Strategies for making connections between reading and

writing (and oral language!)

Sao Paolo

April-May 2012

Else Hamayan

ehamayan@gmail.com

“The best way to become a successful writer is to read good writing, remember it, and then forget where you remember it from.”

Gene Fowler

Making the Connection between Reading and Writing a Routine in the Classroom•What writing activities can stem from the text that students are reading?

•How can I extend this piece of writing so that students will read it for meaning?

•What oral language do I need to build as a foundation for what students will be reading and writing?

Key Criteria for Activities that Connect Reading and Writing• Activities have to be meaningful and functional

• Activities have to be relevant and interesting to students

• Activities have to build on oral language

• Activities must also expand students’ language

• Activities have to connect to the curriculum and to students’ lives

A Strategy for Making the Connections between Reading and Writing and Oral Language: Only for Students in the Very Earliest Stages of Language Learning

•Very young children

•Older students new to English

Mimic Writing

Mimic Writing

Mimic Writing is copying, but with a very specific purpose: what is being copied must serve a clear function and must somehow be useful to the student.

Only for the earliest stage of language learning, and only for a very short time!

Examples of tasks that lend themselves to Mimic Writing

• Labels for the classroom

• Lists for special projects

• El cuaderno de comunicacion: Any messages to be sent home, or things to remember to do at home

What NOT to do with Mimic Writing!

•Do not make students copy new words five times each!•Do not let students copy whole sentences (as in

messages to be sent home) with more than one or two words they do not know!•Do not give students copying exercises like copying words into blanks or fill in blanks in sentences that are not connected to one another!•Do not let students copy anything that is not already meaningful to them!•Do not let students copy anything that does not have a real function in the classroom or in the student’s daily life!

Strategies to Use with Beginning and Beginning-Intermediate Level StudentsThe Language Experience Approach

•Start with a shared activity

•Elicit an oral story of what happened during the activity

•The story gets written down

•Extension activities

Pizza

We bought the dough. Make the topping. Sauce. We cut the cheese into slices……

We bought the dough. We made the topping.

Techniques that Reinforce the Connection between Reading and Writing in Language Experience ActivitiesFor beginning level students:•When the students dictate the description of the activity for you to write down, sound out the words as you are writing them.•Take advantage of reading aloud by pointing out “strange” spellings of words; that is, words with low enough symbol-sound correspondence.•Point to key words as you read the text aloud.•If students write their own version of the text into their individual notebooks, encourage them to sound out words as they are writing them down.

For more advanced students:•Encourage students to read the text from the perspective of someone who did not participate in the shared activity: How does it sound? Is it comprehensible? Are any details missing? This same text can also be used for assessing writing, using a tool such as the 6 + 1 Trait model of writing (I will describe later).

Meditated Teaching

•Grabbing the teachable moment

•Being constantly aware of what students need

•Always being one step ahead of the student

•Predicting where the student is headed next

•Taking the perspective of the student

Re-writing

Re-reading

Writing

Reading

Oral language elicited from an activity

The complete cycle of reading/writing based on oral language in a Language Experience Text

example

How can you apply what you just heard about Language Experience Approach (LEA) to your classroom?Do you use LEA?

If yes, how?

Is there anything you know you should do differently? If not, how come?

Do you think you might try LEA now that you’ve thought about it?

Think of one Language Experience Activity that you could do.

More strategies

Strategies to Use with Beginning and Beginning-Intermediate Level StudentsThe Language Experience Approach

Storytelling Based on Photographs and VideosStudents create text based on a photograph (or a set of photographs) or a video that they have taken.

By eliciting written text from visuals that belong to the students, you are affirming their own value as producers of ideas and text.

Personal photographs that are either labeled or accompanied by text have a strong allure for others to

read, hence, the strong connection between writing (as the first step) and reading (the next step).

Strategies to Use with Beginning and Beginning-Intermediate Level StudentsThe Language Experience Approach

Storytelling Based on Photographs and Videos

Students as authors•Students must see themselves as authors who write in the foreign language and feel comfortable in that role.•They must be acknowledged by others as authors in that foreign language. •Give students plenty of opportunities to write text that is taken to the point of being produced as a book.•Books developed by students adhere to high standards and are treated with the respect that we afford regularly published books.

Authors chair

A student author is featured in the classroom

A student gets feedback about a particular piece of writing

The constant flow between reading and writing when students are engaged in these activities strengthens students’ language proficiency in ways that no drill or grammar or vocabulary exercise produced by an outsider can.

Cloud, Genesee & Hamayan, 2009

Modeling using published booksStudents use scripts and patterned language to produce their own writing

Students write their own versions of a book they have read

Students write a story they have read from the perspective of one of the characters

Students write about what happened the following day (after the published story ends)

Students write their own cookbook or travel guide based on all the books they have read that have to do with food or places

Strategies to Use with Beginning and Beginning-Intermediate Level StudentsThe Language Experience Approach

Storytelling Based on Photographs and Videos

Students as authors

Dialogue Journals: A written conversation that takes place over time between you (the teacher) and the student. The purpose of this on-going conversation is to find out things about the other person, NOT to correct language.

Dialogue Journals

•For your first prompt: Ask the student about something that you know he or she is passionate about. •Modulate your language so that it is at or just beyond the student’s proficiency level. •Avoid generalizations such as “Very interesting”; rather, individualize your response to what the student has written.•Make your responses personal—tell a story from when you were a child or adolescent that relates to the conversation you are having.•If you feel the student needs prompting, ask a question, but avoid asking too many questions. It is more important for the students to ask you questions because then they will want to read your response.•Have fun “talking” to your students; this is a great opportunity to get to know them.

Do you use Dialogue Journals?

Would you use Dialogue Journals?

What do you see as the biggest challenge with Dialogue Journals?

What are some possible benefits for YOUR students?

1. Think of an activity that you often do in your classroom that connects reading and writing.

2. Share it with a neighbor.

3. Reflect on how effective that activity is:• Is it meaningful and functional?• Is it relevant and interesting to students?• Does it build on oral language?• Does it expand students’ language?

• Does it connect to the curriculum or the students’ lives?

4. How can you change it to make it better?

Clearly, language skills are connected with one another. The interaction among the language skills is clear—one aids and extends the other. With careful planning, you can take advantage of these interconnections and really promote the growth of literacy as well as the underlying language competence of your students.

ehamayan@gmail.com

Making books:

vickiblackwell.com/makingbooks/index.htm

makingbooks.com/freeprojects.htmlAuthors talking about their writing:

www.learnoutloud.com/Podcast-Directory/Literature/Authors-Reading

www.readingrockets.org

Six + 1 Traits Model

www.nwrel.org

General ESL websites

www.esl-galaxy.com

www.ecenglish.com/learnenglish/

www.tesltools.com/

www.webenglishteacher.com/esl.html

Resources