In her book, Connecting Whole-School Literacy: Building Capacity from Leadership to Classroom Practice, author Hayley Harrison draws on 20 years of classroom experience to promote an understanding that literacy is every educator’s responsibility. The book is a practical guide for teachers and school leaders that presents research on how students learn to read and write, and how teachers can effectively support struggling readers and writers. In this exclusive extract for Teacher readers, Harrison explores the writing demands of students in a secondary school context, how teachers should consider their complexity, and why it is important to set high expectations for student writing.
There is a reason students’ knowledge and understanding of content is most commonly assessed through writing in almost every subject area. It comes from the fact that writing is an effective tool for enhancing students’ learning of content.
Gentry and Graham (2010) emphasise how students’ comprehension in any subject “improves when they write about what they read”. Lehr, Osborn and Hiebert (2005) extend this concept by emphasising how “reading and writing are composing processes” that enable readers to organise and clarify their thinking. Given that “writing provides insight about literacy tools”, students gain a deeper understanding of authorial choices when they write, which in turn supports more effective reading comprehension as a byproduct.
Many practical subjects initially assume that writing isn’t the emphasis or priority in their course, but upon deeper reflection, students are required to engage in different forms of writing, for different audiences and purposes, throughout any given subject.
Sedita (2023) classifies these types of content writing into three categories:
- Quick Writes: Low-stake, unrevised, ungraded, free writing
- Content Learning Tasks: Focused learning, formative assessment-based writing
- Formal Writing Tasks: Extended, revised, formally evaluated and graded writing.
Yet, the writing demands upon a student extend beyond these classifications even further. Articulating thoughts, opinions and understanding can occur in numerous text types and forms, and for different purposes and audiences. Table 4.0 includes a list of potential writing forms a student might be required to engage in across different subjects, contexts and situations. It is interesting to note the priority, value and support these different forms receive, and the opportunities students have to read authentic exemplar models as well as experiment, consolidate and refine their capacity to replicate them purposefully.
| essays | extended responses | reflective journals and learning logs | research projects |
| creative stories, comic strips | poetry, lyrics | scripts and dialogue | articles, opinion pieces, blogs |
| short answer responses | worksheets and handouts | graphic organisers | speeches, debates |
| instructions, recipes and procedural texts | reports, factsheets or pamphlets | brainstorming and planning documents | letters, emails, resumes, applications |
| posters, infographics | summaries, class notes | reviews, critiques | debates, advertisements |
Table 4.0: Potential writing forms
Once teachers have identified the writing demands being placed upon their students, they then need to consider the writing complexity to determine how best to support students in the writing task.
Similar to reading demands, the complexity of a text will depend on different potential factors that can be categorised as either fixed or variable.
Fixed factors are those the teacher (or context) has decided are the expectations of the writing. These include:
| Variable factors are those the student brings with them that can impact the way they engage with and ultimately create the text. These include:
|
When determining the potential support for writing a given text, the teacher needs to consider the impact of both fixed and variable complexity factors. Depending on the elements with the highest impact, the most effective strategy for support will generally be different for each task. For example, an extended, multi-step research report is likely to require support from the research and planning stage all the way through to editing checklists and multiple stages of feedback. A short comprehension paragraph may only require an explanation of the expected length and content to include, and maybe peer reading to confirm the accuracy of the response.
Rather than see the list in Table 4.0 as an overwhelming array of structures and features to navigate, schools should notice the opportunities they have to prioritise, transfer, consolidate and extend student writing across the day. Imagine the impact on student writing if every teacher in a school expected students to write in full sentences (using a capital letter and a full stop) in all their responses, in every class across the day; or if teachers sent student emails back for revision before actioning if they were not properly structured, expressed or punctuated*.
If high expectations can be set alongside explicit instruction and support, then all students require is the time and consistent practice to consolidate and ultimately extend their writing skills more holistically.
*I do this every year – initially, I set up the expectations and features of an email and explain how written communication is more formal than speech. Then, if I get an email that includes no subject line or just attaches a document without anything else in the email, I reply with: ‘This email does not conform to the expected structures and features of the text type. Any requests will only be actioned after a revised response is sent. Thank you in advance for your commitment to learning social etiquette.’ Interestingly, I’ve had many students thank me for teaching them how to construct an email properly!
Questions to Connect
What writing demands do you place on your students beyond the assessable tasks, and how complex are these demands?
Which writing tasks do you scaffold and explicitly teach, and which do you assume students should be able to construct independently?
What type of writing contexts do your students generally find the most difficult? How do you currently support these tasks?
References
Gentry, J. R., & Graham, S. (2010). Creating Better Readers and Writers: The Importance of Direct, Systematic Spelling and Handwriting Instruction in Improving Academic Performance. Columbus, OH: Saperstein Associates.
Lehr, F., Osborn, J., & Hiebert, E. H. (2005). A Focus on Comprehension (Research-Based Practices in Early Reading Series). Regional Educational Laboratory: Pacific Resources for Education and Learning.
Sedita, J. (2023). The Writing Rope: A Framework for Explicit Writing Instruction in All Subjects. Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co.
Connecting Whole-School Literacy: Building Capacity from Leadership to Classroom Practice by Hayley Harrison is available from all major book retailers and Amba Press, the publisher.
