Writing Improves Reading

As I turn my attention to the Blogging initiative at SBP, I continue to keep in mind the important student performance goals that we have set during our Middle States reaccreditiation: improvement in our students' writing skills, and improvement in our students' critical reading skills.  The involvement of students in contributing to blogs is a vital component of our initiatives that will accomplish these goals.

We should already be aware that writing is an important piece of literacy.  During my reading assignment for the Critical Reading committee, I began to understand the research-based evidence that showed which reading instruction strategies are effective in improving reading skills.  In the same set of documents and books that I read, I also encountered many recommendations that writing ought to be included as one of the strategies that improves reading.

In the report published by the Alliance for Excellent Education (whose program on Higher and Urban Education actively funds research and initiatives in adolescent literacy) entitled Writing to Read: Evidence for How Writing can Improve Reading, the authors describe their meta-analysis of numerous scientific studies of strategies that involve writing as a tool for improving reading.  They describe the overwhelming evidence that writing and reading are linked to improved literacy in adolescent learners.  The authors provide recommendations based on their meta-analysis and their expertise in adolescent literacy:

What will students write about?

As I've been spending time reading more about the process of 'Reading', I have had the blogging initiative in the back of my mind.  The one document that I knew about which correlates between reading and writing was published by the Carnegie Corporation called Writing to read: Evidence for how writing can improve reading.


We don't have to try to invent topics for what students should write about.  Part of the Critical Reading plan ought to involve some writing response about the items that students read in their classes.  This seems obvious, but there will always be the student who will perhaps write something insubstantial, if just to get the writing assignment done.


So rather than describe suggestions for topics, I thought instead about what it would take to get students to write substantial responses to the discussions that we have in class.  By 'substantial', I don't mean lengthy; 'substantial' in this case ought to mean 'with substance'.  I realized during my learning about what other schools are doing that guidelines for 'substantial' writing already exist.  At SBP, we ought to look at some of these guidelines and adapt these into our content area teaching.


Read more after the jump.