Grounding the Work: The "What" and "Why" of Writing

What is Writing?

Writing is a fundamental component of literacy. Writing is a means of critical inquiry; it promotes problem-solving and mastering new concepts. It is the act of creating composed knowledge. Composition takes place across a range of contexts and for a variety of purposes. Adept writers can work through various ideas while producing informational, persuasive, and narrative or literary texts. In other words, writing can be used as a medium for reasoning and making intellectual connections. As students arrange ideas to persuade, describe, and inform they not only engage in logical critique, but also gain new insights and a deeper understanding of concepts and content.

Why is Writing and Explicit Writing Instruction Important?

Writing and speaking fuel the communication of ideas expressed between to two or more individuals; therefore, when our students write and speak they are sharing the ideas formalized within themselves, sharing how they perceive the world around them. Peter Elbow (2004) writes:

Learning is the making of meaning. This helps explain that is otherwise paradoxical. For example, the more we write and talk, the more we have to write and say. The greater the number of words that come out of us, the greater amount of words we find left inside. And when students feel empty—"I have nothing to say, nothing on my mind"—the cause is not insufficient input but insufficient output. Talking and writing put words and thoughts into students' heads. These facts are not contradictory when we understand that learning consists of making new connections, and thus new meanings.

Writing and the explicit teaching of writing across disciplines (i.e., content areas) help students to produce clear and effective communication that will facilitate collaboration with others as they move through K-12 and into their postsecondary lives. It is the literacy that demands production through which students are actively engaging and demonstrating consumption for the purposes of distilling analysis of not only information gathered, but also through investigating existing ideas and writing from diverse perspectives that adds to the variation of genres to be explored and read by others. Therefore, explicit teaching of writing should move back and forth between “whole to part” and “part to whole”; that is, students should understand the concept of a larger piece of writing (e.g., a book, a brochure, a scientific report, an essay, a narrative) and the parts that comprise the piece of writing (e.g., word choice, varied sentence lengths and structure, and order of ideas presented).

Principles of Writing

The following ten principles are important for all school leaders and educators to consider before engaging in the development of a writing framework. They are foundational principles that will help school leaders and educators ensure that their writing framework includes elements that support writing and teaching of writing across content areas (NCTE, 2018).

Principle 1: Writing is Messy

Writing is not a linear or sequential process. For decades, students have been taught to brainstorm ideas for writing, compose a rough draft, revise the rough draft after receiving feedback, make edits, and then publish (or submit) their final drafts. While the aforementioned was intended to help students understand the process and steps an author undergoes before his or her work is published for public consumption, it is not an accurate depiction of what authors experience in order to produce text—any media, print or nonprint, used to communicate an emotion, idea, or information. CDE has created a powerpoint presentation that articulates the complexity of the writing process. It is designed to help educators and leaders understand the writing process in a more natural, authentic way that supports students discovering what they have to say across different genres, modalities, and technologies.

Principle 2. Writing is Social and Rhetorical

The first parts of this principle—writing is social and rhetorical—focus on external factors and writing (Roozen, 2015, p. 17). Writing is produced by people, in specific situations and contexts, and often (but not always) circulates among people. Writing is thus social—it is intended to speak to audiences for particular purposes. Even when a writer "for themselves" (e.g., in a personal blog or diary), they are their own audience (Bawarshi, 2003). When it is effective, writing is rhetorical; it takes into account the values, ideologies, interests, needs, and commitments of the people, the audiences, for whom it is intended (NCTE, 2018).

When writers produce writing, they take into consideration purposes, audiences, and contexts. This leads them to make intentional choices about the elements that go into writing:

content (the subject or focus of the writing);
form (the shapes of the writing, including its organization, structure, flow, and composition elements like words, symbols, images, etc.);
style/register (the choice of discourse and syntax used for the writing, chosen from among the vast array of language systems [often called "dialects"] that are available for the writer); and mechanics (punctuation, citational style, etc.). (NCTE, 2018)

Principle 3: Writing Serves a Variety of Purposes

Writing can serve a wide variety of purposes, and it happens in and out of school, as well. Sometimes, writing can be utilitarian: it is produced to achieve a specific purpose that can be quite disassociated from the writers' identity or ideas—for example, manual for how to operate a digital projector. At other times, writing can enormously personal, as when a writer is composing a document—film, poem, rap—that reflects deeply held beliefs or ideas. In each of these instances and regardless of purpose, what writers produce reflects their own assessment of the purpose, audience, context, and value of the writing—for themselves and/or for others (NCTE, 2018).

Importantly, writing happens far beyond the walls of a classroom or school—and for school-aged writers, lately more often out of school than inside classrooms (Applebee and Langer, 2006; Lenhart et al, 2008). When writers compose—texts to friends, Instagram posts, fan fiction, blogs, or any one of a myriad of sites where they can create identities—they are writing. However, writers increasingly do not recognize these acts as writing, seeing them as distinct from what they are asked to do in school (Lenhart et al, 2006). Analyses have shown that when writing is taught, it is often linked to expectations that students perceive to be slightly removed or even quite distinct from their experiences, identities, and interests. Effective writing and effective teaching of writing bridges informal with formal, as outlined in the Colorado Academic Standards for Reading, Writing, and Communicating, and encourages students to mirror the techniques, styles, experiences, identities, and interests of the writers they read about in their classrooms.

Principle 4: Everyone is a Writer

Everyone has the capacity to write. Writers are not static. They develop skills and enhance their writing skills throughout their writing lives; thus, writers grow continually (NCTE, 2018). Becoming a better writer requires practice. The more writers write, the more familiar it becomes. As writers, sometimes they feel confident; at other times, they may feel afraid and insecure. Therefore, students learn to write by writing.

Writers can be beginning or advanced writers in different situations. Just because they may be advanced in one situation, it does not make them advanced in all situations. Writers are researchers too, and they should develop the critical ability to evaluate their own work. They may collaborate with each other in different stages of writing, from drafting to revision to publication. Thus, writers learn how writing is a social act when they consider audiences and contexts and when they work with other writers as they compose.

Writers have varied experiences. They employ different strategies when composing in different situations, for different purposes and audiences, and when using different technologies and tools. Writers also make ethical choices, and writers always have more to learn.

Principle 5: Writers Bring Multiliteracies and Cultural and Linguistic Assets to Whatever They Do

Because writing is linked to identity, writes represent different ideologies, values, and identities. Thus, writers' cultures and languages influence their writing. Recognizing that students are language users with multiple literacies will help the educators engage students in writing. Writers also bring their past writing and reading practices with them whenever they write and read. In short, everything they have experienced, who they are, where they have been, and what they have done impact their writing practices, literacies, and language attitudes.

Second-language, or multilingual, writers have become an integral part of writing courses and programs. They take part in these courses and programs at all grades (K-12) and content areas. The language practices and linguistic backgrounds vary among these writers; thus these writers should not be treated as one and the same (NCTE, 2018). For example, some second-language or multilingual writers may be native speakers of languages without ever having learned and/or practice the written form of such languages. This may include their first language.

Because discourse, audience, and rhetorical appeals often differ across cultural, linguistic, and educational contexts, second-language and/or multilingual writers may find it difficult to understand and/or apply the discursive strategies taught in Colorado classrooms. Thus, their writing literacy and linguistic practices should be valued and recognized as assets in the writing classroom and not be viewed as weaknesses and as language interference problems. On the contrary, instructors should identify the strengths second-language and multilingual writers bring to the classroom and seek opportunities to use these writers' literacy and linguistic practices as a foundation.

Principle 6: Writers Compose Using Different Modes and Technologies

With 21st-century technologies, writers compose both print and digital texts. As technologies become more advanced and sophisticated, writers learn the possibilities afforded by these tools. They learn about the potential that various technologies have for the production, consumption, and distribution of forms of composed knowledge. This includes not only writing, but also the composition of other types of texts, such as videos and podcasts. Thus, writers may compose multimodal and digital texts.

With technology, writers are now engaged in multiple discourses, such as texting, blogging, posting on social media sites, and instant messaging, thus using language and writing on a daily basis. It is crucial for writers to be exposed to and gain access to a wide range of technologies and tools and learn about the possibilities of composing with them.

Principle 7: Writers Compose Inside and Outside the Classroom

Because writing takes place in different contexts, writers compose for different readers, with varied purposes, and in diverse situations and places (NCTE, 2018). Writers should develop the critical ability to evaluate their own work so that they can become effective, independent writers in the world beyond school. Writers grow by envisioning and learning to write for a variety of audiences. They reflect on the readers' needs within particular social contexts, often including the readers' values. As such, writers may engage with their communities and make their writing and composing public. Thus, writers may compose about, with, and for their communities (NCTE, 2018).

Principle 8: Writers Grow within a Context, Culture, and a Community of Feedback

To emerge as better writers from a writing experience, learners need feedback, and this feedback should fuel revision. In a community of feedback, teachers become learners too, because they inquire with learners about why writers make the choices they do. In a community of feedback, teachers and writers talk together about both products and processes, which means they share criteria, discuss challenges and choices, and offer feedback on how helpful feedback is in helping writers see new possibilities and options in steps they may take next.

Principle 9: Writers Grow When They Broaden their Repertoire, Refine their Judgment in Making Choices with their Repertoire, and have a Range of In-depth Writing Experiences

Writers need models and strategies to find topics, issues, and questions to write about, to revise, to contextualize and connect their piece with others, to give and receive feedback. However, collecting those strategies is not enough; writers need practice not only in choosing a strategy to fit a particular purpose and context, but they also need practice in explaining why they made the choices they did.

In practice, writers need to write for multiple purposes, audiences, and contexts. When learners have a range of writing experiences, it offers opportunities for them to make choices, to self-assess, and to reflect on the wisdom of those choices they make as the write for those different purposes, audiences, and contexts. When learners have in-depth writing experiences, they have opportunities to spend time, work from multiple drafts, and see how their writing and thinking have changed over time (NCTE 2018). In both broad and deep writing experiences, writers grow when they have opportunities to expand upon—and not merely transmit—content knowledge.

Principle 10: Assessments Should be Transparent and Contextual, and Should Provide Opportunities for Writers to take Risks

Writers need assessments that make audiences, purposes, and expectations clear, and they need multiple opportunities to practice meeting those criteria. When writers have multiple opportunities to practice, to try something new, to take risks or make mistakes, they know that not every writing experience is a high-stakes or evaluative one. For teachers of writers, this means that we can like the practice of assessment to driving a car—we will see some fixed data (e.g., fuel tank, odometer, speedometer), and we will see some contextual data (what other cars are doing, road conditions, weather conditions) (NCTE, 2018). As drivers, we make decisions based on both types of data, and the same idea holds true for both writers and teachers of writers. The assessment tools and the way teachers use them create a set of values and purposes in which student writers respond to their experiences of trying to improve as writers (NCTE, 2018). Thus, assessment provides opportunities and occasions for writers to know where they might be headed in a piece of writing.