Writing Strand

Many are familiar with The Simple View of Reading, which shows us that in order to comprehend text as we read, both word recognition and language comprehension are necessary. This presentation will introduce a Simple View of Writing, revealing how both foundational writing skills (transcription) and text generation (composition) are necessary for skilled writing expression. How writing assessment and instruction are informed by a Simple View of Writing will be discussed. Alignments to the Scarborough Reading Rope and the International Dyslexia Association’s Knowledge and Practice Standards will be provided.

In order to read fluently and comprehend connected text, students must know how to read and write a variety of sentences that are included in all their texts. This means that teachers must understand why grammar is important and how to teach it. Participants will learn a few tips on how they can support students’ reading fluency and comprehension by teaching phrasing and sentence structure with a focus on oral language and written expression.

More often than not, students struggle at the sentence level far more than they struggle at the paragraph level; teachers ignore this fact if they move directly to practicing prompts for assessments. This workshop focuses on parts of speech and sentence parts as they apply to developing student reading and writing skills. Participants learn about the components of a good lesson and strategies for developing sentence sense in student writers. They consider parts of speech as a method of understanding the way words interact with each other and sentence parts as building blocks for creating and understanding different kinds of sentences. They leave with strategies they can use the very next day with their students.

Studies have provided evidence that automaticity of letter writing contributes to better reading and spelling and promotes better quality and quantity of student writing. How can we translate what we know about the handwriting of letters to the handwriting of numerals? In this session, participants will learn instructional routines for the acquisition and fluency stages of writing numerals to improve written computation. Participants will leave with access to free materials to use in their classrooms.