Developing as a Writer in COMP 1500



Developing as a Writer in COMP 1500

The Reading and Writing Project is one of the world's premier providers of professional development in the teaching of writing. Lucy Calkins's many books on teaching writing, including the now-classic The Art of Teaching Writing, are foundational to the field. Thousands and thousands of school districts have adopted Units of Study for Teaching Writing as their writing curriculum. Our professional development in writing stretches across the entire globe, involving nations as diverse as Jordan and Sweden, Singapore and India. More than 100,000 educators have attended our institutes in the teaching of writing, and hundreds of people return to these institutes every year (McKoski & Hahn. 1984).

Our work with writing begins with a commitment to structuring schools so that students have time to write—both long chunks of time to work as professional authors do, cycling through the stages of the writing process and receiving the feedback that is so essential to student growth, and also quick bursts of time for writing as a tool for learning across the curriculum. The Common Core Standards, recently adopted by forty-seven states, make it non-negotiable that students receive these opportunities to write.

During the writing workshop, students are invited to live, work and learn as writers. They learn to observe their lives and the world around them while collecting, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing well-crafted narrative and expository texts. Students receive direct instruction in the form of a minilesson and a mid-workshop teaching point (Fishman & Ferguson., 1968). The teacher explicitly names a skill that proficient writers use that is within reach for most of the class, then demonstrates the skill and provides students with a brief interval of guided practice using it. Students are also given time to write, applying the skills and strategies they've learned to their own writing projects. As students write, the teacher provides feedback that is designed to move students along trajectories of development. The feedback is given through one-to-one conferences and small group instruction, and includes instructional compliments and teaching.

Lucy Calkins and her colleagues have developed a Continuum for Assessing Narrative Writing which outlines twelve distinct levels into which grade K-8 student writing falls. Teachers punctuate their year with on-demand writing assessments, and use the continuum to help track student progress. Our assessments are continually updated as strategies are refined and when new needs arise, such as ...