Improving the teaching of writing through scaffolded lessons on author's craft.

摘要

Students as young as third grade are expected to demonstrate writing proficiency and produce writing that draws upon craft techniques to convey a strong writer's voice. As there is little research to guide teachers in the teaching of voice in the elementary grades, this study examined the implementation of a scaffolded model of writing instruction. The research questions guiding this study were: (1) How does students' experience in a series of scaffolded writing lessons on author's craft contribute to the improvement of narrative writing? (2) According to students, what aspects, if any, of the series of scaffolded writing lessons on author's craft contributed to their growth as writers?;Method. A nonequivalent pretest-posttest control-group design was employed. Both groups (N=82) completed a pretest, posttest, and surveys, but only the experimental group (n=41) received the intervention. The scaffolded intervention addressed four aspects of voice (visual craft techniques, word choice, sentence variety, and elaboration) and was delivered twice a week over an eight-week period.;To evaluate the impact of the intervention, Repeated Measures ANOVA was used for seven dependent variables (holistic, content, structure, stance, sentence fluency, diction, and conventions scores). Students' perspectives about the intervention were explored by coding surveys, documents, and observational data. The frequency of comments and the patterns within each code were examined. Themes were generated by looking at the relationship between codes to uncover the patterns that represented the collective voice of the students.;Findings. Struggling students in the treatment group made highly significant gains in stance and significant gains in diction. All students regardless of writing ability reported finding the lessons helpful. It appears that even more important than the strategies taught was the dialogue that was an integral part of the lessons. This talk demonstrated for students how to use the techniques and allowed them to exchange ideas with the teacher and their peers.;Significance. The findings speak to the need for a more diverse, flexible approach to teaching writing --- one that respects that children, as young as third grade, can vocalize how they learn best and uses their perspectives to improve instruction.