The Writing Revolution- Where to Begin
Every year it starts off the same. I begin my writing instruction by giving the baseline writing prompt my district requires. And every year I see the same thing for most of my students. They lack understanding is basic capitalization and punctuation and many struggle to write a complete sentence. So every year I look at their writing in frustration and ask myself, ” Where do I even begin?”
Time to Build a Strong Foundation!
I’ve been diving into the book The Writing Revlution by Judith Hochman and Natalie Wexler. It is based on a writing method called the Hochman Method. In this method Hochman reminds us that we need to drill back and start off with the basics if we want our students to become effective writers. This mean going back to the basics of sentence writing. In this book she shares her own struggles with teaching a student and says. ” …if I wanted my students to write good paragraphs, and compositions, I was going to need to start building a solid foundation- just the way I would start building a house.” (24) And that meant beginning with sentences.
I have realized that is the only answer to the writing problem I see in my students every year. It is time to begin at the beginning. That means going back and teaching the following to help them first understand how to write a good sentence.
- Correct capitalization
- Correct punctuation
- Difference between a complete sentence and a fragment
- Developing their own question sentences
- Types of sentences
- Expanding and joining sentences
One of my favorite activities she shares in her book is Because, But, So. Hochman does recommend using this in content areas such as Science, Math, and Social Studies but suggest starting our with easier tasks for students to complete. Here is an example that could be used at the beginning of the year when teaching school expectations.
Give the students sentence stems to turn into 3 seperate sentences using each conjunction.
- Students should be quiet in the halls because__________________________.
- Students should be quiet in the hall, but_____________________________.
- Students should be quiet in the hall, so ____________________________ _.
There are many more amazing ideas for teaching sentence writing in the book The Writing Revolution. I am including a link to the book if you are interested in purchasing this book. I do not receive any compensation for this. I just believe in the information shared in this book.
Another great online resource I have found is from the Ascend Smarter Intervention Website. This is website is one of my favorites and I really like how they explain the importance of what to teach with sentence instruction in their blog post How to Teach Sentence Level Writing using a Research-Based Approach. They also offer a free webinar on Aligning Your Writing Instruction with the Science of Reading if you want to dive in even more. There is so much information on all kinds of teaching interventions so I am warning you to plan to spend some time here when you visit.
Next time we will dig a little deeper and look at what the Hochman Method says about writing in content areas. It is truly an eye opener and you will not want to miss it.
Until next time…..
