Helping kids write

Beth Rogowsky, assistant professor of early childhood and adolescent education, has written an article for Scientific Learning’s blog about how developing cognitive skills is an important part of any writing program.

 When teachers think of teaching writing, they typically begin with the type of writing they want their students to compose—persuasive pieces, personal narratives, academic essays and the like. They think of following the steps of the writing process—prewriting, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing—and conduct mini-lessons during writers’ workshop. Others teachers begin diagraming sentences, discussing subject-verb agreement or distinguishing between nominative and objective case pronouns. All too often, however, little attention is given to the cognitive skills of writing. And that’s a shame, because cognitive skills are the building blocks upon which writing depends. 

 Read the rest of Rogowsky’s article at Scientific Learning: www.scilearn.com/blog/building-better-writers-without-picking-up-a-pen.php