STRATEGIES TO IMPROVE
INSTRUCTIONAL PRACTICES

WRITING COMPONENTS

All teachers can help minority and at-risk students by incorporating effective writing strategies into content areas. Writing is an important skill across the curriculum. Writing-to-learn techniques used across content areas can provide support for students' writing proficiency. It helps students who have difficulty with writing learn to think critically about content information. Content-area writing promotes higher-order thinking skills, increases learning, and promotes overall student achievement.

Helpful hints to nurture students' writing ability:

• Assign short and clear daily writing assignments that allow students to connect to prior knowledge and cultural experiences.
• Build students' confidence in their own ability to write.
• Assign topics that allow creativity, play with language, and exploration of cultural dialects or dialogues.
• Provide opportunities for self-selection of writing topics.
• Provide opportunities for brainstorming.
• Allow daily opportunities to share writing in a nurturing, positive environment that accepts and understands cultural differences.
• Create opportunities to write for a real audience that understands and respects cultural differences.
• Allow enough time to revise, revise, and revise.
• Give positive reinforcement and encouragement.
• Give daily reinforcement of effective writing strategies, but focus on one or two strategies at a time. Don't overwhelm students.
• Provide opportunities for collaborative writing.
• Provide writing opportunities for individual learning styles.
• Provide on-going assessment of students' writing performance.

Using Writing Washboards as a Strategy in All Content Areas

Writing washboards individualize writing to meet the needs of individual learning styles. Washboards help students launder their ideas and feelings in an atmosphere that is structured, secure, and safe for experimenting with words.

• Explain that washboards are like journals.
• Create a visual image of an old fashioned washboard on which students can literally pound out ideas and clean up their thoughts.
• Ask students to write a brief record of what they learn each day.
• Allow students to write entries any time during the class period.
• Have computers/laptops available for students who have difficulty with handwriting.
• Keep writing washboards in the classroom. Convenient for students to pick them up each day.
• Let students illustrate/individualize the covers.
• Allow students time to write and explore ideas that are meaningful to them.

Encourage and show students how to:

• play with words.
• brainstorm.
• make connections to prior experiences in writing.
• look at visuals for ideas.
• talk to classmates and compare ideas.
• draw pictures.
  
• Allow on-going entries.
• Allow time for students to share their writings.
• Create a safe zone in the classroom for oral presentations.
• Encourage positive peer feedback.
• Modify washboard assessments based on positive feedback, individual student's cultural perspective, and individual learning styles.
• Encourage and provide models for different types of entries:
  • Free writing
  • Word diagrams
  • Reflections
  • Brainstorming
  • Questions
  • Summaries
  • Dialogue
  • Interviews
  • Illustrations with writings
  • TV/Radio broadcasts
  • Commercials
  • Cartoons with captions
  • Riddles
  • Jokes
  • Video game formats
  • Drama and skits

**Providing appropriate models for desired student performance is an especially powerful instructional procedure to use in classrooms.