WIDA Writing with a Purpose

WIDA Writing with a Purpose

FOCUS ON

In This Issue

Introduction 1

Fostering Students' Engagement with

Writing 2

Expectations of the Common Core State Standards for English

Language Arts 2

Approaches to Addressing the Expectations of the ELA Standards in

Writing 3-4

Supporting ELs' Writing of Personal

Narratives and Arguments 4-10

Providing Feedback on Student Writing

10-13

References and Further Reading

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JUNE 2016

Introduction

We use language for a variety of purposes every day. Opportunities for language use include listening to the news, ordering coffee at a drive-thru, engaging in conversations with our coworkers and friends, and sending a quick text to connect with our loved ones. Interactions like these have predictable structures and familiar language choices, and language use is easy when we know the "rules" of those situations.

For example, when ordering coffee at a drive-thru, we typically start with "Hi," order coffee "small dark roast, please," followed by "thank you" and a quick good bye. If we deviate from those norms, we sound like we do not belong. When we enter communities new to us, we need to learn the rules of those communities and how their members use language to accomplish different things.

Students, likewise, use language for their own purposes in and outside of school. When students move through different school spaces (such as health or Physical Education classrooms, science labs, study groups, or lunch rooms), they may be expected to use language in ways that are not familiar. English learners (ELs) are operating in these unfamiliar situations all the time.

This Focus Bulletin explores some ideas of how teachers can support ELs so they can use language for various purposes in the area of English Language Arts (ELA). This bulletin addresses the following questions:

1. How can teachers foster their students' engagement with writing? 2. What expectations do the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for ELA emphasize in

writing? 3. What are some approaches for addressing the expectations of the ELA standards in writing,

as students a. share personal experiences through narratives, and b. defend their points of view through arguments?

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How Do Teachers Foster Their Students' Engagement with

Writing?

In this bulletin, we highlight key practices for fostering engagement with writing, fully acknowledging that teachers have many approaches available to them and that it is beyond the scope of this bulletin to address all of them. The key practices we highlight in this bulletin are as follows:

1. Teachers create environments in which students have opportunities to connect writing with their own lives. They draw on their students' home, community, and school experiences to develop as writers.

2. Teachers create opportunities for students to "own literacy." To them, "keeping ownership and student agency at the top of the academic agenda is really important" (Au, personal communication). Owning literacy means that students see the power of language and literacy as tools to achieve their own purposes as they engage with the world.

"...language is learned, not because we want to talk or read or write about language, but because we want to talk and read and write about the world... especially for children, language is the medium of our interpersonal relationships, the medium of our mental life, the medium of learning about the world" (Cazden, 1977, p. 42)

3. Teachers have a "can do" attitude toward their students' developing writing practices, even though their students' writing may contain grammatical errors.

4. Teachers work on building student writing potential by explicitly drawing student attention to language choices hidden in "good writing." For example, they draw attention to how the language choices in writing a personal narrative are different from language used in writing arguments as required by the CCSS for ELA, and they make those differences visible to their learners.

Larger purposes of writing

? for the purposes of personal fulfillment,

? for capturing and sharing your human experiences with others,

? for participating in the public discourse around a public issue. Kathy Au

What Expectations Do the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts Emphasize in Writing?

The Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts (CCSSA.ELA) hold high expectations for what students do in writing, such as:

Students will

1. Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts, using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence (CCSS.ELA-RA.W.1).

2. Write informative/explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas and information clearly and accurately through the effective selection, organization, and analysis of content (CCSS.ELA-RA.W.2).

3. Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, well-chosen details, and well-structured event sequences (CCSS.ELA-RA.W.3).

While the CCSS for ELA are clear about which text types students are expected to write (e.g., arguments, informative/explanatory, narratives), what is not clear is what language choices are needed to write good arguments, informative/explanatory texts, and narratives. We will explore some possible approaches to address the language expectations implicit in various text types required by CCSS in ELA. We will also connect these approaches with two of the WIDA Key Uses of academic language, Recount and Argue, which are described in the next section.

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What are Some Approaches to Addressing the

Expectations of the English Language Arts Standards in

Writing?

Teachers use many different approaches when they teach English Language Arts to English Learners. Some approaches focus on accuracy of grammar and teach writing through discrete grammar skills, emphasizing correct tense usage or punctuation. In the CCSS for ELA, the focus is not only on correct grammar usage, but also on effective communication for different purposes. This focus on sophisticated and strategic language choices calls for an approach to teaching language that emphasizes language use. One such approach is grounded in Systemic Functional Linguistics Theory, developed by Halliday and others (e.g., Christie & Martin, 1997; Halliday, 1978, 1994; Martin, 1993). This theory describes typical ways in which students are expected to use language in and across academic contexts and for various purposes.

Figure 1. Key Uses of Academic Language

Co

ing

ntext

for

Teaching

DISCUSS

and

Learn

Interact with others

or with text to build and

share knowledge

RECOUNT

EXPLAIN

Retell to display

Clarify the why or

knowledge or

the how of ideas,

narrate experiences

Key Uses

actions, or phenomena

or events of Academic

Language

Keeping this theory in mind, WIDA has identified four ways of using language (known as Key Uses of academic language). Figure 1 shows these Key Uses. The WIDA Key Uses correspond to the Anchor Standards in CCSS for ELA; this is shown in Table 1.

Persuade by making claims supported by evidence

ARGUE

Table 1. WIDA Key Uses of Academic Language with Corresponding ELA Anchor Standards

Key Use

Recount--To display knowledge or narrate experiences or events.

Explain--To clarify the "why" or the "how" of ideas, actions, or phenomena.

Argue--To persuade by making claims supported by evidence.

Discuss--To interact with others to build meaning, contribute ideas, and share knowledge.

ELA Anchor Standards

Anchor Standard for Writing CCSS.ELA-RA.W.3 Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, well-chosen details and well-structured event sequences.

Anchor Standard for Writing CCSS.ELA-RA.W.2 Write informative/explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas and information clearly and accurately through the effective selection, organization, and analysis of content.

Anchor Standard for Writing CCSS.ELA-RA.W.1 Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence.

Anchor Standard for Speaking and Listening CCSS.ELA-RA.SL.1 Prepare for and participate effectively in a range of conversations and collaborations with diverse partners, building on others' ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.

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In the next section, we highlight the use of two of the Key Uses, Recount and Argue. In this section, we walk into two classrooms to examine how to teach language in ways that foster students' agency and engagement with writing.

Both classroom teachers use various levels of scaffolding throughout the year to support students to be successful writers, including macro- and micro-scaffolding (Schleppegrell & O'Hallaron, 2011). Macro-scaffolding involves planning a series of units or lessons throughout the year that build on each other incrementally in such a way that students need less and less support as they move toward the writing of more complex tasks. Micro-scaffolding occurs at the lesson level, by structuring activities to move students toward more independence within a lesson. For students to become successful writers, they need to develop and solidify their ideas, analyze how authors use language in mentor texts and co-construct an approach together before they engage in independent writing. Following this scaffolding process gives students a chance to take ownership of their learning as the scaffolds are gradually dismantled when students no longer need them (Byrnes, 1998). We see examples of those two levels of scaffolding in these two example classrooms:

? A 4th grade EL teacher, Ms. Sorensen, whose students are sharing personal experiences through narratives

? A middle school EL teacher, Mr. Creapo, whose eighth graders are defending their position on racism in the past and present.

Macro- and Micro-Scaffolding Towards Writing of Personal Narratives

1. Develop ideas around a topic of choice (e.g., by using student first language, viewing, talking, and reading, going on fieldtrips).

2. Model how authors use language by analyzing mentor texts (which match the desired genre of the final product).

3. Develop working templates to support the reading and writing of the genre.

4. Co-construct texts together as a whole class and in small groups.

5. Allow students to write collaboratively on a topic.

6. Engage students in independent writing using various supports, if needed (e.g., class-created graphic organizers, working templates, or other supports from previous lessons).

How do Teachers Support ELs' Writing as They Share Personal Experiences Through Narratives?

Ms. Sorenson's students have been working on writing for a variety of purposes and across various disciplines. They wrote information reports on how Minnesota got its name and drew textual evidence from texts written by people indigenous to Minnesota. The next step is to write personal narratives as part of a larger transdisciplinary unit. They start by reflecting on personal experiences and making a class gallery illustrating these experiences. Students share different experiences they have had, such as making a friend on the playground, going to an older brother's basketball game, helping Grandma make supper, going to a cousin's wedding, or being bored and going over to a friend's house. During this process, students learn that even seemingly insignificant experiences can be worth capturing and sharing with others. They realize that the reason for writing personal narratives is bigger than just good sentences, punctuation, and spelling: It is to capture and share their personal experiences using language strategically.

After students establish a purpose for writing and develop ideas around which experiences they want to write about, Ms. Sorenson shares a variety of texts that model personal narratives. She reads a couple of texts and draws students' attention to how personal narratives are organized and how authors use language to capture

and share personal experiences. They develop a working template to capture the organization of personal narratives with language choices. Their template reflects that most personal narratives start with an orientation telling the reader what the story will be about, followed by a series of events leading to a conclusion. Students notice that some narratives include dialogue, and open up with a catchy hook or a line of a dialogue or a question. The purpose of reading these mentor texts is to learn the structures of narratives and to identify how authors share their own experiences and what language authors use to achieve that purpose. During this time, students use graphic organizers to keep track of their learning of how narratives are structured as well as how authors use various language choices to create an orientation, to sequence events, and to draw a conclusion.

After students become familiar with organizational structures of narratives, Ms. Sorenson and the students co-construct a class narrative. Figure 2 shows common characteristics of narrative texts. During this phase, students choose a common experience they all participated in, and Ms. Sorenson writes down what the students are saying, guiding them to make effective language choices and pointing out the organizational structures such as orientation,

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Figure 2. Narratives: Key Uses--Recount

Narratives: Key Use--Recount

Purposes and Types of Narratives

There are different types of narratives. Some are fictional, such as fairy tales, mysteries, science fiction stories, adventure stories, myths and fables, legends, and the like (Derewianka, 1999). Others are nonfiction, such as autobiographies, and biographies in which someone's life is recounted. Other types of narratives are personal narratives, which allow the writer to capture and share one's human experiences with others, providing a tool to create community (Au, personal communication; Brisk, 2015).

Instructional implications: How can I broaden the repertoire of different types of narratives? (e.g., do we tend to write more fictional narratives, such as fairy tales, and not as many biographies?) How can I help students connect writing of personal narratives to larger purposes? How can I validate students' personal experiences so that they can get excited about capturing and sharing them with others?

Organizational Structures of Narratives

Narratives may begin with an orientation that provides the reader/listener with the background necessary to understand the topic. The orientation presents information about who was involved, where it happened, when it happened and continues with a series of events ordered in chronological sequences. If the recount is more story based, the organizational structure is commonly called a story map (orientation, complication, resolution). Narrative structures differ among cultures, and students from other cultures will likely follow the norms of their cultures when writing personal narratives (Brisk, 2015).

Instructional implications: How can I expose my students to a full range of narrative types? How can I provide students with knowledge of structures of different types of narratives as scaffolds for writing?

Typical Language Features Narratives May Include

Discourse Dimension ? Ideas that follow a timeline (although events may not always occur in strict chronological sequence) ? Time connectives (later in the afternoon, the day before), although sometimes these may remain implicit

Sentence Dimension ? Past tenses to refer to past time ? Short punchy sentences or fragments to create special effects (e.g., It hurts. A lot! And then... Bump.

Bump. Bump! Ouch! Yikes!)

Word/Phrase Dimension ? Adjectives (e.g., long and boring night), metaphors and similes (e.g., as slow as a turtle), prepositional

phrases (e.g., in the middle of the night) to create detailed descriptions to help readers visualize the story ? A variety of saying verbs (e.g., grumbled, whispered, shouted), thinking verbs (e.g., considered,

pondered, understood), doing verbs (e.g., bumped into, played) ? Personal pronouns to refer to people in the story

Instructional implications: How can I provide students with knowledge of structures of different types of narratives as scaffolds for writing?

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