Think Forward Blog
From “Assigning” to Teaching — How research can reshape writing instruction
I once had a student who loved rhinos. After all, what's not to love? During ‘free choice’ writing sessions (the opportunity for students to engage and communicate across genres of their choice), this student continued to write about rhinos in several formats. There was the narrative on rhinos, the persuasive, the poem – both Acrostic and Haiku.
His writing was engaging, passionate, showed an awareness of purpose and audience, but what niggled at me was that I wasn’t teaching him anything.
Actually, what I found was that my competent writers avoided authorial risks. They wrote texts where the topic was the focus, while writers who found writing challenging, continued to find it so. The struggle to engage was confronting.
Five Ways Series: The Science of Reading
Five Ways Series: The Science of Reading
Over the coming weeks, Think Forward Educators will be posting a series of blog articles written by educational experts providing ready-to-use tips on how to implement the Science of Reading into the classroom.
Inspired by Tom Sherrington’s Five Ways Collection, the posts have been edited and curated by Brendan Lee and Dr Nathaniel Swain.
Over the coming weeks, Think Forward Educators will be posting a series of blog articles written by educational experts providing ready-to-use tips on how to implement the Science of Reading into the classroom. Inspired by Tom Sherrington’s Five Ways Collection, the posts have been edited and curated by Brendan Lee and Dr Nathaniel Swain. The second blog post of the series comes from teacher and consultant, Lindsey Bartes, on Phonics teaching.