Home: Expository writing | Shape Learning, Reshape Teaching Using Informal Writing

Suppose I offered you a tool that:

Enables students to master difficult concepts,
Provides students with immediate feedback,
Identifies student misunderstandings,
Trains students to write in timed test situations,
Exponentially increases students' writing practice opportunities.

Would you be interested?

Suppose I told you this tool also:

Reduces paper grading,
Improves class discussion,
Gives you an alternative to giving grades for participation,
Shows you how to become a better teacher,
Works in high-tech, low-tech, and no-tech situations.

Sounds like something you need in your English and communications classes, doesn't it?

The tool that does it all is informal writing.

Informal writing is writing done in immediate response to a writing prompt, without any research, consultation, or lengthy reflection. Its purpose is not to achieve some life-changing objective (a job with a six-figure salary, for example) but to express thoughts on more modest, even mundane, topics.

In the classroom, teachers typically don't correct or grade students' informal writing. Teachers usually treat responses to informal prompts as first drafts to get the neurons firing.

"This guide takes a very different approach from the usual writing improvement books. It accurately focuses on the questions and problems that teachers of writing frequently encounter. It also focuses on the most essential writing mechanics that students don't easily master through the traditional exercises. It is a clear and straightforward writing guide which I would highly recommend to any English teacher."

Tom Guadagno, MS Education
http://tomsdailyenglishhelp.blogspot.com/

Informal writing's my favorite teaching tool

Hello, I'm Linda Aragoni.

Shape Learning, Reshape Teaching draws on my experience teaching writing to college students over four decades.

With a typical load of five composition classes plus other teaching and advising responsibilities, I couldn't have students do as much writing as they needed to develop the ability to put out a decent, 500-word first draft in an hour, which is the standard they had to meet in college and business.

My solution was to have students write informally, usually for two or three minutes, on class topics they needed to master. Each informal prompt addressed at least one essential class concept and provided practice in writing in a deadline situation.

As I saw how informal writing could be used to shape learning, I began including one specific editing requirement in the prompts as well, such as "check your work for sentence fragments." Thus a single two minute writing prompt could address three objectives in my curriculum at once.

I had been using informal writing in my classes for years before I discovered that colleagues in math and science were also using it for instruction and formative assessment. If you do a web search, you'll find books on using informal writing to teach subjects like physics and physical education. However, I wasn't able to find any book about how to use informal prompts to teach English, communications, or other language arts courses.

I thought that gap needed to be plugged.

Since no one else volunteered, I wrote a book explaining how to use informal writing to teach English, communications, and other language arts courses. That book is Shape Learning, Reshape Teaching.

"Linda's informal writing prompts are sure to help all your students become better writers. You need to read this book."

Livia N. McCoy, M.Ed.
Director of Professional Growth,
The New Community School, Richmond VA
author, When Learning is Painful

Formative assessment is for teachers, too

When teachers give a quiz, they usually use the results as indicators of what students have learned. If students haven't learned, teachers typically repeat their instruction again.

If the reason students don't get the right quiz answers is that they didn't understand the original presentation, repeating the material the same way is like speaking English more loudly to someone who understands only Portuguese.

Unlike a quiz, that reveals little about why students can't answer a question, informal writing can provide clues to the location of learning road blocks. Instead of repeating failed instruction, teachers can present the problem material differently.

In effect, informal writing becomes a professional development tool for teachers: it tells them where and how to reshape their teaching to meet students' needs.

"This brief book helps teachers fine tune their assessment through informal writing. The book provides many examples of what works, what doesn't work, and how to improve the quality of assessment."

Deborah A. Brady, Ph.D.
Assistant Superintendent for Teaching and Learning
North Middlesex Regional School District
Pepperell, MA

Overview of the book content

Roughly half of Shape Learning, Reshape Teaching consists of material that teachers in all disciplines at all academic levels need to know. That content is presented in the form of answers to 24 frequently asked questions and an outline of the procedures that teachers should follow for smooth integration of informal writing into their curriculum.

The other half of the book's content illustrates how informal writing can be used to tackle topics English and communications teachers generally have most difficulty teaching students to apply: writing mechanics.

If you can write good informal prompts on writing mechanics topics, you can write good informal prompts on any other topic within your curriculum.

For the table of contents for Shape Learning, Reshape Teaching, see the book excerpt below. If your computer does not support frames, you can view the table of contents here.

Five write-to-learn activities comprising two or more informal prompts show how to use writing to facilitate student mastery of a concept such as verb tenses and grammatical functions of words. View chapter.

A dozen other informal prompts exemplify formative assessments on topics such as misplaced modifiers and sentence syntax. The dozen includes trios of prompts on collective nouns and possessive apostrophes.

By comparing prompts on a single topic, you can see problems you may encounter in developing your own informal writing prompts. View formative assessment chapter.

Real examples, not publisher-created ones

The sample writing prompts in Shape Learning, Reshape Teaching are written for teenage and adult students. They employ examples from real world sources, such as newspapers and social media sites, instead of publisher-created examples. These illustrations serve both pedagogical and psychological functions.

Unlike publisher-created materials sanitized to remove all but a single error, the writing by ordinary people may contain one or more errors that mask the presence of another error. Uncovering a single error in a piece of authentic writing can require significantly higher level thinking than demanded by publisher-created materials.

Students taught using single-error materials may be unable to repair sentences containing two errors, both of which they can repair separately. Real world examples help students learn to expect and cope with writing that contains more than one error per sentence.

Such examples have an important psychological effect. First, they imply that the students are capable of working on an adult level. Teens hate being treated like little kids. They want to be recognized as emerging adults.

Secondly, real examples show students that writing is difficult for everyone. Making an error doesn't mean that the writer is dumb or learning disabled. Bright people who are good writers make dumb mistakes when they are tired or when they are concentrating on an idea rather than on grammar or usage.

Finally, real examples help students understand that a deficiency in one skill can be offset by strength in another. Joshua may be weak at sentence combining, but his precisely worded short sentence, even with a grammar error, may be much easier to understand than Caitlin's long one without any errors.

Informal writing works with Common Core

The informal writing procedures described in Shape Learning, Reshape Teaching fit well within the framework of Common Core standards.

Common Core standards focus on knowledge and skills all high school graduates are expected to have. Shape Learning, Reshape Teaching shows how informal writing should be used to focus on essential knowledge and skills.

In addition, informal writing itself entails using skills required by Common Core standards, such as listening, coming to a discussion prepared to participate, writing using standard English conventions, and using relevant evidence and logical reasoning to support an opinion.

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