Writing is built, not discovered with Phil Coloca and Jeanette Breen
By Martin Ravindran
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Within this webinar, Phil Coloca and Jeanette Breen take a deeper dive into what many refer to as the “black box” of writing instruction, whilst simultaneously setting the stage and direction of the TFE Writing Network.
‘…writing is not simply a function of skill, but of knowledge as well.’
This is further reinforced through Ronald D. Kellogg’s developmental model of writing, which highlights the decades-long journey towards writing proficiency. It serves as a timely reminder that we should not expect polished, expert writing from novice writers. Instead, students progress from the relatively rigid “knowledge-telling” stage towards becoming writers who consciously consider audience, purpose and tone. Writing proficiency is cumulative, with each stage building on those before it, reminding us that strong writers are developed over years rather than within the timeframe of a single lesson, term or even school year.
Other layers of knowledge, including content knowledge, pragmatic understanding of writing conventions and procedural knowledge such as synthesising and editing, also need to be built sequentially over an extended period of time. Foundational knowledge and component skills should first be taught explicitly and practised in isolation before being progressively applied through scaffolded release and ultimately integrated into extended writing. Genre is often prioritised before these foundations are secure, creating unnecessary friction for students when producing quality writing. The sentence itself remains the essential building block, with examples of student work illustrating how the quality of a piece is ultimately constrained by the quality of its sentences.
In the face of these considerations, careful curriculum design that reflects the “long game” of writing becomes increasingly important. Sedita’s Writing Rope provides a useful starting point for considering the knowledge and skills that contribute to writing proficiency, but these strands also need to be sequenced in a way that reflects students’ growing automaticity and expertise. This requires careful consideration of the prerequisites for increasingly complex writing, moving knowledge and skills from explicit instruction and isolated practice towards embedded application. If schools stay the course with this developmental approach, students are far less likely to reach the secondary years with significant gaps in spelling, punctuation and sentence construction. Multi-paragraph scaffolds can then be introduced to support increasingly sophisticated composition, rather than compensate for missing foundational knowledge.
The central message throughout the webinar is clear: strong writing is not discovered through repeated opportunities to write. It is deliberately built through a coherent curriculum, explicit instruction and years of carefully sequenced practice. As the Writing Network continues to develop, educators are invited to contribute their experiences and questions to help shape future learning and collaboration.
In the opening overview of the writing landscape, recent survey data identified educators’ desire to build stronger content and pedagogical knowledge and, more pertinently, a clearer understanding of how effective writing instruction should be implemented. An analysis of performance across the sub-domains of writing suggests that the most teachable or concrete elements, such as spelling and punctuation, tend to perform best, while vocabulary, cohesion and precision continue to lag behind. This is perhaps unsurprising given the larger connective demands of these skills, coupled with their increasingly open-ended and “uncapped” nature (i.e. spelling and grammar are right or wrong, whereas vocabulary and precision require value judgements). We are also reminded that writing is not simply a function of skill, but of knowledge as well.
The discussion then turns to the interplay between student variability, teacher knowledge, teacher philosophy and, perhaps more alarmingly, the disconnect or contradictions that can exist within professional learning messages. Given the relative lack of well-established evidence in writing instruction compared to reading, there is an argument for doubling down on what we already know to be effective as the evidence base continues to grow. The rapid uptake of programmes and approaches perhaps also hints at educators’ desire to fill gaps in knowledge and adopt a more structured approach to what can often feel like an invisible aspect of teaching. At the same time, precision in assessment that genuinely informs writing improvement continues to remain elusive.