Literature+Review+Draft

Teaching students to use the defined writing process began to be wide-spread in the U.S. in the 1980’s (________) This process includes idea collection, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing. The foundation of this instruction was to honor the individual writer and support the development of quality independent writing ( ______________)_. Writing workshop (Calkins, 1986) then extended the process instruction to included mini-lessons, self-selection of writing topics, individual student-teacher conferences, whole class sharing, and publishing opportunities. Writer’s workshop instruction has been found to be effective in developing independent and confident first grade student writers. (Jasmine & Weiher, 2007). In this study, writing was a daily classroom event. There continues to be interest in understanding the nature of process of writing. A case study was undertaken to reveal the narrative writing process of an individual second grader (Ranker, 2007). By recording student group conversations, asking questions, and reading the student’s writing, Ranker discovered that rather than copying a combination of personal experiences, popular culture, and children’s literature, the student was actually remaking those experiences to be uniquely his own. Once students have a writing product, the evaluation process begins. Evaluating student writing has moved from a letter grade with minimal written teacher commentary to a scoring rubric based on the grade-level writing standards and characteristics. The State of Georgia, for example, evaluates student writing in the 5th, 8th, and ___ grade levels using the State of Georgia’s Writing Rubric (Georgia Department of Education, 2011). To guide the student writing process towards producing higher quality writing product, the traits of good writing have been defined by student performance standards that are then translated into a rubric. The desired writing traits have also been incorporated into writing instruction. The Six + 1 Traits of Writing books by Ruth Culham have the stated goals that students and teachers: 1) speak a common language based on the traits 2) nurture process learning 3) use criteria to set the standard (Culham, 2003, p. 7). These traits are identified as Ideas, Organization, Voice, Word Choice, Sentence Fluency, Conventions, and Presentation (Culham, 2003).  Although definition and clarity have come to the instruction of the writing process and the traits of quality writing, writers continue to struggle. _______________ showed the ________% of the student writers analyzed in grades ___ and ___ across the United States were performing below grade level (______, ______). Tracy, Reid, and Graham (2009) studied the impact of self-regulated strategy development on struggling writers. The instruction’s goal was to increase student’s independent use of the strategies while improving the quality of student writing. Explicit instruction and the use of graphic organizers and mnemonic devices were taught to students with the goal of students including seven defined story elements in their writings independently. Student writing showed improvement. However, the control groups in this study did not have consistent writing process or traits of writing instruction with regular student-teacher writing conferences. Struggling writers are often identified as students of high-poverty and high-diversity schools. Walker-Dalhouse and Risko (2008) studied best practices to increase student literacy, which includes writing performance. Developing instruction that both connected to the lives of the students and involved more than one content area was identified to support student learning. “Successful urban teachers make students' cultural and linguistic experiences and differences visible and use this knowledge as a resource for developing content and skills (Walker-Dalhouse and Risko).”  ____% of today’s students are identified by the U.S. Department of Education as English Language Learners. Developing academic writing instruction for this group of students has created additional challenges. Camhi and _____ ( 2008) have piloted writing instruction that addresses both the sentence level structure and the rhetorical structure of academic English writing. The GAINS approach (Grammar Awareness through Isolation, Integration, and Scaffolding) was developed to support non-native college ELLs' writing development through the addition of a metacognitive component in a process-writing classroom (Camhi, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2004). These instructional strategies may have application to English Language Learners in the primary and secondary grades to reach grade-level writing performance.  As Consididine, Horton, and Moreman (2009) state, “The challenge for teachers is to connect the literacy skills that students develop in their social environment with the literacy environment of the school.” Technologies such as digital storytelling may provide that bridge. “ However, it is clear to many that content integration, supported by powerful computer technologies, is needed, and the impact that computer technology can have on students is much more meaningful when it involves an impact on higher order thinking skills ….” (Robin, ____). Qualitative research conducted by Sylvester and Greenidge (2009) showed examples of students overcoming specific difficulties in writing through their experiences with digital storytelling. In this research, students recorded their writing and added images that were either selected by or created by the student to illustrate their narrative writing. The results included examples of how this initial digital storytelling project had started the students on the path to improve their writing. Gregory, Steelman, and Caverly (2009) have noted that students using digital storytelling have demonstrated increased confidence. Bringing images and sound into the classroom through digital storytelling has the potential to provide in-school instruction in literacy that is both vibrant and unified (Walsh, 2008).