Expository Writing: Introduction - Best Practices from CACPS

    As an expeditionary college-preparatory school with a lottery-selected urban public school population, CACPS will always face complex questions on how to best approach preparing students for state standardized testing. In their sophomore year of high school, all Massachusetts public school students must take the MCAS (Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System) in Mathematics and English Language Arts (ELA). Passing the test is now a graduation requirement for all Massachusetts public high school students. Students who fail in their first attempt may re-take the test. Public high schools in the same geographic area as CACPS have consistently failed abysmally high percentages of students each year. Only 50% of sophomores at Dorchester High, for example, passed the English Language Arts portion of the test in 2003.
    In English Language Arts the MCAS consists of two parts. The first part involves a single “Long Composition” question in which students are asked write on a work of literature they have read in or out of school. The second part involves a combination of short answer “Open Response” questions and multiple choice questions based on a variety of textual passages.
    We try to use the MCAS as one motivating tool among many in order to fuel our students’ commitment to becoming powerful writers. Especially given our college-preparatory focus, we know that mastery of expository writing is essential for all of our students. 10th grade is the focal point of our instruction in this writing genre. Thus far our work has resulted not only in deep, authentic learning in the Humanities, but also in successful test results. On our first two years of having sophomores tested by the state, 100% of our students have passed the ELA MCAS exam on their first attempt.
       Indeed, with this in mind, I wanted to note that much of this curriculum has its roots in the excellent work done by Thabiti Brown and Kim Parker at CACPS during the the 2002-3 and 2003-4 school years. My conversations with both Thabiti and Kim were invaluable in the design process of this curriculum.

Overview

The materials
Following this introduction you will find a set of materials created during the 2004-5 school year for the Humanities 10 Writers’ Workshop. In some ways these materials are very particular; they use student work from the particular class in question, they are based on the class texts of the year in question, etc. Therefore, I think they are best understood as models of what a teacher might do were he/she trying to create a rigorous curriculum designed to explicitly teach expository writing skills. Further, these materials do not involve lesson plans. I tried to add some brief process notes, as you will see, but in general I imagine teachers will create processes that fit the needs of their classrooms and students. In general I tried to name documents that refer to the Open Responses “OR-…” and those that refer to the Composition “COMP-…”.

Pedagogical Goal and Approach
Essentially our goal has been to use effective instructional pedagogy to teach our students to be powerful expository essay writers. The pillars of this pedagogy include:

Explicit instruction, through “mini-lessons”, in expository writing structures
Extensive independent in-class work time with frequent one-on-one conferencing
Frequent group analysis of student work
An ethic of multiple revisions
Consistent self-assessment and reflection systems
Links between expository writing work and intensive curricular engagement with compelling texts
On-going differentiation for all learners
Lots and lots and lots and lots of writing!

Upon these pillars we’ve tried to build a classroom learning environment that is rigorously oriented towards skill-building and relentless in the work ethic it demands of students. In the 2004-5 school year, I called our writing time, “Writers’ Workshop”, though it was really a modified version of the pure Writers’ Workshop model. Approximately 1 hour was devoted to Writers’ Workshop every day of the school year.

Classroom Structures and Processes

Mini-lessons:
Almost every single Writers’ Workshop began with a mini-lesson. Mini-lessons involved a 5-30 minute lesson in which some skill was explicitly taught. The skills were taught in a clear, progressive order over the course of the year. Often the content of the mini-lessons was determined by what students were most struggling with. These mini-lessons would frequently involve an analysis (either teacher- or student-led) of student work (using both exemplary and problematic models). Sometimes such student work mini-lessons would involve active feedback sessions from the class in which accolades and constructive criticism were offered. Often I would use student work in order to help students understand the skill being taught. These student work sessions were usually structured in an inquiry-based way in which students were pushed to examine written work and assess and articulate its strengths and weaknesses. At the close of each mini-lesson, students were briefly assessed for understanding through a variety of activities. Most frequently, students would be asked to apply their understanding to their own writing and I would check this application by conferencing with students at the beginning of Workshop Time.

Workshop Time:
After the daily mini-lesson, students engaged in a structured independent work period that we called “Workshop Time”. Usually, all students would be working towards the same product during a given two week period. During Workshop Time I had individual and group conferences with students based on student needs. These conferences allowed me to track student progress and to provide individualized and differentiated instruction. There was always a Conferencing List on the board on which students wrote their names to request help. I usually required silence in the class during Workshop Time.

A note on grammar instruction: almost all grammar instruction in my class occurred individually during conferencing time, based on individual student needs. Occasionally a mini-lesson would address an issue many students were struggling with, but this was a rare occurrence.

Technology:
    Students in my class were required to hand in all work typed, with the exception of the last two preparatory essays before the actual MCAS exam which I wanted in written form. During workshop time students worked on laptops, an incredible luxury offered by CACPS’s technology program.

Differentiation:
    A variety of tools were used to differentiate instruction to effectively meet the needs of the lowest readers and writers while continuing to push everyone to his/her highest potential. Skill instruction itself was often differentiated during conferencing time; I would teach more advanced skills to small groups of top kids and spend more time with the struggling students to ensure understanding. I sometimes reduced the number of required products for my lowest students. Graphic Organizers were used extensively for the first half of the year for the most struggling students. A number of students whose Special Education programs allowed for this accommodation used the Kurzweil 3000 laptop-based system, which allowed students to hear their own typed work read back to them. (The Kurzweil system is approved for these students to use during the MCAS.)   Top students were pushed to move beyond the 5 paragraph structure, adding paragraphs that addressed counter arguments and that expanded their analysis of the text in question.

Student Reflection and Self-Assessment:
    All Open Responses and Compositions had to be handed in with a Self-Assessment which included a scoring rubric and set of reflection questions. This promoted a constant ethic of metacognitive self-reflection among students about their strengths, weaknesses, and plans for improvement. During the second half of the time we spent working on Compositions, students were also asked to turn in individualized Editing and Revision checklists which were based on their own editing and revision foci.

Assessment:
    All Open Responses and Compositions were assessed using detailed rubrics based on our skill-based mini-lessons and on the 10 point MCAS Composition rubric. In addition, comments were made on papers. I generally sought to provide very detailed corrections, based on mini-lessons, early in the year so as to ensure student understanding. With time I began to circle all areas in which there was an error of some sort without making any actual correction. By the end of the year I was only providing general feedback about the areas in which students excelled and the areas in which they needed to improve.

Language:
I tend to use the term “Supporting Idea Statement” to refer to what is normally called a “Topic Sentence”. Likewise, I use the term “Supporting Idea Paragraphs” for what are normally referred to as “Body Paragraphs”. I tend to use the terms “Hook” and “Lead” interchangeably. By “clincher” I mean a wrap-up summarizing sentence.

Schedule and Assignments

During the 2004-5 school year, the basic sequence of instruction in Writers’ Workshop involved the following steps:

Preparatory Work (2 weeks)
Open Response Writing (6 weeks)
Composition Writing (4 months)
Final MCAS Preparation (4 weeks)
Expository Writing Portfolio Creation (1 week)

Preparatory Work (2 Weeks)
    The year began with an initial assessment of student writing (using a past MCAS exam question) and instruction in the basics of Writer’s Workshop, including, most importantly, the writing cycle and my expectations for Workshop Time (see below). I used a number of creative, compelling writing assignments linked to the texts we were reading as the basis for this work. During this time students also were engaged in an assignment which involved writing and sharing with the class their “Reading and Writing Autobiographies”.

Open Response Writing (6 weeks)
    After these essential pieces were in place, students began by writing what we called “Open Responses” (OR) which are essentially single paragraph (approximately 12-15 sentences) versions of complete 5 paragraph essays. At first, all students wrote on a common OR question. Throughout the entire year all questions were derived from literature we were reading in common as a class. During the 2004-5 year our common class texts included: August Wilson’s Fences, Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart.
    Each aspect of the Open Response (Lead, Thesis, Supporting Idea Statements, Supporting Details, Conclusion) was taught through mini-lessons. After each mini-lesson students added to their work and were assessed based on the new skill that had been taught. I called these new skills “Focus Correction Areas” (knowing that this was a slight misnomer given the pure FCA philosophy). Over the course of two weeks students had complete OR’s which they then revised based on an additional series of mini-lessons about the finer points of OR writing. After this, students worked on two additional OR’s, all the while refining their understanding of OR writing through mini-lessons.

Composition Writing (4 months)
   After the completion of our OR work, we transitioned to the 5-paragraph Composition. The OR had allowed students to learn the basic structures of the Composition within the context of a manageable piece of writing. As we moved to the Composition, we explicitly discussed how each aspect of the OR remained, in expanded form, in the Composition.
    The next 4 months were spent writing 5-paragraph essays. Again, we began with a single essay through which all the basic structures of essay writing were established (using FCA’s) over the course of three or four weeks. The pace of essay writing steadily increased throughout the year until students were writing an essay every two weeks (including drafts and revisions). Revisions of work were always accepted and many students easily went through 5 revisions on single pieces in order to achieve the grade and quality of work they were seeking.

Final MCAS Preparation (4 weeks)
   As the date of the MCAS Assessment approached, we focused explicitly on test preparation. Each student picked a “focus text”, a single text that they would fully master and based on which they would answer whatever question was asked of them on the MCAS. We did extensive work drafting Theses and Supporting Idea Statements based on these focus texts and potential MCAS questions. Students wrote a final Long Composition in a mock MCAS examination environment the week before the test.

Expository Writing Portfolio Creation (1 week)
   The culmination of the year's work was the creation of an Expository Writing Portfolio. Each student created a personal portfolio which featured his/her work from the entire year including both high-quality final products as well as all drafts. Students had to complete an extensive set of skill-based Final Reflections on their work as part of this Portfolio process.