Article 11

I. Title: What’s Right with Writing
II. Author: Linda Rief
III. Author’s Purpose: Linda Rief shares with readers the progress that
has been made in writing and the teaching of writing over the past twenty years.
IV. What are the points made in the review of the literature? Do they
support the need for the study? Rief tells readers that teachers must
be researchers in our own classrooms, gather information from our students over time,
question ourselves about what is working and not working, and act on this information to
help students reap the benefits of writing. Rief comments, as well, on the following points:
A. Writing is thinking; it is a way of communicating our understanding and
misunderstanding of ourselves and the world around us.
B. There is no one process that defines the way all writers write. Writing is recursive, and
the writer shifts back and forth between steps to make ideas clear.
C. We learn to write by reading extensively and writing for real audiences. Model for
students and share samples of good writing for students to read and imitate.
D. Writers need constructive response. Let students know what you noticed about their
writing, what was done well and questions that came to mind as you read. Put away
the red pen.
E. Evaluation of writing should highlight the strengths of process, content, and
conventions, and give the writer the tools and techniques to strengthen the
weaknesses. Allow students to verbalize their thinking as they moved through the
process helps them. Evaluation should move the writer forward and help them grow in
their thinking.
F. Writing is reading. For too long, the past ten years, the focus has been on literacy as
reading. We have forgotten writing. Since writing is a recursive process, students
engage in critical thinking and questioning and reading and writing.
V. Author’s Inquiry Question/s: What is right with writing and the
teaching of writing? How did we reach this point and where do we go
from here?
VI Author’s Methodology: Observation of and reflection on the
development and progress of writing instruction
A. Who is being studied? Students and teachers
B. Over what length of time: Twenty years
C. What data is being collected? Rief gathered teaching methods and strategies,
student writing samples, and other literature on writing to analyze ideas on how the
teaching of writing has changed over the past twenty years or so.
D. How is it being analyzed? Rief has taken the information gathered and looked at
where we were twenty years ago and where we are now
E. Any other interesting or pertinent data: Rief tells readers what our students need to
help them write well. They need time, choice, and models. This seems to sum up most
of the articles I have read for this review. She also mentions the need for professional
development for teachers that focuses as much on writing as on reading. Certainly,
The National Writing Project has done this around the United States.
VII. How the author collected information? I think Rief collected her
information through reading the works of John Dewey, Donald Murray, Peter Elbow,
Donald Graves, Tom Newkirk, Shelley Harwayne, Tom Romano, and Nancie Atwell in
addition to observations in classrooms and analysis of student work.
VIII. What the Author Discovered or Conclusions/Implications: Rief
also mentions in her article that testing is standing in the way of powerful writing
instruction. She even mentions that she met two young teachers who had to sign a clause
in their contracts that if they didn’t raise the scores of the students in their classrooms
from one year to the next, they understood they would be let go. What a difficult task to
accomplish! We need to do what is best for our students. In addition to her thoughts on
testing, Rief wants teachers of writing to stay focused on their own writing because this
helps us to understand what we are asking our students to do every day. Rief feels that we
have come a long way in the past twenty years, but we still have a long way to go.