Strategy Adaptations
For the High School Learner

High School Approaches to Learning

Writing Skills

Instructional Level
High School (Grades 9-12)

Which Approaches to Learning is not present?
Has writing skills required in assignments and testing.

What have you observed?
The student may be unable to do assigned work, delay in beginning the task and have difficulty in producing a writing product that meets the required criteria

What are the suggested methods?

  1. Provide a model for completing writing assignments.
  2. Provide appropriate writing prompts to support the basic organizational format of introduction, body, and conclusion.
  3. Use group writing activities to build confidence and to develop concept understanding.
  4. Employ computer programs that provide the writing instructional support necessary to help the student strengthen writing skills.
  5. Use journals to motivate writing and to encourage thinking.
  6. Assign students to read model readings which exemplify excellent writing, in order to promote effective writing. Use a rubric to set standards.
  7. Read aloud passages of strong fiction and nonfiction to promote effective writing.
  8. Use the classroom as a writing lab to focus on improving specific writing skills.
  9. Use video viewing to motivate students to produce an effective written analysis of the presentation.
  10. Employ sequenced writing activities, which require the student to produce paragraphs or chapters as a part of the writing project.
  11. Bring in local, national, or international writing experts to share their skills and knowledge with students. Encourage students to produce a sample of the writing type presented by the expert.
  12. Employ writing strategies which reinforce reading skills, using the Six Trait process.
  13. Promote student participation in writing contests and competitions.
  14. Focus instruction on helping students apply the components of the Six Trait writing process.
  15. Encourage students to produce coherent written responses when producing daily assignments.
  16. Set expectations for students to produce high quality written products. Select basic writing skills for students who are having great difficulty and mark only errors related to these basics. For example, focus on end punctuation and capitalization or work on effective adjectives. When you have identified some of these in a student's paper, stop. Don't mark up the whole paper. Ask the student to look for additional errors or weaknesses of the same type and make changes to complete the assignment.

 

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URL: http://www.ops.org/excels/hs7write.htm
Last updated: February 12, 2003
Contact: excels@ops.org