I have been teaching in China for nearly a decade, and in that time at least half of my students have been English language learners. Ultimately, this has made me a much better teacher. When I started teaching in Florida, I rarely used instructional time to explicitly teach writing. After all, that’s what the English teachers did. When I moved to China, I was forced to stop taking writing skills for granted.
Less than a year into my first teaching position in China and I noticed that the most common feedback I wrote on student papers was “awkward.” This became so common that it was a bit of a joke between myself and the students. I knew I needed to give them better feedback, and so I made myself reflect on what exactly I was trying to say every time I wrote the word. I realized that there was a whole host of mistakes I was putting in this “awkward” catch-all category. When I separated these out, they were almost all tied to very specific writing skills and historical thinking skills. I needed new strategies and structures to address these instead of writing them off as mere awkwardness.
Scaffold Historical Thinking with Common Frameworks
Clear and effective writing requires clear and effective historical thinking; students must be taught how to think first. I like to use a handful of frameworks for analysis to approach many of the most common historical thinking skills. Early activities and lessons emphasize these to help students internalize these patterns and understand that analysis is more than memorization of facts or of others’ interpretations.
Causation is my favorite skill to use as an example of this process. Most students can easily create a list of relevant causes or effects. However, as soon as they are asked to prioritize them or craft them into an argument, things get messy. Students struggle to clarify why one is more significant than another and they mix together claim and counterclaim reasoning creating an awkward, run-on explanation that lacks argumentative tension. Handing students a framework such as short-term causes vs. long term causes, or the role of individuals vs. the role of historical conditions, helps avoid this pitfall. Of course, this is just good teaching.However, English language learners especially appreciate a usable and predictable structure that they can rely on class after class.
These frameworks do more than support their thinking, they also offer supports for structuring writing. Short-term causes tend to have less historical significance than long-term causes. Thus, a short-term cause works great for a counterclaim in a thesis, whereas the longer term causes can be used to structure a more complex claim that shows nuance. They can easily be combined with or integrated into sentence frames, paragraph organizers, or larger essay outlines. Structure the thinking first and the writing will follow!
Scaffold Writing with Sentence Frames and Common Structures
I frequently tell students they need to learn how to walk before they can run. Although there are countless structures and styles that good writers use, I want my students to become effective at using a few common ones first. Only then do I encourage them to get creative and explore new ways of expressing their thinking and insights.
One of the more obvious examples is to provide students a structure for thesis writing. I know there are many “formulas” that work, but I choose a couple that I feel comfortable using. The image below is one I like, and comes from Chino Valley Unified School District in California.
The structure above can be easily adjusted to “Although X, Y because ABC.” I also like providing a reason to the counterclaim and often use “Although X because Y, Z because ABC” in my own classes. Steve Heimler teaches something very similar. Using a structure is more important than which structure you select.
When teaching HIPP, I provide students some incredibly basic sentence frames according to which part of the strategy they are using. This saves students time in figuring out what is expected of them in terms of style and clarity, thereby allowing them to find their own voice quicker. As they innovate beyond my examples, I keep a running list of the great sentence stems that they develop.
Historical Context
- At the same time as this document was written…this is significant because…
- This document was influence by…
- This document was written as a result of…
Intended Audience
- The author sought to address…this relates to…because…
- This document was written for…
- This document was targeted at/ tried to persuade…
Author’s Purpose
- The intent of this document was…this relates to the claim…
- This document was written to…
- The author of this document intended to…
Point of View
- The author was (identify description) and therefore…This is important to understanding the document because…
- The author’s writing was influenced by (identity description) because…This is significant because…
When I teach contextualization I use a frame to help students avoid a tendency to brain dump all the information they can remember. I like the upside down pyramid frame that coaches them to start with the big picture and slowly “zoom in” to make connections to the thesis.
Model, Model, and Model
Any time I ask students to do historical writing, I have a model prepared as either a pre- or post-example. This can be something as quick and easy as a thesis statement with a few sentences of contextualization or something larger like a body paragraph or full DBQ essay.
I joke with students that we are the best writers the day before we die, and that we become better at writing by “plagiarizing” writers who are better than us. The former is a quick bit of reflection about growth over time while the latter is a logistical statement about how I want my students to approach using my models.
Obviously, they are not encouraged to copy someone else’s work and call it a day. I encourage them to use my models as examples, use them as foundations to build from, and reflect on how to integrate their own thinking and insights.
My models are most frequently seen in the context of a end-of-lesson exit ticket. This can be a thesis statement quick write, a few sentences of contextualization, a quick primary source analysis statement, or even a full body paragraph. Regardless, I always provide students with a model that helps drive good discussion, feedback, and revision. Even with I assign students a DBQ essay, I will release my own example that they can compare to their own. Models make feedback even more powerful.
Peer Collaboration
I have struggled in the past with using peer feedback protocols. Generally, my students do not give each other effective feedback without a highly detailed and scaffolded protocol, at which point I might as well be giving them the feedback myself. On top of this, I have found many parents biased against peer feedback as they prefer it to come from me anyway. I know there are teachers who can do peer feedback smoothly and effectively, but alas, I am not one of them.
I have had much more success with collaboration around historical thinking, planning writing, and the act of writing. Almost every block, students are collaborating on a task that leads to some form of writing. This allows them to share ideas, brainstorm, and work through problems without needing any hand holding. I give feedback on the final product, and students get the best of both worlds.
I already mentioned my exit-tickets, which are commonly collaborative. In AP World, I also like to do in-class group DBQs. These are exactly as they sound, students work together to complete a DBQ essay in 60 minutes. Not only do they gain the benefit of discussing thinking and analysis, but they simultaneously write, revise, and assess each other’s style and structure as they go.
Allow Feedback-based Revision
If you have read some of my previous posts, it is obvious that I am a proponent of standards-based/mastery based teaching and assessment. While that may still be contentious in some circles, teachers universally recognize the power of feedback in driving student growth. For feedback to reach its full potential, students need opportunities to reflect on it and apply it to their learning. This is where revision can become a powerful tool for teaching writing.
I have a revision policy for essays and longer writing tasks that incentivizes students to pay attention to their feedback, meet with me about it, and re-approach their assessment. This policy applies to summative assessments as well as formative ones. My in-class and external assessment data suggests it has been incredibly effective. After all, its only grade inflation if the learning fails to increase at the same rate as the grade.
This is also a fancier way of saying practice, practice, practice!
Few of these ideas are truly revolutionary. I have been thinking recently about the explicit ways I instruct writing and want to expand the number of posts that cover my strategies and activities. I always have more ideas than time when it comes to what I want to reflect on and write about. Thanks!