Kaitlin Mott

EDRE 4860
October 31, 2017

Question: What are some different writing strategies and ways to incorporate other content areas into
writing?

1. Ried, L., (2002). Quick-writes: Leads to Literacy. Voices from the Middle 10(.1). 50-51.
The author of this article discusses how she runs quick writes in her own classroom. She notes that
while her students participate in quick writes for 1-3 minutes, she always does as well. She found that quick-
writes allowed her to find her voice as a writer, and hope it will help her students do the same. Additionally,
quick writes offer numerous benefits for students. Narrowing a quick write to a specific topic stimulates
students and allows them to make deep connections within an unchanging time limit. Doing this several
times throughout the week, across different content areas, helps engage students in writing on a continuous
basis and can be used as a way to see comprehension from other subjects. However, quick writes do not
necessarily need to be school or content related. Students can write for a few minutes about sports, their
weekend, or anything else that interests them. The author says, Short works that are language-rich, evoke
strong feelings with their strong sensory imagery, provoke thought, and are relevant to adolescents interests
are valuable as resources for quick-writes. This article is explains the benefits to quick writes as a daily
routine. Although I may not use quick writes every day, I can still use them throughout the week to learn
more about my students and assess their knowledge over different content areas. This article has been useful
to me because the author explains how she has learned over the years to utilize quick writes as an informal,
formative assessment tool that helps check for understanding and see where the class stands on a topic.

2.
3. Ellis, E. S. (1994). Integrating writing strategy instruction with content-area instruction: Part I---orienting
students to organizational devices. Intervention in School and Clinic, 29(3), 169-179.

In this article, the authors discuss guidelines for teaching content-area lessons while using graphic
organizers. In addition, the article goes into discussion over the components of the Integrated Strategies
Instruction (ISI) model developed by the author in 1993. The ISI model focuses on how teachers can
facilitate student understanding and intentional use of effective thinking and problem-solving cognitive
processes, or cognitive literacy, in the context of facilitation acquisition and mastery of content-area
subjects (Ellis, 169). Another use of this model is to teach information-processing skills. The use of
graphic organizers is a way that teachers can teach content strategically. When using graphic organizers to
teach content lessons, the teacher should incorporate both teacher-directed and student-directed learning
opportunities (Ellis, 178). The author also goes on to suggest that there should be effective student-teacher
dialogue that allows that teacher to model the thinking process when using organizers. This article helped
me learn new writing strategies that could be used with content-area instruction. Learning about the four
instructional processes -- orienting, framing, applying, and extending. These help to provide explicit and
direct instruction that promotes constructive and cooperative learning activities. This is important to me
because

4. Hertzberg, F., & Roe, A. (2016). Writing in the content areas: A norwegian case study.Reading and
Writing, 29(3), 555-576.

This article presents quantitative and qualitative data from a network of secondary schools that have
established cross-curricular school-based writing projects (Hertzberg, Roe 2016). The study looked at 16
secondary schools in Norway. The writing projects in this study are teacher-initiated and reflect the
increasing global focus on literacy education. Researchers and teachers collaborated together, sharing
classroom experiences. The article states, that no text should be written in isolation, and no text should be
handed in without me having looked at it. The authors agree that it is important to make sure every writing
has a purpose and gets feedback of some sort. The study talks about a method, the four subjects model
that consists of cross-curricular writing and response sessions. While using this model, peer response was
used along with whole-class discussions to support and encourage responses. Additionally, a number of
strategies, including mentor texts, discussions, oral responses, giving feedback, and peer mentors are used to
help define cross-curricular writing. The study found that today the number of schools prioritizing content
writing is growing, and regional and national programs for content area writing are being established
(Hertzberg, Roe 2016). This article can be applied to my question because the authors discuss cross-
curricular writing and how to implement it into a daily routine. As a teacher, I can use mentor texts and oral
discussions to examine a cross-curricular writing assignment and help students define their writing while
gaining a deeper understanding of the topic. Although I do not agree with writing necessarily being a way
for students to learn a topic for the first time or as busy work to make sure students research enough to write
a paper over it, I believe that writing can be used for students to gather their thoughts and ideas on a topic.
Additionally, it can be used to address misconceptions that students may have.

5. Knipper, K. J., & Duggan, T. J. (2006). Writing to learn across the curriculum: Tools for comprehension in content
area classes. The Reading Teacher, 59(5), 462-470. doi:10.1598/RT.59.5.5

The authors of this article discuss the idea of writing-to-learn instructional strategies to reinforce students
comprehension. Additionally, the article states, Integrating writing through reading enhances
comprehension (Brandenburg, 2002) because the two are reciprocal processes (Knipper, Duggan 2006).
The authors agree that they observe writing being left out of content classrooms. They believe this is
because there in an overemphasis on the process of writing. They say, Writing to learn differs from
learning to write because the writing produced is not a process piece that will undergo multiple changes
resulting in a published document (Knipper, Duggan 2006). The duo suggests strategies such as learning
logs, quick writes, structured note-taking, and list-stop-and-write to strengthen their content understanding
through writing. Furthermore, they discuss reviewing and summarizing strategies that consist of
microthemes, framed paragraphs, text boxes, and sentence synthesis. Also, strategies for critical and creative
writing-to-learn include bio-poems, word maps, and ABC list. All of these strategies listed are valuable
tools to assist students with cross-curricular, particularly science and social studies, content area concepts
and knowledge.

6. Fisher, D., & Frey, N. (2013). A range of writing across the content areas. The Reading Teacher, 67(2), 96-101.

The authors of this article discuss many things from current writing expectations to different forms and
strategies that our students, as writers, should be able to accomplish. They state, writing is something that
students should do routinely (Fisher, Frey 2013). The article goes over the differences between shared and
interactive writing, including strategies and attention starters to get the students attention. The authors say,
writing from sources is an important aspect of content area learning (Fisher, Frey 2013). Additionally,
they mention particular types of writing that could be incorporated with science and social studies, like
informative and explanatory. To do this, students should be able to independently research and collect
evidence from texts. Fisher and Frey (2013) wrote, Effective writing teachers know that building stamina,
discussion, and knowledge are integral for developing stronger writers. The article contains an anchor
charts with information on reading for information, writing to inform or explain, and for speaking and
listening. This helps us, the readers, additional ideas and steps for informing and explaining.
7. Tompkins Chapter 12
Writing across the curriculum involves integrating writing into all subject areas. The book says,
... when students write about what theyre learning, it helps them become better writers, and teachers can
use students writing to assess their learning. Different instructional tools to utilize in writing instruction is
clustering, double-entry journals, learning logs, and semantic feature analysis. These are quick ways that
students can use to make charts, maps, and any other visual representation to organize ideas and details.
Teachers can address writings across content areas by using checklists and rubrics. The book stays, Writing
across the curriculum activities are especially valuable because they support students learning and
demonstrate their learning more effectively than traditional tests do. Writing across content areas does not
necessarily have to be a written paragraph or page. This is something that I realized when reading this book,
that I did not realize while reading the other articles. Having students fill out a chart or create their own map
is an easy and quick way for teachers to incorporate writing. Writing instruction must be integrated with
other instruction -- writing in response to reading, writing as part of social studies projects, writing is
integral to scientific process instruction, and even writing about problem solving.
8. Monroe, B. W., & Troia, G. A. (2006). Teaching writing strategies to middle school students with disabilities. The
Journal of Educational Research, 100(1), 21-33.
This article discusses writing difficulties that students with disabilities may have, how to address
those writing difficulties, and goals to keep in mind during writing instruction. Some difficulties that
students with learning disabilities could come across include having shorter, less coherent writing with
mechanical and grammatical errors. The authors say, One reason for the poor writing performance of
students with LD is that they tend to use an approach to writing that minimizes the role of planning. To
help students with learning disabilities refine their writing, teachers can explicitly teach these students
planning strategies. These strategies should contain ways to brainstorm before the writing and how to self-
monitor and self-evaluate during writing. The authors state, ... one important goal in writing instruction for
students with LD is helping them become better at planning their papers. One-on-one instruction can be
useful for helping students with learning disabilities. Another goal that can be useful is teaching students
with learning disabilities how to revise. This can dramatically help students refine their work. Students with
learning disabilities may not produce the longest or most descriptive writings in the class, but we can still
implement writing across different content areas with them. Changing the required writing length or time
allocated to produce a writing sample is a simple way to accommodate daily or weekly writing for students
with disabilities. This article is useful to my question because, although I did not specify writing with
students with disabilities, we will come across students with learning and/or physical disabilities in our
classrooms. It is important that we are readily able to teach these students and accommodate in ways to
benefit them.