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Augmenting Academic Writing Achievement for All Students

Writing Instruction to Support Literacy Success

ISBN: 978-1-78635-526-3, eISBN: 978-1-78635-525-6

Publication date: 15 November 2016

Abstract

Purpose

Writing is an act of expressive communication achieved through the medium of print. It is but one of three modes of linguistic communication. The other expressive mode is speaking, while listening and reading comprise the two receptive modes. The purpose of this chapter is to present the impact of a study in which students read and discussed expository poetry. Then they exchanged ideas relating to scientific concepts in the poems with students in a different group via pen pal letters. We analyzed these pen pal letters over four weeks to determine the influence of writing opportunities in an atmosphere rich in all four aspects of linguistic communication, involving authentic communication between students and within a community of learners.

Design/methodology/Approach

Six of Brod Bagert’s unpublished poems concerned with science concepts were read by students in Collaborative Discover Groups (CDG) in two third-grade classes. After the groups discussed the poems, a mini-lesson on one of the Six Traits of Writing followed, and the students responded individually to a teacher-generated prompt related to the specific poem. The responses were in the form of pen pal letters to students in another class who had just read the same poem, received the same teacher-directed mini-lesson, and had had a similar discussion in their respective CDG. The data gleaned from these letters provide information demonstrating the effect of emphasizing all linguistic facets synergistically in a social, communicative setting. Both the processes and the findings will be discussed.

Findings

Analysis of the pen pal letters third-grade students wrote over four weeks showed the following patterns. (1) There was an increase in the discursive nature of the writing. (2) The incidence of rhetorical questioning, using A + B = C reasoning, and evaluative thinking was present in the fifth set of letters, and not in the first. Additionally, the number of sentences per letter increased from the first to the fifth, and the number of words per letter increased from approximately 50 words per letter to 75 words per letter. It appears that the linguistically synergistic communicative processes employed in this study are reflected in the increased sophistication and communicative nature of these writings.

Practical implications

The data revealed the importance of including the sociocultural tenants in the classroom, emphasizing that reading, writing, speaking, and listening are all a part of the same phenomenon. Together they strengthen and support each other.

Keywords

Citation

Thompson, W., Coffey, D. and Pettet, T. (2016), "Augmenting Academic Writing Achievement for All Students", Writing Instruction to Support Literacy Success (Literacy Research, Practice and Evaluation, Vol. 7), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 303-330. https://doi.org/10.1108/S2048-045820160000007018

Publisher

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Emerald Group Publishing Limited

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