Writing Instruction: In Days of Yore?

As I think about the kind of writing instruction I received as a student, I cringe. Most of my teachers would say something like this:

“I want a 3 page research report. Make sure you cite your sources and use strong topic sentences. Be sure to check for errors and spelling.”

Not having much writing experience, I would find a topic that I hoped my teacher would like. I would look in encyclopedias for information on the topic. (Give me a break. I’m old!) I would try my best to paraphrase the information I had read because I knew that I wasn’t supposed to copy or I would be thrown into jail for plagiarism. I didn’t really understand the idea of topic sentences so I just wrote things that made sense to my ears. After plodding my way to the end of the 3^rd page, I would check to see if everything “looked” right.

I turned these labors of... dread into the teacher and would wait in anticipation. (Picture the boy in A Christmas Story and you’ll have a vision of me.) After 3 days or 3 weeks, the teacher would return the graded report. I would look at the red marks on the paper and try to decipher the hieroglyphics. I would glance at the grade (usually a C), try to figure out what those marks meant, wonder why the teacher’s word choice was better than mine, and then stuff the assignment in a tattered folder.

I never saw a teacher write. The writing process was not discussed. Conferencing was yet to be invented. I never had a mini-lesson on word choice. Instead, I had the privilege of matching topic sentences to pre-written details. I had the opportunity to memorize and identify the parts of speech and diagram sentences...but I did not know how all of those things should affect my assignments.

My hope is that the kind of writing instruction (or lack of it) that I experienced has retired along with my teachers. (By the way, this is not to wag my finger at my teachers. This was before researchers were looking so closely at what effective literacy instruction looks like.) Unfortunately, I am not sure writing teachers of today know how to deliver the kind of writing instruction that research has shown to be effective. I do not know if they know how to teach differently than they were taught. For example, when I mention to folks that Writing Next reports that explicitly teaching parts of speech and sentence structures has shown to have negative results with low achieving students ( 2007, p. 21), many retort with something like, “That is how I was taught. It is important that students know these things.”

So now, I put it to you…

If you examine your writing instruction, does it look like it came from "days of yore"? What do you need to align your instruction with what research has to say about effective writing? (See Writing Next, 2007 for a reference point. There is a link to it on my website: www.comprehensiveliteracysupport.com)