Teaching Writing in Kindergarten

I just read another good blog post from Tim Shanahan, this one about how to teach writing in kindergarten…. on the same day that our new Keys to Early Writing book is going to the printer! So, I thought I’d devote this entry to kindergarten writing instruction. You might be asking this question: Do young children in kindergarten even have the skills to be able to write? Part of the answer is how you define writing. When you substitute the word composing, it’s easy to see that the answer is yes! Kindergarteners definitely have the ability to compose, even if they can’t yet read or write letters.
Joan Sedita | April 2, 2018 | 3 Comments
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Explicit Instruction of Note Taking Skills

Note taking, and two-column note taking in particular, is integrated into several Keys to Literacy professional development programs. It is used in The Key Comprehension Routine as a strategy for improving reading comprehension. It is used in Keys to Content Writing as a strategy and scaffold for gathering information from sources before writing. It is also used in The Key Vocabulary Routine as a template that can be used to deeply teach academic vocabulary terms. This post provides some suggestions for teaching note taking.
Joan Sedita | January 16, 2018 | 6 Comments
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Patterns of Organization

Expository text typically incorporates five common patterns of organization, and transition words and phrases often signal the use of these patterns in text. These patterns are sometimes referred to as text structures. They are more commonly found in informational and opinion types of writing, but may also be used in narratives.
Joan Sedita | November 20, 2017 | 3 Comments
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The Writing Revolution

I’ve long been a fan of Judith Hochman’s work related to teaching basic writing skills to older students who struggle with writing. In 2012, the Atlantic published a riveting article titled “The Writing Revolution” that chronicled the experience of a New York City high school as they sought to understand why so many of their students could not write. They determined that Judith’s sentence instruction practices were a big part of the solution. Now Judith has written a book with Natalie Wexler (with a forward by Doug Lemov) titled “The Writing Revolution: A Guide to Advancing Thinking Through Writing in all Subjects and Grades.”
Joan Sedita | July 17, 2017 | 6 Comments
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Literacy in Every Classroom

The focus of the February 2017 issue of Educational Leadership is “Literacy in Every Classroom”. The journal has several excellent articles aligned to our work at Keys to Literacy. Only members of ASCD can access the full edition, but there are a few articles that are available free to the public. I have listed them below and added notes connecting the instructional practices suggested by the authors with our Keys to Literacy teacher training routines.
Joan Sedita | March 20, 2017 | 1 Comment
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Teaching Basic Argument Writing Components

Over the past two years since Keys to Literacy published my Keys to Argument Writing professional development module and the associated training book Keys to Content Writing I am often asked by teachers advice for how to teach argument writing (and opinion for elementary grades). The place to start is to introduce students to the structure of argument/opinion writing.
Joan Sedita | March 6, 2017 | 12 Comments
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Teaching Secondary Students to Write Effectively

The last decade has seen a renewed focus on improving the content writing skills of middle and high school students. A new Educator’s Practice Guide was just published in November, 2016 by the IES (Institute of Education Sciences) titled Teaching Secondary Students to Write Effectively. This report presents writing instruction recommendations aligned with several earlier research reports including Writing Next (2007) and Writing to Read (2010). The authors of the report (Steve Graham and colleagues) organized their recommendations into three sections. Similar to reading instruction where the focus after grade 4 shifts from learning to read to reading to learn, the focus for writing instruction also shifts from learning to write to writing to learn. As students move through grades 6 to 12, the need grows to learn to write specifically for different content areas (i.e., disciplinary writing). This opening paragraph from the introduction of the new report sums up the important role of writing.
Joan Sedita | February 7, 2017 | 1 Comment
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Universal Design for Learning

Universal Design for Learning (UDL), often associated with using technology to improve accessibility for all learners, applies that principle to the classroom. However, the instructional design choices available can often include low-tech solutions. Small-group instruction and graphic organizers provide flexible options in addition to the tech-savvy internet hyperlinks and text to speech translators. UDL has much more to do with how a teacher thinks about his or her students’ learning than it does with using iPads, YouTube, or Google Docs to create a final product.
0030319 | December 20, 2016 | 0 Comments
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The Language and Literacy Connection

I have recently been developing modified versions of Keys to Literacy’s professional development for instructional practices of comprehension, vocabulary, and writing skills to focus on how these practices can be used to meet the needs of English Language Learners and students with a reading disability. This work has reminded me that language skills are tightly connected to learning literacy skills, and that weak English language skills are often the reason why many students struggle with reading and writing...
Joan Sedita | August 23, 2016 | 0 Comments
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Building Community

It’s summer and I am cleaning out my office; organizing files, restocking the paper clips and staples, filling the recycling bin. Nostalgically looking through a folder of handouts for a writers’ workshop I conducted many years ago, I laser focused on the words of one page in particular. It outlined the grading criteria for my writing classes – how to evaluate the product and, always more importantly for me, how to evaluate the process of writing....
Becky DeSmith | August 9, 2016 | 0 Comments
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Scaffolds to Support Summarizing

Summarizing is one of the most effective activities for improving both comprehension and writing skills (National Reading Panel, 2000; Graham & Perin, 2007). Summarizing enhances comprehension as students select, condense, and synthesize in their own words the big ideas of what they have learned. Summarizing also lets teachers monitor student comprehension. It’s not surprising that the Common Core has devoted one of the ten reading standards to summarizing....
Joan Sedita | March 29, 2016 | 11 Comments
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Teaching Grammar: What Works and What Doesn’t

I have been recently working with my Keys to Literacy colleagues to develop our new Keys to Early Writing professional development program -- we will pilot it next month. An important piece of comprehension and writing instruction for young children, (and also for older struggling writers) is teaching sentence structure. What’s the best way to teach sentences? A recent article by Lauren Gartland and Laura Smolkin in The Reading Teacher titled The Histories and Mysteries of Grammar Instruction presents some interesting history about grammar instruction and some suggestions for effective teaching, but first let’s address why students need explicit sentence instruction...
Joan Sedita | February 23, 2016 | 1 Comment
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“The Write Stuff”

The February issue of Educational Leadership Magazine, “Helping ELLs Excel”, was of great interest to me as a Keys to Literacy teacher trainer. Much of the work I do is with teachers who are from urban districts where the ELL population is quickly becoming the majority of the students they teach.

I was particularly interested in the article “The Write Stuff” by Carol Booth Olson, Robin Scarcella and Tina Matuchniak. This article reported the grim statistics of the 2011 NAEP scores in which only 1% of ELL students scored at proficient or above in writing....
Donna Mastrovito | February 16, 2016 | 0 Comments
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Three Ideas to Motivate Kids to Write

In recent writing follow-ups for Keys to Content Writing, I have noticed a positive trend of teachers "stepping outside of the box" when it comes to writing instruction. The goal? To make writing more meaningful for their students.

What are three simple things you can do to make writing assignments in your class more meaningful? ......
Lisa Klein | February 2, 2016 | 0 Comments
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The Advantage of Taking Notes by Hand

Research shows that taking notes by hand is more effective for remembering conceptual information over the long term than taking notes on a computer or laptop.

I recently read two pieces about research conducted by Mueller and Oppenheimer demonstrating that students who write out their notes on paper learn more than students who type notes on laptops. The first was in Scientific American and the second was in KQED Public Radio News.

Because students can type significantly faster than they can write, those who use laptops in the classroom tend to take more notes than those who write them out. At first, this may seem like an advantage....
Joan Sedita | December 1, 2015 | 1 Comment
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Task, Audience, and Purpose When Writing

Lately I have been pinning a large button on the lapel of my jacket when I deliver professional development for writing instruction that says: AUDIENCE, TASK, PURPOSE. I wear the button as a reminder to participants that they should teach their students to always be mindful of the audience, task, and purpose when they write because these elements influence a number of important decisions that a writer must make, including (McKensie & Tompkins, 1984)...
Joan Sedita | November 17, 2015 | 0 Comments
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Literacy Instruction Resources

Part of the Keys to Literacy mission is to make research-based, practical instructional material available to educators. To address this goal, we provide a wide range of free resources that can be accessed from the Keys to Literacy website. We recently updated much of this material, so I decided to focus this blog entry on identifying these resources and providing links to them. ..
Joan Sedita | November 10, 2015 | 0 Comments
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Writing Disabilities

The Reading Rockets website has long been a resource I recommend to educators and parents for any topic related to literacy instruction. For this blog post, I’m featuring several Reading Rockets resources related to writing disabilities.

Writing Disabilities: An Overview by Charles MacArthur offers an excellent summary of why some kids struggle with writing (especially those with learning disabilities), and how some instructional practices can help. MacArthur was part of the panel that wrote “Teaching Elementary School Students to Be Effective Writers”, an Educator’s Practice Guide published by Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education....
Joan Sedita | September 22, 2015 | 0 Comments
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Young Voices find an Audience

As a foundational piece of our Keys to Content Writing training, we examine the 10 Common Core State Standards for writing. Standard 4 specifically addresses the importance of task, audience and purpose.

W#4: Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.....

Lisa Klein | September 8, 2015 | 0 Comments
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Things Organized Neatly

Main idea skills, including categorizing, feature prominently in most of the Keys to Literacy professional development programs. It is a foundational skill that is essential for comprehension and writing.

It is often the case that a visual (picture, chart, etc.) is the best way to teach a skill or concept to students. I have found a fun and whimsical website as a source for pictures that can help students learn the concept of categorizing and main ideas: Things Organized Neatly....
Joan Sedita | August 11, 2015 | 0 Comments
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Teaching Text Structures

This blog post is devoted to encouraging teachers of all grades and subject areas to teach students about text structure. It is an excellent way to improve writing and reading comprehension.

Text structure is the arrangement of ideas and the relationships among the ideas; readers and writers who are familiar with text structure recognize how the information is unfolding. Common Core Reading Standard #5 focuses on teaching text structure.

As students advance to middle and high school grades, the text that they have to read and write become increasingly varied in style, vocabulary, text structure, purpose, and intended audience....
Joan Sedita | July 21, 2015 | 1 Comment
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Motivate Writers with Authentic Audiences

As societal shifts have increased the demand for writing skills, and the Common Core Standards have returned writing back to its equal place as an important partner to reading, increasing the amount of writing our students are doing has become a renewed focus in our schools. And it should be. College and career readiness favors those that can write well.

But as the Common Core raises the level of expectation across grade levels and content areas, we need to be careful that students don’t become compliant workers in an essay factory with rubric ready teachers supervising the assembly line....
Shauna Cotte | May 26, 2015 | 1 Comment
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Teaching Revision – Where do I begin?

In order to address this question, let’s start with some of my beliefs about writing:

  • Writing is struggle
  • Writing is a craft that can be learned
  • And real writing happens in revision

These beliefs mean that as teachers we must explicitly teach the revision moves that our students so desperately need, but we also need to understand that we serve our students more effectively when we model the authentic struggle of writing....
Shauna Cotte | April 28, 2015 | 1 Comment
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Mentor Text Lessons to Improve Student Writing

The seminal report Writing Next (Graham & Perin, 2007) is based on a meta-analysis of research related to best instructional practices for improving student writing. One of the eleven elements identified in the report as most effective is Study of Models (i.e., provide students with opportunities to read, analyze, and emulate models of good writing). Showing models is also one of the six instructional practices that make up the teaching routine for Keys to Content Writing (Keys to Literacy’s writing professional development program). But many teachers are not sure about where to find good mentor writing samples, or what would be a good focus for analyzing a mentor text....
Joan Sedita | March 17, 2015 | 2 Comments
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Too Many College Freshman Need Remedial Courses

A few months ago I read an article quoting Bob Wise, president of Alliance for Excellent Education, about the very large number of college freshman who need remedial work, and how this often delays graduation and increases costs of higher education.

The article summarized findings from a study by the U.S. Department of Education based on 2012 statistics. Here are some troubling findings:

  • One in four college freshman nationwide takes at least one noncredit remedial class
  • Costly reading and writing remedial courses delay college graduation and increase by half the likelihood that students will not complete studies
  • The nationwide costs of remedial courses was $3.6 in tuition alone in 2007-08
  • Freshman at the 14 state-owned universities took 4,584 remedial courses in the 2012-13 school year that cost about $1000 a course....
Joan Sedita | February 17, 2015 | 1 Comment
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ACCESSING KEYS TO LITERACY PD DURING SCHOOL CLOSURES

We are closely monitoring the COVID-19 situation and the impact on our employees and the schools where we provide professional development.

During this time period when onsite, face-to-face training and coaching is not possible, we offer multiple options for accessing our literacy PD content and instructional practices.

If you are a current or new partner, explore our website or contact us to learn more about:

info@keystoliteracy.com
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