Concepts in Writing Instruction

Concepts in Writing Instruction 

 In a previous post, I had mentioned how important it was for students to identify and use different strategies that can help them during the writing process. I also mentioned that these will not only help students to better structure their ideas and their writing, but it will help them identify which strategies that work for them and which strategies that do not. These  concepts in writing instruction are: 

• Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) and is used for writing where the focus is on learning tasks specific strategies for composing.  This approach was developed by Graham, Harris, Read and Ryan (1992), and is designed to make the use of strategies habitual, flexible and automatic in writing.

• The PLAN and WRITE strategy. This strategy explicitly teaches strategies for preparing and organizing the writing task, and revising and editing.

Let us now look into each strategy in a little more depth…

1. SELF-REGULATED STRATEGY DEVELOPMENT (SRSD)

 Graham, Harris, MacArthur, & Schwartz, (1991); Harris & Graham, (1996) developed a form of cognitive approach referred to as the self-regulated strategy development (SRSD) model where students “ learn task-specific strategies for composing, such as planning and revising, and this learning is scaffold to help them master the use of the strategies” (Graham, Harris, MacArthur & Schwartz, 1991).  

Since these strategies include self-regulatory procedures such as goal setting, self-instructions, and self-monitoring, it is important that teachers model these behaviours and practices so that students learn how to use these strategies in the most effective way possible, and to their advantage.

The SRSD approach identifies quite a number of stages involved in writing instruction. These stages take place over two or more weeks, as teachers scaffold students' learning, gradually transferring responsibility for independent use of the target strategy. Harris & Graham (1996) identify the stages as:

1. Developing (or activating) students' background knowledge.
This involves developing pre-skills for individual student’s learning deficits

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2. Discussing and describing the target strategy to be learned and obtaining students' commitment for learning.

3. Teacher modeling strategy use and self-regulatory statements. (teachers should use think-alouds at this stage)

4. Mastery (memorization) of any strategy mnemonics or routines.

5. Collaborative practice, in which teachers support the students' use of strategy in large or small groups of students.  

6. Independent practice, when instructional cues are gradually faded. (independent practice)

From my readings, I also understood that the SRSD strategy is also broken down in two sub-strategies which facilitates the SRSD model.

1. TWA- (Think before reading, Think while reading, Think after reading)

As you may realize, this strategy encourages students to think during three points in their writing - before reading (about the author’s purpose, what the student wants to know and learn), during reading (about reading speed, linking knowledge, and rereading parts), and after reading (about the main idea, summarizing information, and what the student has learned). (Joe Savrock. 2007)

2. PLAN AND WRITE STRATEGY

The steps to this method are as follows; students should:

1. Pay attention to prompts

2. List Main ideas

3. Add supporting details

4. Number your ideas.

 (and)

5. Work on your plan to develop/create a thesis statement.

6. Remember you goals

7. Include transition words

8. Try to use different kinds of sentences-long, short etc

9. Exciting Words- use varied words that will bring out the piece. 

I think that this SRSD strategy can be of beneficial use to both the teachers and the students. Writing can be a difficult task for adults like myself, especially so for students who are novice writer, in the process of identifying and developing their writing skills. These strategies will be even more useful for students who find the writing process to be overwhelming and have difficulties planning, organizing and expressing their thoughts into something that will be readable and make sense to other people. I also believe that in order for students to truly benefit from the use of these strategies, teachers MUST first model the strategies in the most simple and comprehensive way to students.