What’s Next for the Science of Reading: Focus on the Science of Writing
A Look at Reading-Writing Connections
There’s an undeniable urgency behind the task of teaching students to read. Such a fundamental — and yet complex — skill that often acts as a gatekeeper to success throughout a lifetime leaves educators with little room for anything but effective, proven, research-based instruction. As schools now face pandemic-induced learning loss and exacerbated achievement gaps, it’s no wonder that many educators are deeply engaged in the Science of Reading — an ever-expanding body of evidence comprised of more than 40 years of research into how we learn to read.
However, equally important to learning to read is learning to write: and that isn’t simply because writing is an invaluable skill that empowers learners to communicate their ideas, or because writing is an increasingly drawn-upon skill in the modern workforce. It’s also important because learning to write can help students learn to read. In fact, effective writing instruction has been proven to improve students’ reading comprehension and fluency. In this blog, we’ll take a look at the science behind reading-writing connections, and the crucial writing practices that influence reading ability.
Shared Skills in Reading and Writing
Of course, many of the skills and cognitive processes involved in reading and writing overlap or are interrelated. The knowledge students draw upon when reading overlaps with the knowledge they draw upon to write. For example, knowledge about vocabulary, purpose, and text organization helps inform how students comprehend, interpret, and construct text. Additionally, phonological awareness and phonics play a role in both spelling words while writing a sentence and reading them in a book (Graham, 2020).
Take another example: The writing process requires students to determine the purpose of their writing, organize their ideas, and make their assertions clear. Writing requires them to think deeply about the structure, clarity, and impact of their own text — all skills that can be thoughtfully applied toward deeper comprehension when analyzing the purpose and meaning of a text that they’ve read (Graham, 2020).
Each of these connections might seem fairly intuitive for an educator. But researchers argue that recognizing the connections isn’t enough and that we should push further to leverage these connections to improve reading and writing instruction, thereby further integrating the Science of Writing into what we know about the Science of Reading (Graham, 2020).
Best Practices for Teaching Writing that Improve Reading Ability
The best practices we’ve identified in this blog are derived from a report from the Carnegie Corporation called Writing to Read: Evidence for How Writing Can Improve Reading. This powerful meta-analysis is a foundational piece for evidence-based reading-writing connections, and we encourage you to read it in full for insights into the authors’ impressive data collection and interpretation process.
In the report, the researchers identify three core recommendations for writing instruction that will improve reading ability, outlined below:
Writing Practice: Have Students Write About What They Read
Reading Benefits: Improved Comprehension
This practice extends beyond the ELA classroom — having students write about what they read improves comprehension of texts in science and social studies, too. The connection here is fairly simple: When students have an opportunity to write about what they’ve read, they have to analyze the ideas presented in the text, reflect on implications, consider meaning, and engage in personalization to translate those ideas into their own words.
The researchers identify a few specific best practices within this category that are particularly effective:
- Write a response to a text. In this activity, students should write an extended response to a text, based on either a personal reflection, analysis, or interpretation of the text. Guided journal writing or analytic essays are both strong examples of ways to integrate meaningful extended responses into your lessons.
- Summarize a text in writing. While writing summaries about a text supports middle and high school students’ comprehension, it’s particularly effective for elementary school students. Examples of summary activities include writing a paragraph about the main idea of the text with supporting information or developing outlines of longer texts with a thesis statement and main ideas that support the thesis.
- Write notes about a text. When taking notes, we draw upon existing knowledge to frame and document key information about a text in a way that will be meaningful and useful to us in reference later. Examples of note-taking activities include structured note-taking, where students are taught how to create graphic organizers or note-taking frameworks, and concept mapping, where students use organizers to document key ideas and connections.
- Answer questions about a text. While questions about a text can of course be answered verbally, the researchers note that writing provides a second opportunity for rehearsal, thereby making them more memorable (and available for later analysis). Examples of these activities are not limited to simply answering a question posed by the teacher — having students develop and answer their own questions about the text is also effective.
For more on writing about text and reading comprehension, see pages 11–17 of the Writing to Read: Evidence for How Writing Can Improve Reading report.
Writing Practice: Teach the Writing Skills and Processes Required to Create Text
Reading Benefits: Comprehension, Reading, and Word Fluency
Explicit instruction of writing — including the writing process, sentence and paragraph construction, and spelling — is inextricably linked to reading, and research has proven that it can, in fact, help foster stronger readers. Here are a few core instructional areas where the researchers behind the Carnegie Corporation report suggest turning your focus:
- Teach the writing process, text structure, and sentence and paragraph construction to support reading comprehension. This approach builds students’ understanding of patterns in text, complexity in sentence structure, and how text structure can be an indicator, or guiding framework, for a text’s purpose.
- Teach spelling and sentence construction to support reading fluency and word reading. In earlier grades, spelling instruction builds students’ schemata about letter-sound connections, making it easier for them to identify letters and sounds when reading. Similarly, the skill to build from letter to word to sentence when writing can help students understand letters, words, and sentences when reading.
For more, see pages 17–20 of the Writing to Read: Evidence for How Writing Can Improve Reading report.
Writing Practice: Have Students Write More Often
Reading Benefits: Reading Comprehension
We know which specific writing instructional practices can help foster stronger readers — but researchers also found that simply increasing the amount of time students write also supports reading comprehension. In this report, these findings were specific to grades 1–7. A few examples of activities to boost time spent writing include pen pals or self-selected daily topics.
For more, see pages 20–21 of the Writing to Read: Evidence for How Writing Can Improve Reading report.
Interestingly, having students write more often is also a frequently-cited best practice for improving overall writing proficiency. For more on that, see:
What’s Next for Reading-Writing Connections: Research, Training, and aFocus on Equity
While research has provided us with a strong foundation for understanding reading-writing connections in instruction, there’s so much more to learn. As with all key components of the Science of Reading, researchers must continue to study effective practices in a variety of contexts, take a closer look at what works and why, and that teachers are armed with the knowledge, training, and support systems to implement best practices with fidelity.
Importantly, although much more research is needed, writing instruction may be an effective tool for reading gains in underserved student populations. One study found that combined reading and writing instruction resulted in better reading comprehension than traditional reading instruction in lower-performing urban elementary schools (Collins et al., 2017). As insights about reading-writing connections continue to integrate into the work surrounding the Science of Reading, it will be critical that socio-economic, cultural, and other contextual factors are taken into account to determine which practices can move the needle for equity.
For free writing activities and resources to use in the classroom, visit:
For more, see:
References
Collins, J. L., Lee, J., Fox, J. D., & Madigan, T. P. (2017). Bringing Together Reading and Writing: An Experimental Study of Writing Intensive Reading Comprehension in Low-Performing Urban Elementary Schools. International Literacy Association Reading Research Quarterly, 53(3), 311–332. https://doi.org/doi:10.1002/rrq.175
Graham, S. (2020). The Sciences of Reading and Writing Must Become More Fully Integrated. International Literacy Association Reading Research Quarterly, 55(S1), S35–S44. doi:10.1002/rrq.332
Graham, S., and Hebert, M. A. (2010). Writing to read: Evidence for how writing can improve reading. A Carnegie Corporation Time to Act Report. Washington, DC: Alliance for Excellent Education.
