Job of teaching kids to write
falls to poorly prepared teachers
Video interview with Steven Graham

Special educators teaching kids to write look to Vanderbilt University professor Steven Graham and his associates for practical, researched-based advice.

Recently Graham was one of three researchers on a national study on the state of teaching writing in American high schools.

Study findings

The national study found that very little writing actually occurs in schools and even less teaching of writing.

The Vanderbuilt University research also revealed that a third of elementary teachers and 70% of high school teachers said their teacher preparation at college didn't prepare them for teaching kids to write. (My sister told me that years ago, starting me on the writing adventure that produced this website.)

Worse, half of teachers surveyed said even with what they learned through in-service professional development and their own efforts they were not prepared to teach writing.

Graham says writing is a vital 21st century skill because writing is the primary way of assessing learning at the college level and it is an entry-level skill for today's workplace. Graham also says writing is important as a way of learning new material.

Graham's tips for teaching kids to write

Graham discusses his recommendations for teaching kids in a video clip below. Many of his recommendations are idea discussed in detail on this website, such as these:

• Explicitly and directly teaching students how to plan their writing. I address this through the thesis statement, the writing skeleton™ and the outline template as well as through a variety of strategies for developing paragraphs.

• Explicitly and directly teaching students how to revise their writing. Although I make a distinction between revising and editing, I recommend strategies for explicitly teaching both revision and editing.

• Explicitly and directly teaching students how to construct paragraphs. I focus on teaching the traditional expository paragraph and using it as a point of departure for more creative types of paragraphs.

• Teach students how to set goals for what they are going to write. A thesis statement does that.

• Let kids know what you expect in their writing. You can use writing rubrics to make your expectations clear to yourself and your students.

• Double or triple writing the amount of writing required at the high school level. Learning to write takes time.

• Using peers to provide feedback on students' writing. Peers can also provide formative evaluation during the writing process.

Linda's tips for teaching kids to write

As Graham's study suggests, you and most of my other site visitors are having to learn to teach writing while teaching writing, just as I did. If I can teach writing, you can teach writing.

Let's do it!

One of my must-have resources for teaching kids to write is Writing Better by Steven Graham and Karen Harris.