What Do Fifth Graders Know About Writing? 

In this Elementary School Journal article, Amy Gillespie (Vanderbilt University), Natalie Olinghouse (University of Connecticut), and Steve Graham (Arizona State University) report on their study of fifth graders’ understanding of the writing process and three genres of writing: stories, persuasive arguments, and informational reports. Here are the questions the researchers asked students:

• What do good writers do when they write? Many students responded that authors plan the piece (beginning, middle, end), write a rough draft, edit it, and get it published. Some talked about including details about setting and characters and evidence for what they are saying.

• Why do you think some kids have trouble writing? Students talked about difficulty thinking of subject matter, having trouble drafting (details and characters, planning, organizing content), motivation, vocabulary, penmanship, mechanics, and getting help from an adult.

• When asked to write a paper for class or homework, what kinds of things can you do to help you plan and write your paper? Most students talked about substantive processes – thinking of ideas, doing research before writing, planning the piece, getting to the main idea and explaining it, using graphic organizers, and editing. Only a few students mentioned the importance of neat handwriting, looking up words in a dictionary, and finding a quiet place to write. 

• What kinds of things are included in a story? Students talked about structural elements (“You always need a title because you want to tell what your story is about,” “Make up any characters you want to,” and “End with a final paragraph that shows the character finishing the story and a quick summary on everything”), getting information for writing (“Grab an idea that’s in your mind and write it down” and “It’s always good to include details”), and organization (“Put things in a sequence” and “There needs to be a beginning, middle, and an end that flow correctly”). Few students talked about appeal, story genre, grammar, usage, sentence construction, and word choice.

• What kinds of things are included in a persuasive argument? Half of the students focused on structural elements (“Take a stand on what you’re writing,” “Add really specific details so they know why it’s a good or bad idea,” and “You can do the other side of the argument”). Students also touched on other ideas: “It’s not like a story,” “Make sure it’s helping the person realize it,” “Write about everything you think they’ll be interested in,” and “Write in a way people can understand.” Few students talked about organization, grammar, usage, sentence construction, and word choice.

• What kinds of things are included in an informational report? Most students focused on structural elements (“Give true information and also tell about the topic,” “Make sure you have evidence,” “Make sure you give good specific details,” and “Have an introduction, an ending, and at least three main ideas.”) A few students mentioned other elements, including using anecdotes, getting the reader’s interest, organization, grammar, and usage. 

What did the researchers conclude? First, that students had a nuanced but incomplete understanding of the writing process. Two-thirds of students’ responses focused on just three writing processes: gaining information to write about, organizing ideas for writing, and drafting the composition. Students weren’t as strong on planning, goal-setting, reviewing, and revising; they rarely talked about how these processes worked together; and they didn’t emphasize the importance of writing about one idea and explaining it well. 

Second, students were able to distinguish among the three types of writing, but again, their knowledge wasn’t deep and integrated. “Students rarely provided detailed elaborations about a specific characteristic of a story, persuasive argument, or informational report,” say Gillespie, Olinghouse, and Graham. “For example, they frequently mentioned that stories have characters, but gave little to no detail about their purpose or function in a story.” 

Finally, the authors found the more students knew about the writing process, the better their grasp of the three genres of writing (controlling for gender, writing achievement, and emphasis on procedures when writing). 

The authors conclude that schools need to do a better job helping upper-elementary students develop a broader conceptualization of writing – “one that moves beyond gathering information, organizing it, and writing text to include goal setting/planning as well as reviewing and revising. We also need to help these students become more cognizant of specific and multiple strategies for carrying out the basic processes involved in writing and how these strategies and processes work together. One way that teachers can help students develop this knowledge is by modeling how to carry out each of the processes involved in writing, naming and discussing with students the strategies applied. A second approach is to teach students strategies they learn to apply independently to help them plan, draft, and revise their papers.” 

“Fifth-Grade Students’ Knowledge About Writing Process and Writing Genres” by Amy Gillespie, Natalie Olinghouse, and Steve Graham in Elementary School Journal, June 2013 (Vol. 113, 34, p. 565-588), http://www.citeulike.org/article/12313360 

From the Marshall Memo #491