genre structure, coupled with authentic purposes for reading and writing in that genre, positively impacts the quality of students’ writing within a genre (e.g., Purcell-Gates, Duke, & Martineau, 2007).

Elevating Writing through Effective Peer and Teacher Conferencing

Finally, peer and teacher conferencing, whether one-on-one or in small groups, is frequently used in structured writing classrooms to engineer better student papers. However, conferencing between students and teachers often has the “flavor” of typical instructional discourse (teacher-controlled and centered on assignment requirements and teacher expectations) rather than egalitarian conversations regarding writing craft and composition content, especially when the teacher is more knowledgeable about the writing topic. Moreover, peer respondents often provide vague and unhelpful comments and suggestions to authors unless they are explicitly taught to give meaningful feedback. Thus, the positive impact of conference feedback on the quality of students’ papers is likely because many students benefit from attention to even the most global aspects of composition, such as text structure and form, and notably improve their texts with even limited revision. To maximize the effectiveness of writing conferences, a teacher should aim to do the following (see Martin & Certo, 2008):

• Establish a conversational stance to understand students’ goals and ideas before discussing specific textual issues.

• Provide frequent and varied opportunities for conferencing about pieces of writing.

• Encourage flash drafting, a technique in which smaller segments of text (e.g., the climax of a story) are drafted, examined (through conferencing), and revised to help the student feel less invested in a completed draft of the whole paper.

• Collaboratively establish concrete goals for planning, drafting, and/or revision.

• Give weaker writers more conference time that is also of high quality.

• Along with a student’s text, use checklists, questionnaires, and graphic aids as touchpoints during conferences to help link concrete tools with strategic behaviors.

Empowering Educators Through Effective Writing Instruction

In conclusion, effective writing instruction is a vital component of literacy education, and when coupled with structured literacy practices, it can genuinely empower educators and students alike. I hope this blog post has shed light on the critical elements of effective writing instruction and how they can be harnessed within structured literacy classrooms. For those eager to explore this topic further, I invite you to learn more about Bridge to Writing at heggerty.org/bridgetowriting, where you can access valuable resources and tools to enhance your teaching journey. Together, we can help students become proficient and confident writers.

References and Further Reading

De La Paz, S. (2007). Managing cognitive demands for writing: Comparing the effects of instructional components in strategy instruction. Reading and Writing Quarterly: Overcoming Learning Difficulties, 23, 249-266.

Dobson, K S. (Ed.). (2010). Handbook of cognitive-behavioral therapies (3rd ed.). Guilford Press.

Graham, S., Bollinger, A., Booth Olson, C., D’Aoust, C., MacArthur, C., McCutchen, D., & Olinghouse, 

N. (2012). Teaching elementary school students to be effective writers: A practice guide (NCEE 2012-

4058). Washington, DC: National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. Retrieved from http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/publications_reviews.aspx#pubsearch.

Graham, S., Harris, K. R., & Mason, L. (2005). Improving the writing performance, knowledge, and self-efficacy of struggling young writers: The effects of self-regulated strategy development. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 30, 207-241.

Graham, S., & Perin, D. (2007). Writing next: Effective strategies to improve writing of adolescents in middle and high schools—A report to Carnegie Corporation of New York. Washington, DC: Alliance for Excellent Education.

Lloyd, J. W., Bateman, D. F., Landrum, T. J., & Hallahan, D. P. (1989). Self-recording of attention versus productivity. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 22, 315-323.

Maag, J. W., Reid, R., & DiGangi, S. A (1993). Differential effects of self-monitoring attention, accuracy, and productivity. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 26, 329-344.

Manning, B. H., & Payne, B. D. (1996). Self-talk for teachers and students: Metacognitive strategies

for personal and classroom use. Allyn & Bacon.

Martin, N. M., & Certo, J. L. (2008, February). Truth or tale? The efficacy of teacher-student writing conferences. Paper presented at the Third Writing Research across Borders Conference, Santa Barbara, CA.

Page-Voth, V., & Graham, S. (1999). Effects of goal setting and strategy use on the writing performance and self-efficacy of students with writing and learning problems. Journal of Educational Psychology, 91, 230-240.

Purcell-Gates, V., Duke, N. K., & Martineau, J. A (2007). Learning to read and write genre-specific texts: Roles of authentic experience and explicit teaching. Reading Research Quarterly, 42, 8-45.

Sedita, J. (2022). The writing rope: A framework for explicit writing instruction in all subjects. Brookes Publishing.

Troia, G. A. (2013). Effective writing instruction in the 21st century. In B. M. Taylor & N. K. Duke (Eds.), Handbook of effective literacy instruction: Research-based practice K-8 (pp. 298-345). Guilford Press.