"Writing to learn" is the next stage after learning to write. When a student writes to learn, they are taking responsibility for their learning and making autonomous choices. It is important because "learning to write and writing to learn...are intertwined...Collecting and organizing thoughts to communicate ideas and feelings lead to understanding and learning."(Richardson, Morgan, & Fleener, 2012, pp. 214,215) When students are writing to respond to a content area, they must consider: reliable sources, evidence, and sometimes various points of view on the topic. If the student is writing a story, they must adhere to the structure of a good story: setting, characters, problem, solution, and engaging plot/details. As an ESOL teacher, I teach all four domains of languages as synchronously as possible. So, I am conscientious that reading (input) and writing (output) go hand in hand. Each domain supports and strengthens the other. According to the text, teachers should move away from "on-demand writing," which is responding to prompts and preparing for tests - on to "authentic writing," which can start as soon as a student learns how to write and continue into adulthood. Authentic writing has personal purpose. It can be personal expression or serve to solve a problem, for example, a letter to the country executive about a real problem. As an ESOL teacher, I also try to stay aware of the cognition (thinking) and metacognition (thinking about what you are thinking)in the writing process. Metacognitive skills can be practiced and strengthened especially in the pre-writing stage and during collaboration or reciprocal teaching/learning. As ESOL Newcomers, working with a partner and/or small group is effective with generating ideas, vocabulary, and expressions - as long as students are guided to help constructively. This part was very challenging for me because, it is more difficult for me to facilitate and guide while students are translanguaging. Ultimately, (after teacher modeling, explaining, facilitating, and encouraging) the responsibility to write to learn lies with the student according to their motivation. One area in which I disagree with the emphasis on writing content is the downplaying of writing conventions. As an ESOL teacher, spelling and grammar are as much part of the content as the meaning and concepts. I understand that we want students to take risks in expressing their ideas without being inhibited or slowed down by perfection. However, I think the trend of content first has made both students and teachers a little lazy about adhering to standard language conventions. Overall, there has to be a balance of encouraging self-motivation and expressing without ignoring conventions of writing. I think some of that carefulness can be addressed along the way in the writing process, starting with teacher modeling, discussions, graphic organizers/prewriting, drafts, editing, final publishing, and self-assessments - and this with rubrics to keep both content and conventions of English in mind along with way.
One topic that I teach is vocabulary for body parts/health. In the textbook, there is a dialogue/story of a group of friends talking about an accident one student had and the the parts of his body that were hurt (leg, knee, wrist). For preparation, students copy the vocabulary into a Frayer model-based graphic organizer. Because it takes practice repetition of about 10-15 times to internalize a new word, we will also play a number of games throughout the unit, and not just for pre-writing. "Reinforcement may be particularly important for ELLs because may ELLs will have less exposure to English words outside of the school environment than their native English-speaking peers." (Graves, August, & Mancilla-Martinez, 2013, p. 39 For their first draft, I like to have students draw, comic-book style) in panels, labeling pictures and showing dialogue with speech bubbles. Students drew and wrote about their own personal experiences with accidents, labeling parts of the body and using accident-related vocabulary. As students orally shared their own experience, they practiced the vocabulary while also expressing their authentic voices by relating details about their home country/culture. Assistance is provided by me (as I model and facilitate), by materials (anchor charts, content picture dictionaries, bilingual dictionaries, rubrics, etc) and by their peers as they work together. Reflection is done throughout. Students self-assess both with the rubric as well as providing constructive feedback for a partner. As the facilitator, I try to walk the delicate balance of encouraging and suggesting, while helping students make corrections to writing conventions.
References:
Richardson, J.S., Morgan, R.F., & Fleener, C.E. (2012). Reading to Learn in the Content Areas, Eight Edition. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
Graves, M.F, August, D., & Mancilla-Martinez, J. (2013). Teaching Vocabulary to English Language Learners. Alexandria, Va: TESOL International Association.
I agree when you write about the important steps to understand a story before writing. They must identify the character, setting, look for what were the problems and their solutions. In kindergarten we begin to practice these key questions through drawings and when they learn to write they begin to associate drawings with writing. With these guiding questions they begin to explain through writing what they have understood from history.
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