What Is A Frame? (With Examples)
There is a lot of information out there in the world. Our brains need a way to know what to pay attention to and what to ignore. Think of a frame like a story or narrative. It presents information about the world by emphasizing certain aspects of our experience while de emphasizing others. Framing can be done with words, visuals, prices, and ideas.
Framing is common in politics. Often both sides will have access to the same events and same facts, but they come away with different conclusions. One reason this happens is because each side has different values. The values emphasize and de emphasize different parts of the event.
For example, take the hot button topic of abortion. One side focuses on how abortion is about a woman’s right to do what she wants with her body. This value leads that side to be for abortion. The other side focuses on the person hood of the child. By framing the discussion as one about person hood, they reach the conclusion that abortion should not be allowed.
Frames also are common persuasion, manipulation, relationships, and pretty much any type of conversation since people must choose what to spend their time talking and focusing on.
Another example of the power of framing was a study done about crime. People had crime described to them as a “beast preying on a community.” Another group had crime described to them as a “virus infecting a person.” The first group was more likely to support measures like increasing the police force and jailing offenders, while the other group was more likely to support measures that focused on systemic changes or social reform. So we can see how what we talk about before we discuss a topic effects how we approach that second topic. This is framing.
So what is the purpose of framing? Since framing emphasizes certain elements of reality over others, a frame’s purpose is to tell a story that helps our brains decide what is happening in the world. For example, if you have a rough day at work, you could tell yourself a story about how rough your life is and how you should quit. This story emphasizes the negative parts of work. You could also change the frame by telling yourself that these difficult events are a challenge that is making you stronger if you can make it through. Both frames emphasize different aspects of reality and tell the brain what is happening.
Frames can help you establish control in social situations, they can help you focus your life, and frames can help you get through difficult times. This article is going to teach everything you need to know about frames from a scientific perspective. We are also going to include some practical tips on how you can be better at framing things in your life.
Types Of Frames (A Complete List)
- Power frame: I am more important than you and have better options. For example,
- Problem frame: you have all these problems you haven’t fixed so you need my help.
- Authority frame: my way of seeing things is morally, empirically, or factually more correct.
- Prize frame: I am more valuable. Why should I do business with you?
- Time frames: my time is scarce, you better meet my demands before I leave.
- Intrigue frames: I’ll tell you a good story with all the important facts at the end.
- Analyst frame: facts and reasoning are all that matter.
- Loss frame: person X has taken from you what is rightfully yours.
- Redirect frame: I’m not here for the reason you think. I’m actually doing Y. (see the section on framing in persuasion)
- Mirror frame: Accuse them of what you are being accused of. This is basically gaslighting.
- Long term frame: That might be good in the short term but do we know about the long term?
- Contrast frame: This is used in advertising frequently. A decent car looks much nicer parked next to two terrible cars.
- Redirect frame: Think of what they expect and then do or say something different. See the section on frames in persuasion for more.
- Reinterpretation: X actually means Y.
- The “D” reframe: Deflect, delay, deny, discount, distract, divide, discredit, and deal. In other words, find a way to do one of these things to their argument. For example, “delay.” Argue that your opponent’s plan isn’t important and should be delayed so the group can focus on your topic which is much more pressing.
- Subversion reframe. If someone trys to say the issue is x, find a way to say the issue is actually y. For example when someone says “the question is whether we should tax these people more,” say “the issue isn’t taxation at all but whether we should focus on immigration rules.”
What Makes A Frame Appealing? (Frame Science)
There are certain things that make a frame powerful versus weak. A powerful frame is more appealing to people while a weak frame is easily dismissed as the wrong way of looking at the world. Science says that effective frames have 10 different characteristics that control how appealing a frame is to the mind.
- Repetition: Good frames are repeated in a frequent and timely manner. How long has it been since people heard your frame?
- Relevancy/Identity Threat: People care most about frames that threaten their way of life.
- Credible Messenger: The person who delivers the frame must be credible or people won’t accept that way of looking at the world.
- Emotional Match: If you tell a story to a peaceful audience about revenge and bitterness, people won’t be as likely to accept that way of framing the world since it doesn’t match their inner emotions.
- Episodic: Powerful frames must be presented through a specific story or anecdote.
- Prior Attitude Coherence: Appealing frames build on a person’s already existing set of beliefs.
- Group Approval: A person is more likely to accept a frame if they believe their in group already accepts it.
- Fewer Reasonable Options: Science has shown that too many options make decisions difficult. The same applies to the number of frames and the complexity of each frame. Simple is better.
- Prevent Loss: People are afraid to lose more than they are excited to gain. Good frames focus on what people are going to lose.
- Responsibility: People want to minimize their culpability and maximize their benefits. Appealing frames tell people that they deserve all sorts of benefits and aren’t responsible for any of the negatives.
I would also add 3 practical tips about frames:
- Good frames surprise people and catch their attention by challenging what they expect to happen. Learn more about capturing people’s attention here.
- People are often able to have their frame accepted simply because they are more stubborn and verbally dominant in advocating their frame than the other options. See how to improve your stubbornness here or in the section below on “how to practice frame control.”
- If you want to maintain the frame, don’t answer people’s questions. Instead respond to a question when they ask a question. For example if they say “why should we listen to you,” you can respond “why would you ask that?”
See these studies for more on the science of what makes people choose one frame over another.
Journal article on the types of frames.
More psychology journal references and other details about frames.
How Do You Undermine A Frame? (Science)
In order to attack a frame, simply attack one or more of the 10 things that make a frame strong listed above. Here are a list of ways to attack a frame.
- Point out incoherent values or show contradictions.
- Perform small denials or defiances that disrupt the person sharing the opposition frame. Challenge their words and definitions they use, disrupt their flow, ask irrelevant questions, attack parts that are not core to their thesis, make fun of something, minimize the importance of what they are saying.
- Simply have a better story for explaining the facts of the situation.
- Frame buffet trick. Dodge the frame and focus on what elements of it that you want. See our article on dodging. Try using the phrase “the issue isn’t X, but Y,” or “what really matters is X,” to keep the focus on what you want to talk about.
- Use the I’m not convinced yet frame by pretending that the other frame hasn’t persuaded you enough.
- Tell a riveting story with all the important facts and information at the end. This works really well when someone is nit picking your frame.
- Use questions. For example, get people thinking about the counter arguments. Try this one “what would the other side say about your point of view?”
- Attack the person’s authority. Do they have experience in the subject? What do other experts say?
- Use stubbornness. Simply restate the frame and be willing to walk away if they don’t accept your way.
- Look at the practical examples for frame control in specific life situations below, or reframe using the frame techniques listed above.
How Do You Practice Frame Control?
There are many levels to frame control practice. Remember the most important step of frame control is practicing being stubborn. The first step will help you develop this stubbornness.
First, you can practice this by simply starting debates with people. Practice taking the opposite position that you normally would as it will be more difficult for you to hold your frame. Remember your goal isn’t accuracy. Your goal is practicing being assertive and stubborn. While normally you want to quickly change your mind if you are wrong, in this situation you want to practice disagreeing just to disagree. This is somewhat of a version of assertiveness training.
Second you can practice frame control with total strangers on text and video chat sites like omegle. Let them choose the topic of conversation and then either practice focusing the conversation on an aspect you are interested in or practice changing the conversation to another topic. Then use the frames above to keep it on the new topic. This particularly works well if you can join a debate style forum since frames are ever present in debates.
Third you can practice frame control in every day conversations. When someone makes a value judgement, simply disagree and assert something else. When they start to argue, use the techniques above, remain stubborn, and keep your frame.
Fourth you can practice frame control in minor work situations. Simply find ways to change how your coworker or boss is approaching things. Ask yourself how else you could look at this problem. Practice reframing even the smallest conversations like where to go to lunch and what the best sports team or video game is.
Fifth is to practice the preparation aspect of frame control. Think about the frames you regularly come across during the day and think of ways to subvert them. See the list of ways to undermine frames above.
Finally, practice improving your frames by studying how people tell stories. Understanding storytelling whether it be though comedy, books, or movies will make you better at framing. Practice applying elements of good storytelling you pick up. Pay careful attention to how people shift the way you approach a topic and pay attention to what people do to keep your attention.
Frames In The Real World (EXAMPLES)
Sometimes it is easier to understand a topic with examples. Here are specific examples of frames and frame tricks in common categories.
Many of the frames listed above work well in persuasive situations. But here are a few examples:
- When someone begins to nit pick you, restate your main thesis and then be willing to walk away. If people don’t have a bad enough problem, there is no point trying to persuade them.
- If you are cold calling people expect you to try to persuade them to buy. They will often say they already have a product and they don’t need yours. Instead of arguing, say “I’m really glad you already have software. I was just calling to give you information on the current marketplace so you can hold your current provider accountable.” This is a version of the Redirect frame listed above. This book has great reframing phrases for cold calls if you do sales.
- Sales people often use the loss frame in relation to deals. Tell the person when the deal is expiring or when you are about to run out of products.
Here is a good introductory book on the importance of frames in persuasion. This book also can help you see the ways to effect a frame long before you start talking about it.
Debate requires good frames. Essentially you are trying to convince someone that your way of looking at the world is the right way and theirs is wrong. Here are a few frames that work well in this situation.
- Questions are very successful at a frame game. Simply use questions to poke holes in the person’s argument. For example “what would the other side say,” or “what are the disadvantages of that plan?” Ask questions with a face and tone of skepticism.
- When people complain and bring up objections, simply frame them as minor hangups. “I wouldn’t let a little thing like that bother me.”
- Attack the person’s authority. Show they have bias, bad character, no authority, they are overreacting, overeager, incoherent, missing the point, or running away from the real issue.
- Negotiate the frame. Ask the other person about their assumptions. Are there better assumptions we could make that would lead us to different conclusions?
- Often you can’t persuade people that an argument or frame is wrong. In this case use the delay tactic. Frame the issue as something that doesn’t need to be decided at this time. Argue that something else is more important. “While we sit here talking about taxes, people starve in Africa.” (Be careful, someone might reframe your reframe by arguing that “to not decide is to decide.” Since not stopping something shows support by allowing it to happen.)
See this book for an excellent guide on arguing, some of which has to do with framing.
There are a few useful frames for manipulation. If you want to learn more about the key to manipulation though, check out this article.
- Often people you talk with will have thought of all the different moves you could make. Instead of arguing with them, simply frame them as a sneaky schemer. Why did they take the time to think about all the negative aspects of a situation?
- A useful frame in manipulation is the parent frame. Pretend the person you are interacting with is your child. Teach them the right way to do things. This often includes things like a parental tone, facial expressions, and oversimplification.
- One way to get people to accept your frame is to use the overwhelm into heuristic mode trick. If the brain is give too many options, it will resort back to what it knows and finds safe. If you want a person to not select the new frame that is being presented, make it seem really complicated and confuse them.
- Deny and insist. This is the basis of any frame battle. You can always simply deny that the person is right and insist on your way of looking at things.
- Gaslighting or mirror framing is an other trick. Whatever they are accusing you of, simply accuse them of the same thing. This muddles the water and makes it hard to assert a clear winner or loser.
- Finally is frame shaming. Instead of responding to the substance of a person’s frame, simply call it names. You can try “old fashioned,” “stupid,” “gaudy,” and more. Ask yourself what identity you can give the person’s frame that would disqualify it in your culture. For example if you are more liberal you might say something about how Trump would like that idea. If you are conservative you might say how Biden probably came up with that idea.
Cognitive weaknesses are regularly exploited in advertising to control the frame.
- The contrast effect. One item looks better when in the presence of a worse one. A person in a normal suit looks better in a room full of people in casual clothing. 80% meat versus 20% fat. Clothing stores often play classical music and hire people with accents to give the appearance of wealth and to drive the prices up. This creates a strong contrast with the outside world which isn’t that way.
- See also the decoy effect, the default effect, the denomination effect, distinction bias, and more here.
Frame control in conversations often has a slightly different feel because your goal is to maintain control with out angering the other person. Here are a few tricks
- Negative frame. Don’t think about a spider. Tell the person not to think about something and their brain will have a tough time not thinking about it.
- Use PreSuasion. If you want people to focus on achievement, competition, and goal setting, play them a clip of a race. See this book for more.
- Confusion trick. One powerful way to keep the frame of a situation is to keep people confused as to what you are doing. By keeping their attention, you maintain control because they are trying to figure you out and reacting to your behavior. Jokes, weird stories, and odd behaviors accomplish this.
- Dodging tricks. Dodging tricks are very useful for maintaining frames in conversations. One easy to use trick is to say this when someone brings up a topic you don’t want to focus on, “the issue isn’t x but y,” or “what I find interesting is this (z) aspect of what you said,” or “let’s stay focused on X,” or “we aren’t going to have that conversation.” See this article for more.
- Question tricks. You can always just ask someone “what does that have to do with the topic of conversation?”
Frame control is very important in an insult or comeback exchange. The key to a good insult frame is to have a brand in mind for the person. Here are a few suggestions: sensitive, creepy, awkward, shady, whiner, needy, entitled, weak, dramatic, delusional, oblivious, child, loser, unpopular, desperate, hack, guilty, average, less than. Think about what characterization most hurts your competitor’s credibility and then make sure to frame all of your attacks in that way. See our insult rolodex article for more.
- “I bet you are single because your face looks like a 911 crash site.”
- “I’m not going to exploit my opponent’s youth and inexperience.”
In The Workplace
Some people in the workplace can be extremely difficult to deal with. Consider applying these frames to their behaviors.
- If they are constantly criticizing you, frame them as a whiner. Ask what their solution is and then attack it.
- If they are always telling you what to do and assigning you tasks when they aren’t your boss, frame them as lazy. A hard working person wouldn’t be focused on giving work away.
- If they keep arguing, frame them as a time waster.
- Framing a person as helpless, irresponsible, or sensitive seems to always play well.
Keep in mind these are all basically character attacks and don’t actually address the argument. Be careful who is listening as your audience might lose respect for you if you never make a logical argument.
How You See The World
Your mental approach to life can have a strong effect on outcomes. Here are some tricks you can use. Keep in mind that you might see this as cheesy or an unrealistic way of looking at the world. You might even think that looking at only parts of the world is lying to yourself. This isn’t correct. You are consciously choosing to focus on certain elements of the world and not others. There is nothing unrealistic or false about this. Why would you focus on a way of looking at the world that doesn’t improve your life?
- Reframe setbacks or mistakes as opportunities to learn. You either win or you learn.
- Reframe obstacles as ways to weed out your competitors. Think of all the people who are quitting right now!
- Reframe in long terms. Will this little thing matter in 50 years?
- Transmute bad to good. Every bad event in life has a positive side. People dying close to you can make you appreciate the little time you have left. Medical issues can give you more time to read and think than you would normally have if you had to work. Lying or cheating can teach you to be a better observer of people. Another example would be if people insult you all the time and you aren’t good at insults, simply write each insult down and memorize it. Eventually these people’s insults will have helped you out.
- The victim reframe. Instead of looking at the world happening to you, take responsibility for what you do in the world. While what happened might not be right or your fault, it still happened. What could you have done to prevent that event? If there isn’t something you could have done, move on and stop thinking about it.
- Wordplay reframe. “I’m not good enough.” “That comment actually shows humility. It actually means you might be humble enough to master this subject if you put in the work. Arrogance is always a serious stumbling block for learning and growth.”
If you want to learn more about reframing how you see the world and fixing your mindset, check out this book on stoicism, this simplified stoicism book, this article on nlp reframing (not so scientific but gives practical examples), or this article on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and frames.


Write in the Middle: A Workshop for Middle School Teachers
Learn effective practices and strategies to help students become confident and proficient writers.
A video workshop for middle school teachers; 8 one-hour video programs, workshop guide, and website.
Write in the Middle: A Workshop for Middle School Teachers is an eight-part professional development workshop designed to help teachers learn effective practices and strategies to use with middle school students in writing instruction. Through classroom footage of excellent teachers modeling successful strategies and interviews with teachers, students, and nationally recognized experts about the writing process, workshop participants will learn ways to create a positive and productive writing environment for young adolescents.
In this eight-part workshop, classroom video and insightful discussion illustrate effective ways teachers can help their students become confident and proficient writers.
Middle school teachers from across the country share specific strategies they use with their students, and extensive video from each of their classrooms gives viewers an opportunity to see those strategies in action. The workshop explores several common themes that underlie effective writing instruction at the middle school level—providing engaging prompts, allowing student choice, modeling good writing, and using innovative approaches like multigenre writing. Some workshop videos feature aspects of the writing process, such as revision and pre-writing, while others illustrate successful strategies for teaching specific writing forms such as poetry or persuasive essays.
Individual Workshop Descriptions
Workshop 1: Creating a Community of Writers
After a brief introduction to the goals of all eight workshop sessions, a middle school teacher and writing expert Linda Rief and several of the teachers whose classrooms are featured in Write in the Middle share strategies they use to build a safe writing environment for their students starting at the beginning of the school year.
Extended classroom video segments demonstrate some community-building activities teachers can use with their own students. Through classroom examples, teacher discussions, and interviews, Workshop 1 also examines how room arrangements can encourage written and spoken communication and how sharing their writing helps students become part of the writing community.
“Creating a Community of Writers” closes with an exploration of some of the psychological and emotional needs specific to young adolescents and their learning.
Workshop 2: Making Writing Meaningful
Workshop 2 demonstrates how teachers use authentic sources and topics to prompt students to write about things that matter to them—subjects that relate to their lives, relationships, and communities. The topic may be the students themselves—their feelings, emotions, reactions—or it may involve outside forces that have an impact on their lives.
Damond Moodie, a teacher from Oakland, California, uses current events as a prompt for encouraging his seventh-graders to write. Using television, newspapers, the Internet, and radio as sources, the students locate and summarize stories that interest them. Allen Teng, another teacher from Southern California, uses various resources and activities to guide his seventh-grade students through a lesson designed to help them develop and substantiate their opinions on controversial issues. We see Gloria Hamilton, who teaches eighth grade in the Los Angeles area, using an advice-column approach to prompt student writing.
In addition to classroom segments, the video also features teacher discussions about student engagement and excerpts from an interview with Linda Rief, the author of Seeking Diversity: Language Arts With Adolescents.
Many students—and teachers—avoid reading and writing poetry because it seems so difficult and foreign to their everyday experience. But for middle school students, poetry offers an unparalleled opportunity to explore feelings and emotions and to increase awareness of the power of written expression. In Workshop 3, we see two master teachers—Vivian Johnson, who teaches eighth grade in Elizabethton, Tennessee, and Jack Wilde, a fifth-grade teacher from Hanover, New Hampshire—helping their students develop as readers and writers of poetry.
Vivian Johnson introduces a mini-lesson on line breaks. The lesson features exemplars; excerpts from books on writing poetry; opportunities for discussion, sharing, and response; and writing applications. Throughout the classroom segments, we see how Vivian’s carefully structured, student-centered approach fosters her students’ appreciation and understanding of poetry and helps them begin to find their own poetic voices.
Like Vivian, Jack Wilde uses exemplars to teach his fifth-grade students about writing poetry. In the lesson featured in the video, Jack has the class read and analyze a published poem and then practice writing stanzas modeled on the exemplar to combine into a class poem. After the children share their writing, Jack leads them in a discussion of the difference between poetry and prose. Later, students will choose their own topics and write individual poems modeled on the exemplar.
Rounding out the video are excerpts from a conversation between Jack and Vivian, in which they share their overall approaches to teaching poetry as well as their reflections on specific instructional practices and strategies. Also featured is a cameo appearance from author and educator Tom Romano (Writing With Passion: Life Stories, Multiple Genres).
Workshop 4: Teaching Persuasive Writing
The fourth workshop features the classrooms of two teachers: sixth-grade language arts teacher Jenny Beasley from Somerset, Kentucky, and fifth-grade teacher Jack Wilde. Both are teaching units on persuasive writing that allow students to write about topics that matter to them—topics drawn from their experiences within their own communities. Also featured are excerpts from a discussion in which the two teachers reflect on their strategies and practices.
For Jenny’s students, the definition of community is wide-ranging—it includes their families, their school, and their town. But under this broad umbrella, Jenny encourages her students to think specifically and concretely about issues that interest them. The students begin by exploring a range of possible editorial topics. When we catch up with the class, they already have narrowed their focus to one issue. Now, with Jenny’s help, the students are laying the groundwork for effective and authentic editorials by stating their opinion, identifying their audience and purpose, and beginning to think about support for their point of view.
Meanwhile, Jack Wilde is introducing his students to persuasive writing by asking them to write on a familiar subject—their school community. Using a skillful mix of modeling, brainstorming, and conferring, Jack is teaching his class how to develop and organize an effective persuasive essay. The children’s audience is the school principal and their purpose is to persuade him to go along with a suggested change—letting fifth-graders go home for lunch or giving students more computer time, for example. We see the students beginning their first drafts, well on their way to the unit’s culminating activity: choosing representative essays for the principal to read and respond to.
Workshop 5: Teaching Multigenre Writing
Workshop 5 centers on multigenre writing, an eclectic approach to writing instruction that offers students a wide range of options for expressing ideas and communicating knowledge. As students explore different avenues for translating what they think or know into writing, they begin to understand that there is no single “right way” to communicate. Instead, writing demands intelligent, informed choices based on purpose, audience, content, and personal preference. Giving students the freedom to make these choices fosters their creativity and increases their engagement.
The first teacher featured in the video is Laurie Swistak from Newport, Rhode Island, whose fifth-graders are starting work on a research-based multigenre unit. Laurie begins by reviewing FQI—Facts/Questions/Interpretation —an inquiry framework that helps students think critically about genre choice. Through the course of two class periods, we see Laurie use whole-class and small group work to prepare her students to use FQI independently.
In the second part of the video, we see St. Paul teacher Mary Cathryn Ricker and her seventh-grade students approach multigenre writing from a different angle. Over the next few months, the students will prepare a portfolio of multigenre pieces focused on personal experience. To get the students started, Mary Cathryn introduces several literary models including Jerry Spinelli’s entertaining memoir, Knots in My Yo-Yo String, and a collection of biographical poems about George Washington Carver. Later, we see her use a student poem—written in both English and Spanish—as a prompt, a particularly apt choice for her class of second-language learners.
Also featured in the video are excerpts from a conversation between Mary Cathryn and Laurie, and from an interview with Tom Romano, the author of Blending Genre, Altering Style: Writing Multigenre Papers and a national expert on multigenre writing.
Workshop 6: Responding to Writing: Teacher to Student
Because of the personal nature of writing, one of the best ways to teach the craft is to interact directly with individual students. To make these vital student-teacher conferences as effective as possible, teachers need to be intentional in their planning and practice. At the same time, they must balance the benefits of conferencing with the challenges of fitting it into their busy classroom schedules.
“Responding to Writing: Teacher to Student” demonstrates how five teachers—Jenny Beasley, Vivian Johnson, Mary Cathryn Ricker, Laurie Swistak, and Jack Wilde—use student-teacher conferences to help their students improve as writers. The workshop provides classroom illustrations of several different approaches to conferring with students including formal one-on-one conferences, informal one-on-one interactions, and formal and informal conferences with student response groups.
Through interviews and discussion, the teachers reflect on their practice: planning effective one-on-one and group conferences, providing direction without taking over students’ papers, using conferences to assess student learning and communicate expectations, and dealing with classroom management issues related to conferencing. The workshop also features excerpts from interviews with Tom Romano (Writing With Passion: Life Stories, Multiple Genres) and Linda Rief (Seeking Diversity: Language Arts With Adolescents).
Workshop 7: Responding to Writing: Peer to Peer
Peer responses provide a tremendous learning opportunity for young writers. These interactions help students with topic generation and idea development, increase their confidence about sharing their work, force them to look more objectively at their own writing, give them valuable feedback for possible revisions, and allow them to learn from the writing successes and challenges of their peers.
“Responding to Writing: Peer to Peer” visits the classrooms of three teachers—fifth-grade teacher Jack Wilde, seventh-grade teacher Velvet McReynolds, and eighth-grade teacher Vivian Johnson—to explore various ways that teachers can structure student interactions, from whole-class responses to informal writing partnerships.
The video highlights teaching strategies that help students learn how to respond appropriately and meaningfully to each other’s writing. Both Jack and Velvet model response using their own writing, and Jack and his students demonstrate how a whole-class response to an individual writer can help all the students hone their conferencing skills. We also sit in as Jack facilitates a small response group, another way of helping students learn how to respond more effectively.
The video abounds with classroom examples of students interacting. It also features excerpts from teacher discussions about peer conferencing, held at the end of the school year, as well as comments from Linda Rief, an eighth-grade English teacher and the author of Seeking Diversity: Language Arts With Adolescents.
Workshop 8: Teaching the Power of Revision
Workshop 8 takes viewers into the classrooms of three language arts teachers—Velvet McReynolds, Mary Cathryn Ricker, and Jack Wilde—as their students tackle the ongoing task of revision.
To Velvet McReynolds, revision is at the heart of the writing process—it’s “where the magic happens.” Using a student exemplar, class discussion, handouts, and individual and small-group work, Velvet prompts her seventh-graders to focus on revising personal narratives they wrote earlier in the year. The two-day session culminates with a celebration circle where students share “before” and “after” versions of their papers.
Mary Cathryn Ricker’s seventh-grade students are beginning work on an autobiographical multigenre project. On the second day of the unit, Mary Cathryn presents a mini-lesson on the Barry Lane revision technique “exploding the moment.” After the students “mine” their writing notebooks for a piece of personal writing to revise, Mary Cathryn moves around the room, helping them come up with details that will expand and improve their writing.
Jack Wilde also is teaching a mini-lesson, this one on leads for persuasive essays. Using models drawn from past students’ papers, Jack helps his class generate a list of effective ways to begin their papers. Then, after the students have drafted openings for their essays, they confer with one another and with Jack about possible revisions.
Throughout the workshop, we hear reflections on revision from both teachers and students, as well as discussions among the teachers about dealing with student resistance to revision, planning mini-lessons, and other issues related to the revision process.
About Support Materials
If you are participating in a group session, your facilitator will give you a copy of the print guide or request that you print the pdf for yourself from this website. Your facilitator will give you any instructions concerning meeting time and place, what you should bring to sessions, and work you should do outside the group sessions.
Using the Group Materials
The Support Materials and website provide background, activities, discussion questions, homework assignments, and resources to supplement Write in the Middle. They also provide information for facilitators to plan and structure group sessions, so if you’re watching the videos with other teachers or facilitating a group, check out the Helpful Hints for Facilitators section in the Support Materials for discussion points and suggestions for activities to do before, during, and after viewing the workshops. If you’re using the workshop for self-study, there are suggestions to help you optimize your viewing as well.
Each workshop session is designed to last about two hours and has a suggested format and a guide to discussion and activity breaks. The suggested viewing format includes background reading to do ahead of time to prepare for each workshop. This reading includes a piece tailored to each workshop titled “Key Practices To Observe,” a guide to help viewers identify the specific teaching moments seen in the videos that are considered “best practice.”
During the time participants are watching the workshop video, facilitators are encouraged to stop the video for discussion and activity breaks. Included in the Support Materials is a guide with suggested pause points and discussion questions to get you started. There are also suggestions for discussion and activities to do immediately after viewing.
The materials available on this website were developed to enhance, not to replicate, the viewing of Write in the Middle, so peruse the site and read samples of authentic student writing, listen to reflections from the teachers featured in the programs, or download handouts to use with your students.
Try your hand at evaluating a piece of student writing at Interactive Practice. You’ll find three samples of authentic drafts, written in different genres, by different students. Identify the strengths and weaknesses of each sample and then compare your assessment to those of another teacher.
Best Practices in Teaching Writing
Best Practices in Teaching Writing (pdf)
Dr. Charles Whitaker‘s detailed description of the best practices demonstrated in Write in the Middle.
Best Practices in Teaching Writing: An Outline (pdf)
An abbreviated, one-page version of Dr. Whitaker’s list of best practices.
About the Contributors
Bobbi Ciriza Houtchens, the lead content advisor for Write in the Middle, teaches English and ESL at San Bernadino High School in San Bernadino, California, east of Los Angeles. Among Bobbi’s students are Spanish, Hmong, Vietnamese, and Arabic speakers. Bobbi and her classroom were featured in the Annenberg series Conversations in Literature.
In addition to her full-time work as a teacher, Bobbi serves as chair of the NCTE’s committee on racism and bias and edits the column “English in the News” for The English Journal. She also is a part-time lecturer in the Department of Language, Literacy, and Culture at California State University, San Bernardino.
Charles Whitaker, Ph.D., the lead field content advisor for Write in the Middle and a contributing writer for the Web site, is a professor of English at Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond, Kentucky where he has taught for 28 years and has been recognized as an EKU Foundation Professor. He has taught writing for more than 30 years, along with graduate courses in composition studies, and has published articles and a textbook on writing. He administered the writing program in his department for ten years; and for the past 17 years, he directed two National Writing Project sites—EKU and the Mountain Writing Project, conducted in collaboration with Hazard Community College. Dr. Whitaker has served on the Kentucky Writing Advisory Committee for more than ten years and has worked closely with the Kentucky Department of Education to develop the state’s Program of Studies in English/Language Arts, materials used in the statewide assessment of writing and statewide professional development in writing instruction. In addition, he consults with school districts and schools throughout Kentucky to improve instruction and test scores in writing. Dr. Whitaker also has served on the faculty at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky.
Barbara Flores, Ph.D., is a professor in the Department of Language, Literacy, and Culture in the College of Education at California State University, San Bernadino. During her tenure at Cal State, she has collaborated with teachers and administrators in action research on literacy among culturally and linguistically diverse children. Barbara co-authored Reading in a Bilingual Classroom: Literacy and Biliteracy with Drs. Ken and Yetta Goodman and Whole Language: What’s the Difference? with Carole Edelsky and Bess Altwerger. Both books were published by Heinemann. She also has written a number of articles and chapters for journals and books.
Dewey Hensley works for Jefferson County Public Schools in Louisville, Kentucky, in their principal internship program. Part of Dewey’s time is spent traveling the district working with assessment-year elementary school teachers helping them in their reading, writing, and math instruction. Prior to this position, Dewey served as a Highly Skilled Educator for the Kentucky Department of Education, selected on the basis of his teaching excellence and leadership ability. During his two-year tenure as an HSE, Dewey was assigned to several struggling Kentucky schools, where he provided on-site training and support and helped the administration and faculty develop school-wide plans for improving student performance.
Before becoming an HSE, Dewey taught English at South Oldham High School in Crestwood, Kentucky. He also has taught at Eminence High School in Eminence, Kentucky, and at Fairdale High in Louisville. Dewey’s professional activities include serving as associate director of the Louisville Writing Project, conducting training sessions for the Kentucky Association of School Administrators, and serving as a leader for portfolio analysis and as on-demand writing test writer for the Kentucky Department of Education. A National Board-certified teacher, Dewey has a B.A. in English and philosophy from Berea College in Berea, Kentucky, and a master’s in English from the University of Louisville.
Linda Rief teaches eighth-grade language arts at Oyster River Middle School in Durham, New Hampshire. She also is an instructor in the Summer Reading and Writing Program at the University of New Hampshire and has taught graduate courses for Northeastern University and Simmons College in Boston, Massachusetts.
Linda’s publications include Seeking Diversity: Language Arts With Adolescents (1992) and a 1999 book and companion CD, Vision and Voice: Extending the Literacy Spectrum. In addition, she coedited All That Matters: What Is It We Value in School and Beyond?(1995) and Workshop 6: The Teacher as Writer (1994) with Maureen Barbieri. All four books were published by Heinemann. Linda also has written several chapters and articles for professional books and journals.
Linda’s teaching was the subject of Conferences and Conversations: Listening to the Literate Classroom (2000) by Douglas Kaufman, also published by Heinemann. In this book, Kaufman chronicles a year in Linda’s classroom as she fosters relationships with and among her students; establishes classroom organization and routines; and uses conversations and conferences to improve her students’ writing, reading, and thinking.
Tom Romano, Ph.D., teaches writing and language arts methods in the Department of Teacher Education at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. He is the author of Clearing the Way: Working With Teenage Writers (Heinemann, 1987); Writing With Passion: Life Stories, Multiple Genres (Boynton/Cook, 1995); and Blending Genre, Altering Style: Writing Multigenre Papers (Boynton/Cook, 2000).
Tom taught high school English for 17 years and has been a faculty member at Miami since 1995. Tom is in demand nationwide as a consultant because of his unique combination of scholarly expertise, his specialized knowledge in teaching multigenre writing, and his experience in high school classrooms, writing workshops, and in teacher development.
Tom’s undergraduate and master’s degrees are from Miami, and his doctorate is from the University of New Hampshire.
Frank X Walker is the director of Kentucky’s Governor’s School for the Arts, which provides hands-on arts opportunities for the state’s talented high school students in dance, musical theatre, drama, vocal and instrumental music and creative writing in addition to visual art, architecture, and historic preservation. Frank also serves on the board of directors for the Kentucky Writers Coalition and the Louisville Arts Council.
A photographer, muralist, and writer, Frank is a founding member of the Affrilachian Poets, a group of African American writers with roots in the rural South. In 2000, he published his first collection of poetry, Affrilachia. He also was featured in Coal Black Voices, a 2001 documentary on the Affrilachian Poets produced with support from the Kentucky Educational Television Fund for Independent Production.
Frank was born in Danville, Kentucky, a small town south of Lexington, and graduated from the University of Kentucky, where he majored in English. He presently is working on an M.F.A. at Spalding College in Louisville. In addition to his work with the School for the Arts, Frank has served as the assistant director of the Black Cultural Center at Purdue University, as the program coordinator for the Martin Luther King Jr. Cultural Center at the University of Kentucky, and as the executive director of the Bluegrass Black Arts Consortium, an organization he founded. He also has five years of experience teaching creative writing.
Jenny Beasley has taught language arts at Meece Middle School in Somerset, Kentucky, for the past nine years. She is presently teaching sixth-graders. Jenny earned a B.A. in public relations/journalism from Auburn University in Alabama and then returned to Auburn several years later to complete her M.E. in elementary education.
Jenny is very active professionally. At Meece Middle, she has served as a language arts chair and Writing Cluster Leader. She also has been part of the School Portfolio Assessment Team and was the chair for Meece’s school-wide review, conducted in 1998-99 by the Southern Association of Schools and Colleges. After completing the Eastern Kentucky Writing Project’s Summer Institute in 1995, she spent three years serving as the EKU Writing Project co-director. The recipient of several teaching awards, Jenny has conducted professional development workshops on writing instruction at the state and national level.
For the past 23 years, Gloria Hamilton has taught in the Inglewood Unified School District in Inglewood, California, an urban community near Los Angeles. Currently, she teaches eighth-grade language arts at Crozier Middle School and serves as a district-wide literacy coach. Her other accomplishments include designing and implementing a writing and testing program for technical students at the University of Illinois, Northwestern University, the Illinois Institute of Technology, the University of Southern California, and West Los Angeles College. She also developed and piloted a student mentor program in partnership with the Inglewood Public Library. Gloria graduated cum laude with a bachelor’s degree from Indiana University. She completed an advanced study in reading from Northern University in DeKalb, Illinois.
Vivian Johnson has been teaching language arts at T.A. Dugger Junior High School in Elizabethton, Tennessee, for seven years—the last five years enjoying eighth-graders. She holds an E.Ed. in curriculum and instruction and an M.S.T. in English from the University of New Hampshire, and she became National Board certified in 1999.
Vivian’s special interests as a teacher of literacy center on the workings of a writing process classroom, and she frequently presents writing and reading workshops for school districts in her region. She has published articles in Tennessee Reading Teacher and In the Middle. Her most treasured accomplishments, however, are students who leave for high school with a strong sense of who they are as readers and writers, on their way to being lifelong learners.
Velvet McReynolds has been teaching for 30 years. Following graduation from UCLA, Velvet spent 20 years teaching middle school language arts in Los Angeles County’s Lennox School District. While in California, Velvet served as a peer coach and mentor, specializing in portfolio assessment, and as president of the Lennox Teachers Association. She was named Teacher of the Year for the Lennox School District in 1989. Velvet earned her master’s degree in curriculum development at California State University at Dominguez Hills. Since the early 1990s, she has taught in Hoover, Alabama, a suburb of Birmingham. She continues to serve in a mentorship role and facilitates workshops on portfolio assessment, multi-culture in language arts, and authentic writing. She earned National Board certification in 1997.
Damond Moodie is in his sixth year of teaching at Roosevelt Middle School in the Oakland, California, school district. He has taught seventh-grade English and history for more than four years. Damond has served on the Leadership Team and as chair of the Social Studies Department. He coaches the seventh-grade boys’ basketball team and works in Roosevelt’s homework center as well. He has a B.A. in English from the College of Wooster in Ohio.
Since 2000, Mary Cathryn Ricker has taught seventh-grade language arts at Cleveland Quality Middle School in St. Paul, Minnesota. She received her undergraduate degree at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul and her master’s in teacher leadership with a certification in staff development at the University of Minnesota. She began her career at South Junior High in St. Cloud, Minnesota, and she also has taught at North Junior High and Tech High School in St. Cloud. Additional experience includes three years teaching seventh-grade language arts in Camas, Washington, and a year teaching English in Seoul, Korea. Mary Cathryn coordinates the Promising Young Writers Program for the Minnesota Council of Teachers of English and serves on the board of the Minnesota Writing Project. She is a member of the Minnesota Best Practice Writing Workshop, the Loft Literary Center, and the St. Paul Federation of Teachers Executive Board and COPE committee. She co-chairs the Education Action Committee at Progressive Minnesota.
Laurie Swistak received a B.S. in education magna cum laude in 1989 after 20 years as a stay-at-home mom. In 1991, she left her first teaching position at a small Catholic school to begin working at Cranston-Calvert Elementary School in Newport, Rhode Island. In addition to teaching general fifth-grade social studies and math, she teaches language arts to gifted and talented students who come to Cranston-Calvert from schools throughout the district.
Laurie presented on the multigenre approach to writing instruction featured in Workshop 5. In addition, she is active in her local teachers’ association and serves on the curriculum and literacy committees. She also serves on the Cranston-Calvert School Improvement Team and attends the Rhode Island Institute for Learning.
Allen Teng is in his third year of teaching seventh-grade language arts at Rogers Middle School in Lawndale, California. He received his master’s degree in education and credential from UCLA in 2000 after finishing his undergraduate degree at UC Berkeley with a mass communications major and creative writing minor. Before teaching, he worked on race and education policy in Washington, D.C. and Sacramento.
Jack Wilde has taught for more than 34 years. He presently teaches the fifth grade at the Bernice A. Ray School in the small town of Hanover, New Hampshire, where Dartmouth College is located. Jack and another fifth-grade teacher share the responsibilities for teaching two groups of approximately 20 students. Jack teaches language arts to his own homeroom and math to both classes while his partner is in charge of science instruction. Jack has two master’s degrees, an M.A.L.S. from Dartmouth College with a concentration in math and science, and an M.Ed. from the University of Toronto in language arts. He has been a workshop presenter and instructor of writing at various sites including the University of New Hampshire.
Annenberg Media Project Manager
Instructional Design/Content Development
Managing Producer/Project Director
Writers and Content Editors
Mary Duncan, Ph.D.
Field Content Producer
Charles Whitaker, Ph.D.
Web Site Producers
Mary Duncan, Ph.D.
Web Site Designer
Web Site Consultants
Web Site Contributing Writer
Charles Whitaker, Ph.D.
W. Jay Akers
Content Advisory Panel
Bobbi Ceriza Houtchens, Lead Advisor
Barbara Flores, Ph.D.
Tom Romano, Ph.D.
Frank X Walker
Mary Cathryn Ricker
M. Elizabeth Spaulding, Ph.D.
Pillar to Post
Cleveland Middle School, St. Paul, MN
Cranston-Calvert Elementary School, Newport, RI
Crozier Middle School, Inglewood, CA
T.A. Dugger Junior High School, Elizabethton, TN
Meece Middle School, Somerset, KY
Bernice A. Ray School, Hanover, NH
Rogers Middle School, Lawndale, CA
Roosevelt Middle School, Oakland, CA
Arthur Rouse, Video Editing Services 1
Simmons Middle School, Hoover, AL
Sue Swaim, National Middle School Association
1 Creating a Community of Writers
In this session, participants explore practical strategies — from desk arrangements to classroom organization to writing routines — that allow young adolescents to share their writing in an atmosphere of trust and safety and to recognize their identities as lifelong writers and readers.
2 Making Writing Meaningful
When teachers introduce subjects that matter to middle school students or allow them more freedom to choose and develop topics, the task of writing gains new meaning and purpose. In this session, participants examine how five middle-level teachers help their students connect to writing and understand its capacity to transform their own lives and the world around them.
3 Teaching Poetry
Poetry offers young adolescents an unparalleled opportunity for exploring feelings and learning about the power of written expression. This session showcases two master teachers as they help their students develop as writers and readers of poetry.
4 Teaching Persuasive Writing
In this session, participants visit two middle-level classrooms to see how teachers can help young writers develop effective and authentic persuasive pieces based on their own experiences and interests - for example, using cell phones in schools or altering their homework schedule.
5 Teaching Multigenre Writing
Multigenre writing offers students a wide range of options for expressing ideas and communicating knowledge. In this session, participants examine two different, but equally successful, examples of this eclectic and engaging writing approach
6 Responding to Writing: Teacher to Student
In this session, participants see how five middle-level teachers use both formal and informal student/teacher conferences to monitor their students' progress and help them improve as writers.
7 Responding to Writing: Peer to Peer
Throughout the writing process, peer response can help young adolescents develop as thinkers and writers. In this session, participants explore strategies for structuring peer interactions and for teaching students to respond positively and productively to each other's work.
8 Teaching the Power of Revision
In this session, participants visit the classrooms of three teachers to examine strategies that help even reluctant writers see the power and purpose of revision.
Supplementary: Write in the Middle: Best Practices in Teaching Writing
Dr. Charles Whitaker's detailed description of the best practices demonstrated in Write in the Middle
Supplementary: Write in the Middle: Best Practices in Teaching Writing - An Outline
An abbreviated, one-page version of Dr. Whitaker's list of best practices.


Effective literacy practice in secondary schools enables students to access and engage in learning in all subject areas. This research review explores the literacy demands of the secondary school context, and outlines some ways in which secondary school teachers may develop and enhance learning through a disciplinary literacy approach.
The literacy demands of secondary school
In order to engage successfully with the secondary school curriculum, adolescent learners must have a range of literacy abilities to allow them to connect with each subject or learning area for a range of purposes. As students move through secondary school, the texts that they engage with become more complex, the concepts and ideas become more abstract, and the purposes for reading and writing become more specialised[i]. The vocabulary that students encounter throughout secondary school becomes increasingly specialised, technical and subject-specific.
In addition, today’s adolescents are immersed in a world of complex digital media environments that require skills in navigation, comprehension, analysis and evaluation across multiple sources. The array of information available to students is vast, and the literacy skills and knowledge required to use that information are increasingly complex. This means that the literacy skills and knowledge that students obtained at primary school will not be sufficient to see them through secondary school, and that literacy learning needs to be ongoing.
Disciplinary literacy provides a means of conceptualising literacy learning within the context of each secondary school learning area. It is an approach that pays attention to the ways in which learning occurs in each context, so that literacy is not seen as ‘additional’ to teaching and learning but rather as an essential component of how learning happens. Disciplinary literacy examines what is valued by the discipline and how students in that subject read, write, think and communicate. For example, in the English learning area, students often engage in the study of literature that involves an understanding of how an author constructs a text, the recognition and interpretation of language features, and the development of a personal response to literary texts[ii]. In science, knowledge is gained from empirical evidence gathered through hypothesis testing and observation, and focuses on accuracy and supporting evidence. Students are required to design, carry out and record results of investigations, link practical investigations to theory, and communicate their findings[iii]. Learning in History requires students to think analytically and critically about the contexts in which texts or ideas are produced, and to seek and find sources of evidence to challenge or corroborate claims[iv].
Whilst the literacy skills that constitute secondary level science, English, history or any other learning area share some common features, each subject uses literacy differently. When teachers develop students’ literacy skills in the context of each subject, they also build an understanding of how knowledge is produced in the disciplines, rather than just building content knowledge[v]. Literacy therefore becomes an essential and integrated aspect of teaching practice rather than a set of generic strategies brought into the discipline to improve the reading and writing of texts. Viewed in this way, disciplinary literacy teaching and learning require teachers to consider:
- What is valued practice in my learning area?
- What kinds of reading, writing, thinking and communicating are expected ?
- How do I support students to develop these skills in my context?
Attending to students’ disciplinary literacy learning increases access to and participation with the texts and task that students encounter. Disciplinary literacy also has a role to play in in promoting equity and social justice. Literacy is fundamental for success in school and in later life, and students who are able to read, write and communicate effectively are able to engage in learning, particularly at higher levels of the secondary curriculum, leading to academic qualifications and increased opportunities beyond school.
Effective disciplinary literacy practice
There are a number of strategies that may be used at classroom, department and school level to support strong disciplinary literacy practice across all curriculum areas.
Build awareness of disciplinary literacy
An initial step in developing effective practice is to build awareness of the literacy demands within the context of each learning area. Awareness building might happen at a departmental or school-wide level, and could involve teachers sharing examples of the texts and tasks (oral, written and visual) that they use with students, whilst talking about the strengths and challenges that students experience when using those texts. Teachers might also share examples of lesson planning, and talk about the expectations they have of what ‘good’ reading, writing and communicating looks like in their own context.
At a department level, teachers might also discuss their expectations of students at the upper end of secondary learning, and then examine how they are progressively building students’ literacy skills and knowledge from early to late secondary. This exercise supports teachers making connections to the disciplinary literacy practices that are part of their everyday work. As teachers develop their own understanding of disciplinary literacy, they increasingly share this understanding wtih their students, leading to greater clarity about the norms and expectations of each subject. Consequently, students increase their awareness of and practise the types of reading, writing and communicating that are valued by each discipline.
Provide opportunities to read, write and discuss
As teachers think about the literacy practices that are part of their particular learning area or subject, they may also consider the opportunities that are provided for their students to read, write and discuss. Research conducted in a sample of New Zealand secondary schools found inequities in terms of opportunities provided to students, particularly in relation to the types of texts that are presented[vi]. The findings from this research indicate that students from lower socio-economic (SES) schools had fewer opportunities to read longer texts, texts provided in their original form, or texts written for adults rather than young people. The researchers also noted that teachers in high and medium SES schools devoted more time to developing students’ literacy skills than did teachers in low SES schools, including more opportunities for discussion.
In secondary classrooms, reading is often assigned for homework and reviewed during class time, but this may mean that students avoid the reading and wait for the review in class. However, fluency, stamina and comprehension are all boosted through ongoing opportunities to read, and as outlined later in this guide, reading also has a positive effect on writing. Reading during class time has multiple benefits, and might involve a number of approaches such as:
- Reading individually or in groups
- Working together to make sense of a piece of text
- Providing a choice of reading material
- Linking reading to a writing task
An important component of effective literacy practice is teachers carefully previewing the texts to be used for instruction. This includes digital and printed texts as well as visual texts such as diagrams, posters or videos. When previewing texts, teachers pay attention to the structures, vocabulary and knowledge that supports learning through each text, so that they can share that knowledge with their learners. For example, a social sciences article about actions during World War Two may provide a model of writing using a cause and effect structure. Students learn about the content of the article, but their attention is also drawn to a model of writing used by that learning area that they can utilise in their own writing. Similarly, a complex diagram might be used in science to illustrate the Water Cycle. Teachers can draw attention to the content that is being shown, and also the features of the diagram that have been used to communicate effectively with the reader. Previewing material also highlights any complex concepts or ideas thatmay need to be discussed prior to using the texts, and signals the key vocabulary that needs explicit instruction.
Make connections to prior knowledge and experiences
Making connections enables students to build on their prior experiences to further construct knowledge, and to make meaning of the world around them. An explicit focus on making connections provides opportunities for students to deepen their understanding of concepts and ideas, and to build new knowledge in each learning area. This may involve teacher prompts such as:
- ‘What do you already know about…?’
- ‘What does this remind you of?’
- ‘What is the same/different?’
A visual representation of a key concept can assist students to connect their existing knowledge to new knowledge, such as a physical or digital ‘concept wall’ where new vocabulary, definitions, and diagrams are added throughout the progress of a unit of work.
Explicitly teach vocabulary
The development of academic language in secondary school is critical, given the increasingly specialised language of each learning area. As students navigate between subjects, they need to adjust to different forms of reading, writing and communicating. Sometimes they encounter the same words that have different subject meanings, which can lead to confusion. For example, ‘scale’, ‘value’ and ‘factors’ have different meanings in mathematics and history.
Teachers need to identify and explicitly teach the challenging vocabulary in the material to be used with students. This may include subject-specific and technical vocabulary that may be new to students, such as ‘symbiosis’ or ‘parameter’, as well as any complex general academic vocabulary found in many disciplines, such as ‘contradiction’, ‘elaboration’ or ‘justify’. Vocabulary instruction may involve:
- Examining parts of words (prefixes, suffixes and root words), for instance ‘anti-’, ‘photo-’, ‘pro-’
- Finding other words that start with the same prefix
- Matching root words with a prefix or suffix
- Creating word maps around key vocabulary – for example, including the word, a definition, an example, a picture or diagram, and other similar words
- Providing multiple opportunities to introduce new vocabulary through reading a range of texts
- Writing using new vocabulary, for instance: ‘Use these key words in your paragraph’
- Discussion using new vocabulary, for example: ‘Use these key words to talk about…’
Develop strategic readers
Within a disciplinary literacy approach, teachers identify the types of reading that students are required to do in each subject, and consider how they are supporting students to read. All learning areas require some form of reading (print and/or digital). For example in mathematics, reading might be in relation to word problems, equations, graphs, reports and/or diagrams. There are several strategies that teachers use to support students to read strategically.
First of all, setting a clear purpose for reading supports students to be more strategic and focused in their approach to reading a text. A general instruction such as ‘Read this and make a summary of the key points’ may not provide enough direction to students. A more detailed purpose for reading might be: ‘As you read this text, look for ways that friction could be reduced between two solid surfaces’ (in science), or ‘As you read this article, look for two different viewpoints about how the block of land should be used’ (in the social sciences).
Teachers can also check text navigation to ensure that students are able to confidently navigate the texts they are using. Sometimes assumptions are made that students know how to use the available cues in a text in order to aid their understanding, but this may not always be the case. In a digital environment, check that students can use the functions available to them such as hyperlinks, drop-down menus, and navigating within a website. In both print and digital texts, check to see if students are noting textual cues such as words in bold or italics, using footnotes, headings and sub-headings, dates and source of publication, and linking diagrams to print, in order to support their overall understanding. It may be necessary to point these out to students and provide practice using them.
Co-construct approaches to making sense of text
Researchers have described this as ‘capturing the reading process’, whereby students begin to notice and share the strategies they use to make sense of challenging text in the context of each discipline[vii]. The teacher first models the process by describing their own reading processes, as in the following examples:
- ‘When I read this sentence about trialling for the sports team, I could picture that in my mind’
- ‘When I came to the pronoun “they” in the third sentence, I had to check back with the first sentence to see who “they” were’
- ‘When I came across the word “antioxidants”, I broke it down into parts – “anti” which means against and I know the word “oxidation”, so I could make sense of the word’
Students then share their approaches to making sense of text, which may include such things as re-reading, referring to other parts of the text, breaking down the word into parts, using a glossary or online dictionary, or asking a peer. Recording students’ ideas about making sense of text on a class chart or digital record provides a useful reference that they can use and add to over time.
Foster quality discussion across the curriculum
Oral communication, including presentations, arguments, debates, informal talks and discussion activities in small or large groups, is part of every discipline in some form. Each learning area will have expectations around the ways in which students communicate orally. For example, a subject such as English may invite students to talk about their personal response to texts, whilst students of history may be asked to discuss the reliability of sources. Improving classroom talk and discussion can improve outcomes in reading, writing and understanding across the curriculum[viii].
The quality of classroom talk can be improved and enhanced through teacher modelling, and by paying attention to well-designed activities for students. Teachers promote quality talk by modelling the use of subject-specific language, and by explaining complex ideas and concepts clearly and accurately. In addition, students need opportunities to practise using new vocabulary and to describe increasingly complex subject content by talking and by listening to others. When students have had multiple opportunities to talk about and clarify subject content, they are better prepared to write about it.
Teachers are generally familiar with scaffolding students through a writing task, but do not often apply the notion of scaffolding to oral communication. In the same manner as a writing task, students can be provided with sentence frames and prompts to help them form and expand on their responses when they talk within a group. For example:
- English: ‘I think (character X) believes … because she says …’
- Maths: ‘The first thing I did to solve this problem was …’
- Music: ‘The musician has used … to create a mood of …’
Students may also be provided with subject-specific vocabulary and then offered the challenge of using that word or phrase in a group discussion. Various other structured prompts that encourage discussion may be provided to groups, such as open-ended questions, taking sides in an argument, justifying a decision, evaluating an experience, or explaining a complex process to each other. Students can also be given specific roles in a group in order to structure and guide conversation, as in Reciprocal Teaching experiences[ix]. Reciprocal teaching to improve reading comprehension involves four skills of clarifying, questioning, summarising and predicting. Teachers coach students to use each skill, and then provide opportunities in small groups to discuss a text that has been read. Students may be provided with prompts for each skill, for example:
- Clarifying: ‘Can anyone clarify what … means?’
- Questioning: ‘My question is …’
- Summarising: ‘This paragraph is about …’
- Predicting: ‘I think the next part will show …’
Supporting quality writing across the curriculum
Students across the curriculum write for a number of different purposes, according to the expectations and conventions of each subject area. Whilst there may be some commonalities across subjects, there are also unique differences in the expectations and requirements for each discipline. For example, students in English may be expected to write using figurative language and detailed description in creative writing, but in another context such as economics may need to write concisely and with factual information when writing a report.
- What are the types of writing that are common in my learning area?
- When do students write? (for example, mostly during class time, mostly for homework?)
- What is usually expected in terms of structure, content, detail, vocabulary, length, and accuracy?
- How do I currently support students to write well?
Students frequently experience writing as a product or outcome to demonstrate what they know, and it is often associated with some type of assessment. However, writing can also be viewed as a means of clarifying understanding, making meaning, expressing ideas, or reflecting on learning. Viewed in this way, writing should occur frequently, with numerous opportunities for both short and extended pieces being produced for different purposes. Effective writing practice allows students to experience multiple opportunities to develop their ideas and consolidate their understanding, prior to writing for the purpose of assessment.
Reading and writing are complementary skills. Reading quality texts in each subject area provides an opportunity for teachers and students to examine the discipline-specific aspects of writing in that context. In a science text, for example, this might mean paying attention to how the writer has produced an explanation of a scientific process using clearly illustrated steps, symbols, diagrams and written text that includes key vocabulary. One way to use reading as specific means to support writing is to ask students to annotate exemplars of written text, looking for specific features such as where evidence has been provided to back up a statement, where quotations have been used effectively, or how the writer has shown cause and effect.
Students may also be encouraged to ‘borrow’ features such as effective phrases, sentence beginnings, or key definitions, and then try using them in their own writing. This practice is not to encourage wholesale ‘cut and paste’ of long pieces of text from exemplars, but to notice the ways in which written communication happens in each subject, and to gradually align their own writing to the norms and conventions that are expected. Teachers may choose to co-construct lists, charts or word banks with their students to refer back to when writing for different purposes.
Students may also benefit from constructing and co-constructing shorter pieces of writing before being required to write extended texts. For example, teachers may ask students to:
- Use key vocabulary in a sentence
- Record what they have observed today
- Write a paragraph with three details
- Reflect on their own experience of an event
Over a period of time, the practice of deepening understanding of a topic by writing a series of shorter sentences and paragraphs can result in quality extended pieces of writing being produced.
Extended writing usually involves planning and organising prior to writing, and requires practice and development over time. Teachers might consider what types of planning strategies and tools are useful and appropriate to their own discipline, rather than assuming that a generic approach or tool would be best. For example, writing in the social sciences utilises structures such as cause and effect, chronological order of events, and explaining different viewpoints, so the planning tools used prior to writing should also reflect the type of writing required. In order to encourage independence and student agency, teachers could introduce students to a range of planning approaches and tools over time, and then ask students to choose the most appropriate strategy or tool to use for their particular writing task.
Teacher modelling of effective writing is another way to support improved writing outcomes. Teachers can ‘think aloud’ on a whiteboard or shared screen as they demonstrate subject-specific writing to their groups of students. When this happens, students see that writing is not a linear process and that the writer is continually revising and editing as they think about what to write. Teachers can also model the use of sentence starters, effective phrases and vocabulary lists that may have been developed with the class. As with other aspects of effective teaching practice, it is important to provide effective feedback and feedforward to students about their writing. The more specific this is, the more impact it is likely to have on improved practice.
[i] Snow, C., & Moje, E. (2010). Why is everyone talking about adolescent literacy? Phi Delta Kappen, 91(6), 66-70.
[ii] Lee, C.D., & Spratley, A. (2007). Reading in the disciplines and the challenges of adolescent literacy. New York: Cambridge.
[iii] Norris, S.P., & Phillips, L.M. (2003). How literacy in its fundamental sense is central to scientific literacy. Science Education, 87(2), 224-240.
[iv] McTygue, N., & Tindall, P. (2005). History teachers’ covert agenda: Developing student literacy. Social Studies Review, 44(2), 27-32.
[v] Moje, E.B. (2008). Responsive literacy teaching in secondary school content areas. In M. Conley, J. Freidhoff, M. Sherry, & S. Tuckey (Eds), Meeting the challenge of adolescent literacy: Research we have, research we need. New York: The Guildford Press
[vi] Wilson, A., Madjar, I., & McNaughton, S. (2016). Opportunity to learn about disciplinary literacy in senior secondary English classrooms in New Zealand. The Curriculum Journal, 27(2), 204-228.
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By Denise Hitchcock