Classroom Strategies to Develop Writing Skills

It is very important that teachers use effective ESL writing strategies to help ESL students develop proficient writing skills that will aid them in nurturing a love for writing and establishing a solid literacy foundation.In this blog, I will share three of my favorite writing skill strategies that have been very productive in my ESL classroom. I will share the steps of implementing these strategies, the target population, and the rationale and benefits of implementing these writing strategies in an ESL classroom.

Strategy: Dialogue Journal

Target Population (The Stages of Second Language Acquisition): Early Production, Speech Emergence, Intermediate Fluency, Advanced Fluency

Age: All Learners (Grade K-12)

Setting: Individual/Independent

Steps to Implement:

1. Teacher describes and explains to student what a dialogue journal entails.

2. Students write regularly in a journal/notebook on the topic of their choice.

3. Teacher responds to the content of students’ entries, not the form.

4. Teacher explains that she/he may not be able to respond to everything students’ write. He/she advises students if they have something special to which they want a response, they can use a colored marker or highlighter to cue the teacher.

5. Teacher can ask question that encourage elaboration and expand students’ writing.

6. Teacher can also make positive suggestions regarding what students can write in their future journal entries.

7. If unable to write sentences, younger readers and writers can draw pictures and label these pictures with words or with the sounds they can identify in the words.

Rationale and Benefits:

• By responding to students’ journal entries, teachers are making students writing functional and purposeful. This also aids both teachers and students in bonding and building a strong student-teacher relationship.

• Students are exposed to form and function in writing.

• Dialogue journals help students develop fluency and authentic conversation on paper.

• Dialogue Journals build students’ confidence in their writing skills.

• Students enjoy the personal attention they receive from their teacher.

• Journals can be used as an assessment tool because the teacher can use these writing samples to measure students’ improvement in literacy development over time.

• Dialogue journals are meaningful to students because they can make a personal connection by deciding to write on a topic of their choice.

Strategy: Clustering

Target Population (The Stages of Second Language Acquisition): Early Production, Speech Emergence, Intermediate Fluency, Advanced Fluency

Age: All Learners (Grade K-12)

Setting: Small Group, Whole Group, Individual/Independent

Steps to Implement:

1. First, teacher should model clustering in whole group or small group instruction until students feel comfortable enough to incorporate it in their writing.

2. To create a cluster students place the topic/idea/phrase/“nucleus word” in the center of a circle.

3. Then students quickly write all the words that come to their mind or that they associate with the “nucleus word”. They circle each word and connect it to the “nucleus word” with a line.

4. Students can share their cluster with other classmates to even help them generate more ideas for their writing.

Rationale and Benefits:

• Clustering helps students develop vocabulary and serves as a blueprint for their writing.

• Clusters are easy to create and there are no restricting rules on “what can go into a cluster”.

• It is easy to share with other classmates and therefore helps them create a story or “experience orally”.

• It helps students develop word association skills.

• Clustering is very versatile, students can benefit from clustering even in their college and graduate school years.

• By engaging in clustering students reduce their writing anxiety and avoid “writers block”.

Strategy: Life Murals

Target Population (The Stages of Second Language Acquisition): Early Production, Speech Emergence, Intermediate Fluency, Advanced Fluency

Age: All Learners (Grade K-12)

Setting: Individual/Independent, Pair/Partners

Steps to Implement:

1. Students create drawings that illustrate significant events, people, and places in their lives.

2. Students can share these illustration or life symbols with a writing partner.

3. Then, students use their mural to guide their writing.

4. After completing their stories/writing piece, students can also share them with their partner.

Rationale and Benefits:

• Life Murals are meaningful for students and purposeful because they are writing about significant events, people, and places in their lives.

• Since life murals are visible students can easily get ideas for writing.

• Life Murals facilitates writing because it is based on students’ personal experiences.

Reference:

Peregoy, S.F., & Boyle, O.F. (2013). Reading, Writing, and Learning in ESL: A Resource Book for Teaching K-12 English Learners. (6th ed.) Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.