Reading for Writing: Modeling the Modern Essay

Introduction

Every year teachers are tasked with making sure that their students learn to write a narrative.  This past year I taught my students step by step how to write a narrative.  We first wrote a watermelon story.  A watermelon story tells your readers about what you did that day, what you ate, played, watched, and then when you finally went to bed.  We then narrowed it down to a watermelon slice story. A slice story for example tells readers what you did that morning only.  Lastly, we wrote a seed story.  This is where the student is specific about a particular moment of what happened in the morning.  For example it could be a story about putting the toothpaste on the toothbrush and squirting it on the cat.  This process was done for the first trimester and the final writing project was to write a narrative that only took up a moment of their day with a beginning, middle, and end: essentially a seed story.  At the end of the unit my students had created small moment narratives.  While this goal was accomplished, I felt that not only could I have done more for my students, but my students were capable of producing more.

It was during this time that I was encouraged to apply for the Yale National Initiative, I read that one of the seminars was Reading for Writing and I was so intrigued with the idea of learning to write a narrative through reading that I begin to research to find out what the data said about this approach.

Rationale

Every year I look at an area of my teaching that I would like to improve and as I reflected I realized lately that I have not improved my writing instruction.  Although my students have done well as they moved on to 2^nd grade I felt as though I could do more.  I began my research by looking at the writing statistics for the whole country and what I found was confirmation that I did indeed need to do more for my students.

The National Assessment for Educational Progress results for the year 2011, the assessment showed that only 28% of 4^th grade students were proficient in writing.¹

With this statistic in mind my concern for my own students rose; was the writing instruction in my class sufficient?  How could I improve the writing instruction for my students so that as they matriculated they would have a solid foundational knowledge and ability to write?

Many studies have shown the importance of children having solid foundational learning skills starting in preschool.  Children who start elementary with school readiness skills have a more positive learning trajectory.  When a child has solid foundational skills it is the base on which more academic knowledge is built and it is through this lens that we begin to see how necessary it is to prepare our students early.  Another finding that has been consistent is that foundational writing skills positively affect both mathematics and reading performance in 3^rd-grade assessments; this holds true for both low-income and ethnically diverse children.² 

After looking at different methods for teaching writing, it resonated with me that it would be best to teach writing in concert with reading as they go hand in hand.  I had been teaching writing separately and realized that I was missing a huge opportunity.  Teaching writing through reading enables me to teach two major foundational skills at the same time.  I will use mentor texts to teach writing and focus on “narrative” first.  The common core standard for 1^st grade writing a narrative expects the student to “Write narratives in which they recount two or more appropriately sequenced events, include some details regarding what happened, use temporal words to signal event order, and provide some sense of closure.”

I also think that when it comes to writing children are naturally drawn to the personal narrative.  They love telling everyone about what happened to them over the summer, in the cafeteria, on the playground, and at a birthday party etc. By teaching the craft of writing personal experiences at the beginning of the school year we are giving our students the tools to make sure that they are able to capture moments of their life while building a firm foundation for future writing.