Photo: Alessandra Hartkopf for Strategies for Children

As someone who has been writing for a long time, I’m well aware how hard it is to write about something you only partially understand. Now, Education Week reports, there’s an increased focus on teaching writing as a way to improve students’ reading skills. The trend also responds to concerns among employers and college professors about young people’s writing and analytical skills. The article is part of Ed Week’s Rethinking Literacy series. (See “Writing Undergoes Renaissance in Curricula.”)

“The shift is still nascent, but people in the field are taking notice. It marks a departure from recent practice, which often includes little or no explicit writing instruction and only a modest amount of writing, typically in the form of stories, short summaries, or personal reflections, rather than essays or research projects on topics being studied,” Ed Week reports.

“On a literacy landscape that rarely features explicit writing instruction, and where the writing that does take place is often unconnected to reading, experts say, these kinds of projects are unusual for the way they connect writing and reading. Attention to reading has persistently been high, they say, but a focus on writing has waxed and waned in the past few decades. ‘Now we’re seeing a lot more attention to the idea that writing about a text can improve reading about that text,’ said literacy expert Timothy Shanahan, the chairman of the department of curriculum and instruction at the University of Illinois at Chicago.”

In one first grade class in Vermont, for instance, children read “The Lorax” by Dr. Seuss, first for fun and finally to hunt for ways the protagonist protects the earth. They write a paragraph about the story’s theme supported by these examples.

Research supports the emphasis on writing.  “’Writing to Read,’ a 2010 meta-analysis of 93 studies of writing interventions, found that writing had consistently positive effects on students’ reading skills and comprehension,” Ed Week reports. “Writing about what they read was particularly helpful to students’ comprehension, but so were taking notes on what they read, answering questions about it, and simply writing more.”

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Photo: Kate Samp for Strategies for Children

My postings about the 16 one-page memos on literacy from Harvard’s Lead for Literacy series is coming to an end, with this item on Program Design for Impact,

“Educators devote much time and effort to literacy supports and programs that reach many children, but we aren’t making a difference in literacy rates,” the memo states. “We need to focus on programs that result in a measurable impact on children’s literacy, and then find a way to increase the number of children served by those programs.”

Too often, the memo notes, programs define success by the number of children served. Instead, it advises, programs should find “the right dosage – amount of time on task needed to improve literacy skills.” Programs should be evaluated to determine their effectiveness and only then brought to scale. It suggests three guiding questions:

• Implementation characteristics: Are we delivering the program or support?
• Key ingredients: What’s working?
• Sufficient dosage: Are we doing enough to change behaviors, prevent difficulties and improve literacy rates?

The final keys to successful program design are ongoing professional development and ongoing monitoring of quality. “Even a model program quickly loses its impact if not implemented correctly,” the memo warns.

The memos are an initiative of the Language Diversity and Literacy Development Research Group at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. The research group is headed by Professor Nonie Lesaux, author of “Turning the Page: Refocusing Massachusetts for Reading Success,” which we commissioned in 2010 and which informs the memos.

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Orchard Garden students at White House (Official White House photo by Pete Souza)

Vocabulary and background knowledge across subject areas are critical ingredients of learning to read with comprehension as well as fluency. A delightful story in yesterday’s Boston Globe shows how a first grade teacher at the Orchard Gardens School in Roxbury finds lessons in history and vocabulary in Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

(Readers may recall that Governor Deval Patrick unveiled his education plan for fiscal year 2014 at Orchard Gardens last week. He proposed major new investments in high-quality early education as a way to improve third grade reading, a key predictor of children’s success in school and beyond.)

Darlene White-Dottin teaches her young students to recite a shortened version of King’s speech, complete with choreographed gestures that underscore the meaning of the words. She teaches both the words in the speech and the historical context. She’s been doing this for almost 20 years. When Governor Patrick heard the children recite the speech and define its words last year, he arranged for them to perform it at the White House for President Obama. In yesterday’s Globe White-Dottin and her former students, now second graders, described the experience.

White-Dottin explained the lessons she imparts. “King’s speech, she said, helps students build their vocabulary as they learn the meaning of words like brotherhood, justice, oppression, and creed. Students must do more than simply memorize words from a page, she said. They must comprehend the meaning and history behind them,” the Globe reports.

‘If they don’t ever remember anything else, if they don’t remember my name, I want them to take this history on and get an understanding that the way we are in this building and going to the movies and drinking from a water fountain, it has not [always] been like that,’ White-Dottin said.

“ ‘I told them, “You know a lot. You have to keep it.” ’ ”

Ajensy Rosario, who is 8, told the Globe that “Martin Luther King was trying to tell us that everybody could be friends and that’s the reason why we did the speech.” Aveley Kissi, 7, said, “The bathroom had a chandelier in it. It looked like I was in heaven.”

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Photo: Kate Samp for Strategies for Children

For young and emerging readers, an ounce of prevention is certainly worth a pound of cure. A recently released one-page memo in Harvard’s Lead for Literacy series looks at the importance of identifying potential problems early – and intervening to mitigate them. (Read “Early Identification and Intervention Practices.”)

One of the major pitfalls arises, the memo notes, because performance on third grade tests often provide “the first pieces of information on literacy rates collected and available at scale.” To counteract this pitfall, the memo recommends developmentally appropriate assessments, starting in early childhood, to identify children at risk of encountering difficulty with developing literacy.

In addition, the memo notes, “rather than funding early prevention efforts, many grants are tied to state test scores at grade 3 and above.” Here it recommends focusing resources on preventing problems and embedding enrichment activities in daily instruction.

“We need to uncover children’s literacy weaknesses well before they are expected to read and write for academic success,” the memo states. “To do so, sites should focus on early identification practices and prevention efforts. And remember, enrichment and remediation are the same for many young children!”

The Lead for Literacy memos are an initiative of the Language Diversity and Literacy Development Research Group at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. The research group is headed by Professor Nonie Lesaux, author of “Turning the Page: Refocusing Massachusetts for Reading Success,” which we commissioned in 2010 and which informs the memos.

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