Writing Affecting Reading

In the flurry to develop research-based teaching methods, educators have succeeded in breaking literacy tasks into its component parts. It's pretty much understood that phonological awareness, alphabet knowledge, concepts about print, comprehension, oral language, and writing will be a part of all reading instruction. This is great, because teachers are strengthening their instruction in each of these areas, and they are similarly monitoring their students' progress. Unfortunately, a side effect of dissecting processes is making them isolated tasks. That's why it was refreshing to read a couple of recent articles about bringing writing back into reading instruction in a contextualized way, rather than leaving writing instruction as a separate entity.

The move took a step back before moving forward, as researchers identified the need for more intensive writing instruction. Students' low test scores in writing gave rise to curriculums that focused exclusively on the writing process. While I am not against writing process instruction, I am much more excited about contextualized writing and students strengthening their reading comprehension by processing their thoughts into writing. Jamie shared one of the articles in class, "The Effect of an Adapted Interactive Writing Intervention on Kindergarten Children's Phonological Awareness, Spelling, and Early Reading Development: A Contextualized Approach to Instruction." In this study, kindergarteners showed greater improvement on word identification, passage comprehension, and word reading development when they practiced writing about the texts they read (or had read to them). The other kindergarteners in the study used a reading skills games practice method, which focused on skills in isolation.

The other article was more recent, "Writing Undergoes Renaissance in Curricula,"published earlier this month in Education Week. Thanks in part to the Common Core State Standards, which require written responses to texts, writing about reading is being implemented with increasing frequency. They are finding that the practice increases writing ability as well as comprehension. Surprisingly, the International Reading Association still holds the position of separated reading and writing instruction, saying that the benefits of the reading/writing connection requires more research. The article cites a 2010 meta-analysis of writing interventions, so maybe that will help. However, critics have said that the minimal amount of writing done even in so-called extensive writing curricula is leaving our students with a lack of preparation for higher education and the workforce. Furthermore, it was mentioned that the AP exams will be increasing the requirement of written responses. So perhaps this will continue to change our practices.

I'm all for writer's workshop or other designated writing instruction, but when I see that a contextualized writing approach benefits both writing and reading comprehension, I think we should take advantage. Don't you?