Language at Work: Building Reading Comprehension Through Writing
Featured Speakers:
- Jenell Krishnan, Director of Writing Apprenticeship, WestEd
- Casey McAlduff, English Learner Program Associate, WestEd
Host:
- Danny Torres, Associate Director of Events and Digital Media, WestEd
Danny Torres:
All right, let’s get started. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the first of five sessions in our special K-5 Language, Literacy, and Learning Webinar program, which is under our Leading Together webinar series. Today’s topic, Language at Work: Building Reading Comprehension Through Writing. Our featured speakers today are Jenell Krishnan, director of Writing Apprenticeship at WestEd, and Casey McAlduff, English learner program associate for WestEd. Thank you all very much for joining us. My name is Danny Torres. I’m associate director of events and digital media for WestEd. I’ll be your host. Now, before we get into the content, I’d like to take a moment to introduce WestEd.
As a nonpartisan research, development, and service agency, WestEd works to promote excellence, improve learning, and increase opportunity for children, youth, and adults. Our staff partner with schools, districts, states, and others, providing a range of tailored services, including research and evaluation, professional learning, technical assistance, and policy guidance. We work to generate knowledge and apply evidence and expertise to improve policies, systems, and practices. Now, I’d like to pass the mic over to Jenell. Jenell, take it away.
Jenell Krishnan:
Aloha. Hi, hello to everyone who is here. It’s beautiful to be in community with you all. Let’s ground ourselves today in what we’re seeing in classrooms. Let’s do that before we dive in. I’d love to learn from your perspective, so on the screen here, we’ve got a poll. Your question is, how confident do you think that elementary students are in their ability to identify genre when they first encounter a text? So, let’s take a moment to respond to this poll. How confident do you think they are? Are they very confident, somewhat confident, not very confident, or not confident at all?
Okay, let’s see those polling results. We’ve got very confident, one person. I like that. Not so confident. Most of us said not very confident. Okay, I think that that’s something for us to be considering as we learn together today, that maybe our students need more confidence as they are offered a new text in front of them and the value of seeing a text for its genre features, so let’s ground our thinking in that perspective. But before we dig into this approach, let’s name what the research is telling us about reading and writing, because there is this deeply reciprocal relationship between these two things.
When students understand how texts are put together, their purpose, its structure, its language features, they become better at reading them. And when they write in a genre, they can read them more critically and they can understand the choices that authors are making. And this is what we mean by language at work. So, genre isn’t just a label that we put on a text after the fact. It is a social and a linguistic choice that reflects the purpose and audience that an author uses. So, when we teach students to notice those choices as readers and then to adopt or adapt them as writers, we’re really helping to build their comprehension in the deepest sense of that word.
And the research base is really strong. It comes from systemic functional linguistics, from genre pedagogy, and really decades of classroom studies that all point to the same direction, that explicit genre instruction accelerates both reading and writing development, especially for students who need additional exposure to different types of texts.
Casey McAlduff:
Hi, everybody. Thank you for being here. My name is Casey. We also wanna show you here two text samples to really illustrate what Jenell was just speaking about, which is the power of explicit genre and writing instruction. And these two samples of student writing are from two different students who are designated as English language learners. And these texts are from researcher Pauline Gibbons’ book, Scaffolding Language, Scaffolding Learning. It’s a really excellent text. Please check it out if you don’t know it yet. And text 1 on the left is from a student who’s at the early stages of their English learning journey. And text 2 is from a student who is fluent in spoken English. So we’re gonna ask that you take a moment to skim both of these texts and just consider your first reactions.
What are some things you notice about each text? And we’re gonna actually ask you to engage in the chat here. So, if you could just write a few reactions, what do you notice about text 1? What do you notice about text 2? There’s no right or wrong answers. Thanks, Tracy. Yeah, we might notice dialogue in that first text sample. What else are we seeing? I can point out a few things, too. Thank you, folks, for writing in. Yeah, in that second text, text 2, we see it’s all one paragraph. Right? Yeah, so we see some more punctuation and capitalization happening in text 1, for sure. Oh, okay, I’m seeing lack of verb tense in the first text. Yep. Interesting.
Thanks, Mary writes in, “The EL student has a sequence, but is lacking the transitions to mark the sequence.” Right. Okay, great. Thank you all. These are fantastic. Yeah. Brenda, thank you. One student has more exposure to exemplars in that genre, right? And that’s what we really wanna point out here, is that if you were to only look at grammar, you might be more critical of text 1 than text 2 since it does have more grammatical errors. Text 2 lacks punctuation. It’s that one long paragraph, like some of you have written in, but there’s more control there of standard grammar in English. That said, text 1 is more coherent, right? It’s actually easier for us to read as readers.
We see that that student, right, has a lot of strengths in their writing. Okay, they’re including paragraphs to attempt to organize their ideas. They’re attempting to use dialogue, as some people have noted, right? So we’re seeing conventions here, especially in text 1 of the genre of narrative. So, these text samples help show us that when a student has been explicitly taught a genre structure and has learned how to read like a writer, they make significant gains in their writing, regardless of where they are in their English learning journey.
And yes, Louise, thanks for that question. That is right. So, the student who wrote text 2 is designated as an English learner, but is fluent in spoken English, but is still designated as an English learner. And thanks, we can advance this slide. So, we can’t expect our students to just know what to do, right, right away when we give them a complex genre-specific text. So our question for today’s webinar is, really, what does this type of instruction look like in practice? And what are we gonna be doing today? So here’s our agenda.
And we’re gonna start off with students reading like writers, right? They’re learning that language is at work in every text, that the vocabulary, sentence structures, and text organization of the text that we read are not random. They reflect the purpose and audience of the genre. Students will examine mentor texts, and we’ll see this in the first task that we will focus on together, which is called Language Detective. They’re gonna talk about, right, how does a text open? What kinds of evidence does it use, right, depending on the genre. Students will also create a writing strategies list from there, so based on noticings from the text, how can we co-create with our students writing strategies lists for particular genres?
Then we’re gonna move into modeling a bit, how to open a narrative, which is the genre we’ll be focused on today. We’ll see how we can collaboratively write with our students or conduct a joint construction, and we’ll do a little bit of metacognitive reflection as well.
Jenell Krishnan:
Now, we’d like to briefly demonstrate this core routine, Reading Like a Writer. And so we’re going to do this through a task called Language Detectives, which students can use when reading a mentor text to notice those genre features. And so you’ll see this same inquiry stance extend directly into writing. So, reading like a writer, which we’re doing here through this task called Language Detectives, it’s really a powerful routine that invites students to approach a text with the eye of an author. So not just reading for joy and for content, what does this say? But how is this text written and why? What are those authorial choices being made?
So, here’s how it works. First, we read a mentor text together as a class. This is a strong, authentic example of a genre that we’re studying. And then students act as those language detectives. Their job is to notice those specific features of the genre. Maybe the way that it opens, the kinds of sentences that are being used, the organizational moves, maybe vocabulary. And so, as you read, in a text that I’ll be sharing in a second, I want you to be noticing and adding your noticings to the chat, so we’ll be practicing Language Detectives together.
So, what are those features of the genre that you are seeing? And don’t worry about being perfect. We’re going to be adding our thoughts to the chat. And I’ll be reading this text in a moment. So, this is Mia’s Wobbly Bike, so as I read, be looking for those. Be engaging in your language detectives and adding to the chat.
One sunny day, Mia rolled her shiny red bike to the sidewalk in front of her house. She had never ridden the bike alone. She took a deep breath. “I don’t think I can do this,” Mia said, looking at her wobbly wheels. Her dad knelt down next to her. “I believe in you. Just push and go!” he said. Mia pushed off. The bike wobbled left, then right. She almost tipped over. “Keep pedaling!” her dad called. Mia pedaled harder, and slowly, the wobbles turned into a smooth glide. “I’m doing it! I’m really doing it!” Mia shouted with a huge grin. She rode all the way down the block, feeling proud and free. From that day on, Mia rode her bike every single afternoon.
So, let’s see. Do we have anything percolating in the chat? Anything that we as language detectives have noticed in this text? Tracy shares that we’ve got some dialogue in there. Absolutely, we’ve got Mia and her father engaging in dialogue. Cindy shares there’s some descriptive language. We’ve got setting at the beginning with, “One sunny day.” Susan shares that. Absolutely. We’ve got transitions to help the passage flow. Thanks, Kelly. We’ve got story plot that Brenda supports us with. There’s a problem. Yes, Lenora. We’ve got a main character. It has all the different features. Thank you for noticing that, Louise. That’s so beautiful.
Casey McAlduff:
We also wanted to highlight here, and thank you all for engaging in the chat again, that even though we’re not modeling this part of the task, a core piece of a Language Detective task is that students would be working together and engaging in discourse about the narrative genre. So students would be trying to find those different features together, and they’d be talking as they do it. And that really supports language development as we know, and it also supports comprehension. So, here on the screen is an offering in terms of what kind of language supports you might offer your students to support them in having that conversation about the genre.
Jenell Krishnan:
So, like we mentioned earlier, we always wanna start with what students know and can do, and that can help us build a writing strategies list. This is not a checklist that’s handed down from teacher to student. This is something that grows organically from students’ own inquiry into texts. So, we are going to take a moment and co-construct our own writing strategies list for writing narrative based on what we have in our chat, so I think that we’re going to take a moment to do that now. Give me just a second.
All right, so some things that I saw was dialogue. I definitely saw dialogue in the chat. Other things I saw was descriptive language. I saw descriptive language in the chat. I think I saw a conflict. There was main, like, a main character. What else did we see in the chat earlier? Something about a story plot.
Casey McAlduff:
And we also had somebody mention the transitions.
Jenell Krishnan:
Ah, transitions for flow. I remember that statement as well. And I think that this is just a really nice strategies list that we could then use if we were to write our own narrative based on a story that we’ve already read ourselves. So, that’s a little bit about building a writing strategies list based on the assets that students bring with us.
Casey McAlduff:
And essentially what would happen next in our flow, in our instructional flow in the task sequence, is that students would then use that writing strategies list that you co-create to write together, and that starts with writing with you as the teacher. And we begin that by modeling. And someone else had also wrote in the chat one of the features was the setting, the orientation, right? The one sunny day to set up the story. So we’re gonna model how to start a narrative now using a screencast video, so you’ll hear Jenell modeling how to start a narrative based on the text about Mia and her wobbly bike.
And then this is a process we’re also gonna see replicated in a video that we’ll see next, where students are jointly constructing a narrative together as a class. Here we go. And you’ll see there’s the additional orientation support on the side, right? So something like that could be a piece of chart paper that you offer to students, right, as you’re modeling so they can really start to think about what is included in the orientation to a narrative.
Janell Krishnan:
Authors choose how to start their stories using many different strategies. Let’s take a look at how the author started Mia’s story. “One sunny day, Mia rolled her shiny red bike to the sidewalk. She had never ridden it alone. She took a deep breath.” Now, we know where we are, who it’s about, and that something’s probably about to be hard. Before I rewrite this, I wanna think about the big parts of the story. Mia takes her bike outside. She’s a little scared. Her dad helps her try. She wobbles, but she keeps going. And then she feels really proud.
I think I’m going to start retelling this story the same way as this author. Let’s see. How will I start? “One morning, Mia took her new bike outside. She had never ridden it by herself. Her stomach felt a little jumpy.” These are the same ideas, just in my own words. And that’s the beginning of my narrative.
Casey McAlduff:
So, now that we’ve modeled how to orient a narrative, how to start or begin a narrative, the next step in the task sequence is for students to write together and conduct what we call a joint construction. You might know this as collaboratively writing in your classroom. And this is a quote I wanna ground us in from researcher Pamela Spycher. “Joint construction provides teachers with opportunities to observe how students are, quote, ‘taking up’ the content ideas and the language that they’ve been learning. These observations allow teachers to specifically target where they need to clarify content misunderstandings or do more language work. Jointly constructing texts is also a way for teachers to model how real writers write and that writing is a process and that the process is messy.”
So, in a second, we’re gonna start to play a video of an actual teacher conducting a joint construction in her classroom of first graders. But as you watch the video, we want you to ask yourself these questions. What did they do? So what did the students do? Where in the text did they do their work? And how did this help them? How did it both build their reading comprehension and their writing skills, as well as their language development? Okay and just to give you a little context here, in this classroom, students are reading the book that many of you might be familiar with called Last Stop on Market Street from Matt de la Pena. And we’re, again, gonna see them writing together the orientation of the narrative.
Teacher:
Yesterday, you said that in this story, we have CJ, Nana, Colby, and Miguel. You said that it’s taking place in the rain and outside of the church. And we also learned that they’re going to get on the bus. The story’s taking place in the bus. And you said in the orientation, we learned that it’s happening in the morning because it’s after church. And you said that the problem in the story is that CJ thinks it’s not pretty in his community, okay? So I want you to look through the pictures again. So take time to look through the pictures. And I want you to think about how could you tell the orientation of the story, the beginning part of the story, as if you are the author?
So, sometimes, authors start with, “Once upon a time.” That’s usually, like, for fairy tale. Or they could say, “One day.” So, with your partners, I want you to start this story and I want you to tell about this part of the story and about this part, okay? And try to think about some of the things that CJ said.
Student:
We’re still thinking right now.
Teacher:
Oh, you’re still thinking? Okay. If you want to, you can use, “One day,” or, “There once was,” and you can think about what was happening here. I’d like to call on one of my friends to start us off. And we’re gonna do the orientation, so I’m gonna keep this in blue so that we know that the blue writing is the orientation. One day, what? CJ, uh-huh. Keep going. Huh?
Student:
Is-
Teacher:
And keep going. Say the whole idea.
Student:
Is surrounded by dirt.
Teacher:
Good. Now I wanna ask you a question. Is that in the beginning of the story or at the end?
Student:
In the beginning.
Teacher:
Yeah, so let’s hold onto that thought. Good job. What does happen at the beginning? One day, CJ… And was he inside church or outside of church?
Students:
Outside.
Teacher:
Okay, he was skipping down the steps outside of church. And let me read what the author says. The author says, “The outside air smelled like freedom.” So we could say he did feel free. He felt free. And I know you really wanna use that word freedom, so how could we talk about what felt like freedom?
Students:
The air.
Teacher:
Oh. And everyone say freedom!
Students:
Freedom!
Teacher:
Because when he was coming outside of church, he felt like, “Oh, I can do whatever I want. Now I’m free. I feel freedom.” Okay, what did you wanna add onto that?
Casey McAlduff:
That video brings me so much joy. So, one piece I meant to highlight prior to watching is that there’s also key moments in joint construction, even though it’s a whole class task, where students are engaged in partner talk. And that partner talk serves as an essential scaffold to build students’ understanding. So that’s a really important part when you conduct this in your own classrooms or when you’re working on this type of task with teachers. Okay, so we’re now gonna take a moment and we’re gonna return to the questions that we asked you to focus on before the video. And these are the questions here, some metacognitive reflection questions. And we’re presenting these questions also as a task, right? A really essential part of the writing process.
And we would offer these same questions to students about what they just engaged in. And this self-reflection enables students to, once again, read like a writer, so this time with an eye toward their own work and equipped with the tools to critically think about how their language choices illustrate their comprehension more deeply. So, we’ll just take a second here to add some thoughts to the chat. What did students do in this video? What did you notice? Where in the text were they working? And how do we feel like this task and this process, this kind of series of tasks we’ve engaged in, have helped students deepen their comprehension?
Great. And thanks, Carmen. I’m seeing your notes. “Students work in partnerships to discuss and optimize their language, right? Then they turn back to the whole group to continue to craft and iterate.” And thanks, Alana. “Help them deepen their comprehension by having to retell the first two pages in the author’s perspective.” Great. Yes, I love that, “Eliciting that information in the moment helps lower that filter to participate.” A lot of that, like, perfectionism that comes up around writing.
Yeah, and we saw, like… Juanita, thank you. We saw evidence of students learning, the prior learning they had done all over the walls of that classroom, right? And they were drawing on words like orientation and setting to help them write. Excellent. Yeah, thank you. Love what else is coming up in the chat. Please read your peers’, your colleagues’ thoughts here in the chat if you haven’t yet. Beautiful. Oh, these are so great. Thank you all. Yeah. Great, since students are discussing with others prior to actually writing, it helps them to build a stronger comprehension of what they are doing, right? And it helps them to improve their writing once they need to do it on their own. Excellent. Okay, I’m gonna pass it to Jenell for some of our takeaways.
Jenell Krishnan:
So, for our time together, we really want to reiterate that genre instruction really helps students read like writers and that writing strategies lists support both reading and writing development. And as we just saw, joint construction or collaborative writing with students, with that student talk, it supports all learners. And also, metacognitive reflection builds awareness of one’s thinking. And I’ll invite Danny now to share a little bit about our Language, Literacy, and Learning services.
Danny Torres:
Well, thank you, Jenell and Casey, for a great session, and thank you to everyone who joined us today. We really appreciate you being here. Our Language, Literacy, and Learning service is a comprehensive suite of professional learning and technical assistance services that build educator and leadership capacity to deliver high-quality literacy instruction. If you’re interested in learning about our Language, Literacy, and Learning services, please feel free to visit us online at wested.org/language-literacy-learning, or you can scan the QR code displayed on the screen here. And please feel free to reach out to Jenell and Casey via email if you have any questions about the work that we discussed today. You can reach Jenell at [email protected], and you can reach Casey at [email protected].
And please join us for the next session in our five-part K-5 Language, Literacy, and Learning series on July 31st with Menya Cole and Elizabeth Zagata. Our focus, Comprehension Without Compromise: High Expectations for Every Reader. To register, visit us online at wested.org/k5-language-literacy. And finally, if you’re interested in learning more about WestEd and staying connected, you can sign up for WestEd’s email newsletter to receive updates. Subscribe online at wested.org/subscribe, or you can scan the QR code displayed on the screen here. You can also follow us on LinkedIn and Bluesky. With that, thank you all very, very much. We’ll see you next time.