by Berninger, Vaughan, Abbott, Begay, Coleman, Curtin. Hawkins & Graham
Original article: LINK
We don’t have a lot of research specifically looking at how to help children who are struggling to meet writing standards. These children might be in regular classes or have special educational needs. So, these researchers wanted to see if different teaching methods could help children improve their writing. They wanted to see if giving extra writing lessons could make a difference for at-risk students.
They focused specifically on 8-9 year old pupils who struggled with writing fluently (meaning they couldn’t write quickly and happily). This is an early sign of writing problems and is linked to how well they write overall. They found that teaching letter formation, handwriting, encoding and spelling helps children write more fluently. So, they wanted to see if giving children even more help with these skills could improve their writing overall.
The researchers used different methods to see which would help improve children’s fluency the most.
- The first method focused on improving spelling. They thought that if children could spell better, they could express their ideas more clearly in writing. Plus, when their spelling improved, others could understand their writing better, which could motivate them to write more. Also, adults often see good spelling as a sign of good writing.
- The second method focused on teaching children how to compose or write their ideas effectively. Sometimes, children struggle with planning what to write, putting their thoughts into words, and reviewing and revising their compositions. By teaching them these skills, they hoped to improve their writing overall.
- The third method combined elements from the first two methods. They wanted to see if teaching both spelling and composing skills together would be more effective than teaching each one alone.
- The fourth method was a control group where kids practised typing and writing without any specific instruction in spelling or composing. This allowed the researchers to see if just practising these skills without explicit teaching could improve writing, or if teaching was necessary.
Spelling
Sometimes, the way we teach children to read (using phonics) doesn’t fully prepare them for spelling. English spelling isn’t just random; there are patterns to it. Understanding these patterns can make spelling seem less chaotic and more manageable. Children often find it easier to spell content words (like nouns and verbs) than structure words (like prepositions and articles) because content words have more predictable spelling patterns. Teaching the patterns behind structure words can help pupils spell them better, even though they’re not as straightforward as content words.
Composing
A simple view of writing suggests developing children’s writing involves just three things: transcription skills (like spelling and handwriting), self-regulation (which helps with planning and revising), and composing (actually putting ideas into writing). Think of these as the corners of a triangle all supporting the goal of writing well.
Transcription skills are about turning thoughts into words on paper or screen, like spelling correctly and writing neatly. Self-regulation is like the conductor of the writing orchestra, helping to organise thoughts and revise drafts. Finally, composing is the actual act of writing down ideas.
When children are learning to write, they often start with basic strategies and gradually become more skilled at planning and revising their compositions. Instruction in writing needs to cover all these areas to help children become better writers. The instructional procedures in the study involved four different approaches: spelling-only, composition-only, combined spelling-and-composition, and a control group for comparison.
Spelling-only treatment: Focused on teaching spelling skills. Each session began with a 4-minute lesson on phonetic sounds and their corresponding letters. Then, for 6 minutes, children practised spelling words based on what they learned. The last 10 minutes were dedicated to learning about alternative spellings for the same sounds.
Composition-only treatment: Children worked on planning, writing, and revising four informative essays and four persuasive essays. They discussed ideas with their partner, wrote their drafts, and revised them based on teacher prompts.
Combined spelling-and-composition treatment: This included both spelling and writing instruction. The session started with a spelling lesson like in the spelling-only treatment. Then, children received writing instruction similar to the composition-only treatment.
Control: This group practised keyboarding for 15 minutes, typing alphabet letters in various orders. Then, they spent 5 minutes writing on different topics without any specific instruction.
Here’s what they found out:
- Transfer of spelling lessons: Explicit teaching in spelling principles improved spelling in authentic writing contexts, such as composing essays.
- Compositional quality: Explicit composing instruction had a significant effect on compositional quality, especially for persuasive essays. Teaching composing skills, whether alone or combined with spelling instruction, improved compositional quality.
- Comparison of treatments: The combined treatment that included both spelling and composing instruction was the most effective in improving both transcription and composition skills.
In summary, teaching both transcription and high-level composing skills proved to be the most efficient and effective instructional approach for improving various aspects of writing in at-risk 8-9 year old students.