Instruction That Helps Students Meet State Standards in Writing

Abstract

Two key components of recent educational reform are (a) new attention to writing as an important academic skill, and (b) the establishment of national and state standards for student achievement. State standards for writing vary considerably in their form and specificity. Many are not listed separately but are included within integrated language arts benchmarks. Most state standards make reference to the writing process and address several aspects of writing, although most focus on conventions. The most frequently required genres are personal narrative, letter, report, persuasive or opinion essay, and imaginative narrative. Recent reviews of the research literature on writing instruction for students with learning problems have suggested that pupil achievement in writing is linked to explicit strategy instruction. In this article, I present a day-by-day plan for teaching the writing process in a way that will help students meet state standards in writing. Two especially important teaching practices are modeling and highlighting critical features.