Hello colleagues, We had a great live event yesterday focused on supporting learners to engage in regular writing. We heard about so many fantastic instructional strategies for teaching writing from our wonderful guest experts Stephanie Sommers (Minneapolis Adult Education) and Kristine Kelly (Hamline University).
Thank you, Stephanie and Kristine for sharing your expertise with us!
One of the things that stood out to me was an instructional framework called the Pyramid of Writing, which suggests that different writing tasks can be organized into provisional writing which could be done daily, readable writing which could be done weekly, and polished writing which could be done monthly. For anyone who would like to know more about the potential writing tasks for each section of the Pyramid, check out this discussion in the LINCS Reading and Writing group.
There were many tips and resources shared by Kristine and Stephanie as well as by others who attended yesterday's event. Some of the resources shared included:
- A Discussion about Quick Writes
- ClassKick --An online tool that allows you to create documents or upload pdf's and make them fillable
- ESL Literacy Readers -- readers designed for low-level adult English learners
- Reading Skills for Today's Adults --Texts at various levels on topics that are relevant to adults
- The Change Agent -- Texts written by adult learners (There is a cost to subscribe, but there are also free resources on the site. Plus, learners are invited to submit their own writing!)
- Flippity -- A site that offers many tools for teachers to engage learners in interactive activities.
- Mentimeter -- A site where teachers can create polls and other activities
- TEAL Just Write Guide
- Writing Instruction for Adult Learners
- Preparing Adult English Learners to Write for College and the Workplace (2019)
We are super excited that this valuable LINCS event was recorded, and we'll be able to share the link as soon as it's available. Stay tuned for that!
Tell us about your experience with teaching writing. What strategies have worked well in your class? What challenges, if any, have you faced with teaching writing?
Cheers, Susan Finn Miller
Moderator, English Language Acquisition Group