Teaching kids to write: skills focus or “authentic writing”?

Sometimes this controversy arises over how to teach writing to kids:

On one side: We should always teach kids basic writing skills through authentic writing (i.e. projects such as reports, stories, narratives, letters, opinion pieces that will go through a process and end as a finished product). It is never okay to teach writing skills in isolation – that’s “drill and kill”.

On the other side: Direct instruction in grammar, sentences, and conventions and lots of worksheets and drills are the only way students will ever really understand the nuts and bolts of language and how to use it well.

Can you imagine a basketball coach thinking “I’ll just teach basketball skills during the game when there are time outs, or I’ll do some drills with the players who aren’t on the court.” Or another coach thinking, “When all of my players can do 10 perfect layups, then we’ll play another team.” Both of these points of view can be taken to an extreme.

I tend to see the whole school year as a gradual move from more skill based work to more authentic writing projects.

A school year approach

As an example, let’s say a second grade class is writing animal reports in the fall.  As the teacher, you see lots of run-on sentences.  This is getting in the way of looking at the content of the writing.  

At this point, you could stop everyone and do a lesson on run-on sentences, which would take extra time you weren’t planning on. This is what the role of mini-lessons are in Writing Workshop. It will be helpful to some kids and just put others on overwhelm, a bit like trying to do a drill in the middle of the game. I see this approach as unfair to the struggling writers in class, who are already having a hard time understanding how to do the task. Now you’ve added another level of expectation that wasn’t there before, and it can feel discouraging for them when the bar is raised without warning.

You could decide to modify the activity and bring in a lot of scaffolding such as charts and fill in the blank worksheets to structure the writing. In other words, introduce strategies to help with success in completing the report. That is fine, but I would argue that it’s not the same as teaching the skill explicitly.

You could do a day or two of editing.  Now, if most of the class doesn’t understand a run-on sentence, they won’t be able to peer edit because they won’t see those mistakes. So who will have to make the editing marks? You will.

Well, how about preventing this whole problem?

How?  I believe the science of writing will eventually recognize the power of focusing on basic skills at the beginning of the year and waiting until later in the year for big projects. 

Each grade level has skills that should be frontloaded during the first half of the year.  If you are teaching kindergarten, handwriting and basic drawing should be our time priorities before doing other writing projects.  For first grade, handwriting, sound spelling, spacing, and some writing stamina should be firmly in place before giving important assignments. For second grade, understanding complete sentences and different types of sentences should be a concept students have worked with before doing work that involves paragraphs, such as reports, longer personal narratives and opinion writing.

There are plenty of ways to do this that aren’t “drill and kill”, but are fun and engaging even though they are skill-based. It means that there is no focus on “final product” writing at first, and that writing lessons are differentiated so that students who need more time on basic skills are allowed to have that time.

For those of you using Growing Writers, this means focus on the program exclusively for the first half of the year! This is why I recommend doing the Growing Writers program 3-5 days per week starting the first week of school. It isn’t meant to go to the end of the year! (This is why there are only enough lessons to go up to spring break, if done faithfully) It is meant to create the confidence your students need to do those bigger projects, which ARE hugely important.

This way, if you encounter a problem with run-on sentences during animal reports, but it’s April, you can simply say, “Remember what we learned about pronouns and how they often start a new sentence? Check your work so far to see if you are missing any periods.” and heads will nod with understanding. You can continue with the task at hand. There will be less editing necessary. Everyone will enjoy writing time more, including you. And isn’t that what we ultimately want?