{"id":331,"date":"2017-01-27T15:41:31","date_gmt":"2017-01-27T20:41:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/iblog.dearbornschools.org\/akwfhs\/?p=331"},"modified":"2017-01-27T15:41:31","modified_gmt":"2017-01-27T20:41:31","slug":"writing-is-crucial-to-literacy-development-kelly-gallagher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iblog.dearbornschools.org\/akwfhs\/2017\/01\/27\/writing-is-crucial-to-literacy-development-kelly-gallagher\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Writing is crucial to literacy development&#8221; (Kelly Gallagher)"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"dnn_ctr15015_ViewVCMASCDContentModule_ctl00_blurbContainer\">\n<p class=\"blurb\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ascd.org\/publications\/educational-leadership\/feb17\/vol74\/num05\/The-Writing-Journey.aspx\"><em><strong>A California school district provides a case study in how to improve student writing across the curriculum.<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"dnn_ctr15015_ViewVCMASCDContentModule_ctl00_articleContainer\" class=\"articleContainer\">\n<p>Over the past several years, I have been fortunate to work with an incredible array of teachers from across the United States who have given me valuable insight into their professional challenges. For a while now, I&#8217;ve started each workshop by asking the same question: &#8220;How many of you are seeing a decline in your students&#8217; writing abilities?&#8221; Sadly, no matter where I&#8217;m presenting or what the demographic of their students, the teachers&#8217; responses overwhelmingly confirm my worst fears: Wide swaths of students are not developing their writing skills\u2014skills we know to be foundational to their literate lives.<\/p>\n<p>Why are writing skills in decline? To answer this question, one might start by reading a recent study of U.S. middle schools conducted by the Education Trust (2015), in which the researchers examined a key question: Do classroom assignments reflect today&#8217;s higher standards? Their findings were sobering. Only 38 percent of assignments were aligned with a grade-appropriate standard. About 85 percent of assignments asked students to either recall information or apply basic skills and concepts. (The assignments were &#8220;largely surface level,&#8221; the report noted.) Only 1 percent of assignments required students to think for extended periods of time; most assignments could be completed in one class period.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"dnn_ctr15015_ViewVCMASCDContentModule_ctl00_MaskContentContainer\" class=\"MaskContentContainer\">\n<p>This lack of rigor was especially evident in schools&#8217; writing expectations for students in middle school (see fig. 1). <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ascd.org\/publications\/educational-leadership\/feb17\/vol74\/num05\/The-Writing-Journey.aspx\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A California school district provides a case study in how to improve student writing across the curriculum. Over the past several years, I have been fortunate to work with an incredible array of teachers from across the United States who have given me valuable insight into their professional challenges. For a while now, I&#8217;ve started [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":923,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-professional-reading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iblog.dearbornschools.org\/akwfhs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iblog.dearbornschools.org\/akwfhs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iblog.dearbornschools.org\/akwfhs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iblog.dearbornschools.org\/akwfhs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/923"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iblog.dearbornschools.org\/akwfhs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iblog.dearbornschools.org\/akwfhs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iblog.dearbornschools.org\/akwfhs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iblog.dearbornschools.org\/akwfhs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iblog.dearbornschools.org\/akwfhs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}