The Goal of Writing

Brenda Hill
Jul 07, 2008

Writing is an effective tool of communication and the goal is for students to be able to express thoughts, feelings, and ideas well in writing.  Students write in a variety of ways for many purposes from different perspectives.  As students begin to write for different audiences and for different purposes writing becomes a powerful learning tool - deepening understanding of content, aiding  in memory and retention, reinforcing skills and concepts learned, and supporting  reading and vocabulary development.  Sometimes students are asked to write to learn - writing to inform - paper or essays connected to the content.  These longer writing assignments are more formal and the audience is usually someone else.  Other times students simply write a summary point statement or a brief paragraph about the subject that occurs as part of an acquisition lesson.  These shorter writing assignments are embedded in content acquisition lessons and students are asked to write at the beginning, during, or at the end of the lesson.  One example of a "beginning" writing assignment for a content lesson might be having students write prediction statements about a topic from a word splash.  An example of a "during" writing assignment would be having student summarize their learning in one or two sentences up to that point in the lesson - summary point writing.  Writing at the "end" of the lesson would have students use the graphic organizer to construct a brief paragraph to answer the lesson essential question.

As we plan for writing lessons based upon state standards we can greatly increase student achievement when we begin to think about students writing across the curriculum.  According to D.B. Reaves in his book, Accountability in Action: A Blueprint for Learning Organization, "Teachers in successful 90/90/90 schools placed a very high emphasis on informative writing.  The benefits appear to be two-fold.  First, students process information in a much clearer way, and second, teachers have the opportunity to gain rich and complex diagnostic information about students, as an emphasis on writing improvement has a significant impact on student test scores in other disciplines.