How can I teach and prepare struggling writers to be prepared for on-level testing?

 

Every teacher always wants what is best for their students. Once the end of the year starts to roll around, the concept of standardized testing approaches. It can be stressful for teachers to figure out what they can do for their students when it comes to helping them prepare, especially with those who are struggling in writing. This post will help teachers with how they can prepare their struggling writers for on-level testing.

The Self-Regulated Strategy Development stages is a form to help prepare struggling writers to become back on track and feel confident with themselves. This process is a six step process to help improve students academic skills, along with teaching students specific academic strategies and self-regulated skills.

The first stage is building your students background knowledge. In this stage, the student and the teacher will discuss any background knowledge the student may have. The teacher should try to find ways to help relate the subject to the student for them to better acquire and understand the material they are learning. 

In stage two, discuss with your students what their goals are for the objective they are about to learn. Here, you should talk with your students to see what they know so far and what else they would like or need to know.

Stage three includes the modeling stage. As a teacher, we should model for our students what our expectations are and what the instructions are. The students will then take what they have watched from the teacher and personalize their own self regulations and instructions.

During stage four, the students are expected to memorize what was just modeled for them. They should understand the steps given to them along with use the mnemonic strategy. The mnemonic strategy is the study of improving memory. From here, students will take what they learned in stage three and try to come up with different methods of self regulation and instruction. 

In the next stage, stage five, as teachers we need to support our students. We should watch and observe our students as they practice their self regulated instructions. Teachers should look over students work to make sure they are applying the correct information taught. If not, this is where you go back a few stages to make sure everything is understood. If accommodations are needed for the students, this is the stage where those would be applied.

In the final stage, the student applies all knowledge they just took and apply it individually. This final stage is where you see within their writing all of the work and stages built up. Students and teacher will go over their work together to evaluate writings to ensure proper learning. This will also take a look at the strategies effectiveness and performance. 

These phases are a process, although when it comes to our students, we will do anything for them. The Self-Regulation Strategy Development will help prepare students for what they need to understand, along with regain the confidence and skills in those who may be struggling. 

Helsel, L., & Greenberg, D. (2007). Helping struggling writers succeed: A self-regulated strategy instruction program. The Reading Teacher, 60(8), 752–760. https://doi.org/10.1598/rt.60.8.5

How we can help with diverse struggling writers.

 

Helping Diverse Readers and Writers

As teachers, it can be difficult for us to understand how we can help our ELL students. Although, with understanding our students backgrounds and having support for our students, we can help them succeed. 

The most important thing to start off with when it comes to helping ELL students are making sure we understand their backgrounds and prior knowledge. Many students where English is not their first language, learn different types of phonics and phonemic awareness activities than those who english is their first language. 

Vocabulary is another huge subject when helping students write. Those who are ELL learners will experience difficulties with comprehension skills when they are unaware of certain words. This is where word recognition is a huge aspect in helping ELL students. In order for them to become successful in writing, we must help them decode words and help them identify the different parts of words. 

When ELL students take their test for schooling, teachers must be aware of the delay in receiving the test. Not all of the test scores will be accurate to the time difference.

Get help from other sources! Collaborating with a team can be highly effective and will also help with the process of making accommodations to the curriculum when helping ELL students learn how to write. 

Walker-Dalhouse, D., Risko, V. J., Lathrop, K., & Porter, S. (2010). Helping diverse struggling readers through reflective teaching and coaching. The Reading Teacher, 64(1), 70–72. https://doi.org/10.1598/rt.64.1.11

What are the steps to take in order to help a struggling writer when writing a paper?

Steps to Help Struggling Writers

 

Figuring out how to help a struggling writers can be difficult. As I begin my my journey into my teaching career, I have noticed that it can be difficult to help a student who is struggling in writing. 

Many of my courses thus far have helped a lot with distinguishing different tactics of how we can help students who are having difficulties with reading, although how can we help them with writing. There is of course some type of connection between reading and writing, so knowing how we can help are students improve their writing is just as important.

As teachers, it is first important to identify what that child is struggling with first and where they are struggling.

• What is the students strength?
• Is this student meeting the grade standards for that state?
• How is the students work compared to the checklist for an assignment?

Promote these questions into your classroom teaching. When helping your students make sure you are:

• Providing checklists to your students so while they are writing, they have something to refer back to.
• Have the students brainstorm what they will talk about. When this is completed, look over their brainstorms to see how it is applying to the topic they should be writing about.
• Make sure the purpose is clear.
• Make sure as the teacher we are making the difference between editing and revising is clear. 
• Students should double check their work!

As this is just a beginning with helping with your students, take these tips and apply them to your classroom. I promise that with these steps you will see an improvement in your students writings!

Jagaiah, T., Howard, D., & Olinghouse, N. (2019). Writer's checklist: A procedural support for struggling writers. The Reading Teacher, 73(1), 103–110. https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.1802