Writing is more than a classroom task. It’s a core skill that supports learning, thinking, and participation across all areas of life.
Image source: Toolkit to Support Evidence-Based Writing Instruction in Grades 2–4
Because of the critical role that writing plays in students’ success, REL Mid-Atlantic developed a toolkit to help educators strengthen their writing instruction. Educators don’t have to adopt a new curriculum to take advantage of the toolkit—instead, they can integrate evidence-based writing strategies into what they’re already teaching. The toolkit is designed to help teachers implement three key recommendations:
- Provide daily time for students to write.
- Create an engaged community of writers.
- Teach students the writing process.
It includes all the materials needed for eight discussion-based professional learning community (PLC) sessions of an hour each for teachers in grades 2 to 4. This format provides opportunities for teachers to discuss how their current instructional practices compare with the toolkit’s evidence-based strategies and to brainstorm ways they can incorporate the strategies into their teaching.
Erica Lee, a REL Mid-Atlantic researcher, partnered with educators to pilot the toolkit and ensure its materials were practical and relevant. Riah Williams, a DC-based elementary teacher, helped pilot the toolkit and provided feedback to improve it.
During a recent REL Mid-Atlantic webinar, Erica sat down with Riah to reflect on that experience. The following is an edited Q&A from their conversation.
To get us started, can you share a bit about your teaching experience? What was your role when you helped pilot the toolkit, and what are you doing now?
Riah: I currently teach 5th grade in DC public schools—reading, writing, and social studies. This is my 12th year in education, and I’ve taught mostly reading and writing with a little bit of math here and there across grades two through five. When we were piloting the toolkit, I was teaching 4th grade humanities, reading, and writing in a DC charter school.
Your school chose specific parts of the toolkit to use during the pilot. Which parts did you focus on?
Riah: We did the PLC model, so there was a group of us—myself, a 3rd-grade teacher, and our vice principal. We did the first module, creating classroom conditions for writing, and some of the second module, teaching students to use the writing process. We started off with the self-reflections in our PLC. I really enjoyed the self-reflection because it made you stop and think: “How often do I include writing, and not just when it’s mandated or writing time? Am I truly finding places and spaces to include writing?”
What was it like to use the toolkit in a PLC setting? How was it different from your usual day-to-day planning activities?
Riah: I really loved it. Usually, when you’re in a meeting with your vice principal or your coach and other teachers, it’s very serious. It’s professional development, so you feel some pressure and worry about doing it right. This PLC was not like that at all. It was really a professional learning community where we came together. We were able to feel really open, and we brainstormed different ways that we either wanted to implement something or talked about how implementation went after the fact. I think that may have been the only time in my career where it was a true PLC without the pressure of feeling like, if you don’t do this, then you didn’t do it right, and there’s a consequence to it. It was teachers learning together, figuring it out together, and talking to our principal together.
We piloted the toolkit toward the end of the year during morning meeting time, separate from our planning time. We really thought it would be great to have done this professional development during the summer months going into the school year, but it can be easily modified to fit your schedule.
Did your vice principal have to buy into this, given it was a fair amount of time you dedicated to piloting the toolkit in a rather short period?
Riah: She had some buy-in, and she also had to be open enough because, I think sometimes, especially in today’s educational landscape where we are focused on assessments, taking a step back to think about writing is important. Why are we teaching writing? What is the purpose of writing? How are we making sure that we’re teaching kids the purpose of writing by implementing it throughout the day? And we were able to take a step back and begin to truly have those discussions away from curriculum and away from assessment.
What aspects of the toolkit have stuck with you the most? How did the toolkit change your instruction or improve it in some way?
Riah: Even just having the experience of a PLC stuck with me because I really did enjoy it. I also enjoyed the step into self-reflecting. Answering the questions honestly allowed me to truly take a step back.
But what really stuck with me the most was the recommendation to implement 60 minutes of writing a day in different pieces. When I first heard that, I thought it sounded crazy. But when you think about it as not necessarily just sitting down and writing for 60 minutes straight, it makes sense and should be a practice around the school.
If I was doing grammar, I’d say, “Okay, write on a sticky note for a minute.” Before the PLC, we were really strict with separate reading and writing days. So making sure that regardless of what kind of day it is, or what subject was being taught, that students were still writing. I taught math and reading for a short time last year, and I would have students write to explain their thinking.
I really thought about how I could partner with other teachers in the building on this, for any activity. So, if they were doing a dance activity in music class, I asked that teacher to have them write about what that movement felt like after. It wasn’t necessarily all just on me, or just the music teacher, but it did push me to collaborate with other teachers to implement writing in their classroom spaces as well.
Another thing was making sure students have rubrics and that they’re checking each other’s work and that they’re sharing. I know that is a very popular thing to say, but in the hustle and bustle of classrooms and planning for assessments, you don’t always do it. Having the toolkit and going through the PLC process really helped me make sure to do that consistently.
Making sure that kids read each other’s writing was a big deal. I think kids were excited about that. They took it seriously, and it was a change from just knowing that the teacher is your only audience. And then also when students shared their writing, that was meaningful, and they were really excited about it. The toolkit also helped take the stress off of writing by helping kids get all of the information in their heads down on paper knowing that they can always go back and revise and work through it some more.
How did the content of the toolkit align or complement your curriculum or activities that you were already doing?
Riah: At the time, the curriculum we were using didn’t have explicit writing instruction. It was more like a big writing project that you walked students through each semester. So I had already made adjustments to that, but the biggest addition was the use of rubrics and having students read their writing, share their writing, and have that circle of writing.
➡️ Watch the full webinar recording for more from Erica and Riah: https://youtu.be/vyxBDWNawys
➡️ Explore the toolkit to see how you can bring these evidence-based writing strategies into your own classroom: https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/rel/writing-grades-2-4/intro
