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8 Webinars on How to Teach Writing With The New York Times

Our library of writing webinars explores how to teach the kinds of real-world writing found in newspapers, including editorials, reviews, profiles, personal narratives and more.

By The Learning Network

Videos by C. Ross Flatt

Are you looking for engaging ways to teach your students about how to share their stories? Are you thinking about bringing a real-world approach to your writing curriculum for the next school year? Have you thought about incorporating multimedia projects, such as podcasts or photography, into your classroom but don’t know where to start?

In the eight videos below — all edited versions of previously recorded live webinars — we walk teachers through how to use The New York Times to teach writing using our lesson plans, writing prompts, mentor texts and student contests. Each video focuses on a different genre: argumentative writing, narrative writing, informational/science writing, review writing, profile writing, podcast writing, multimedia creation and reader responses. The videos feature a mix of Learning Network staff, Times journalists, classroom educators and student creators who share their advice for producing writing that is meaningful, engaging and impactful.

Please note: Each year we adjust our lineup of student contests. Please stay tuned for our 2022-23 contest calendar.

Argumentative Writing

Evidenced-based persuasive writing is a core component of middle and high school education, and you can find models of it every day in The Times Opinion section. In this webinar, you’ll hear from an educator who uses Times editorials in his teaching, past winners of our Student Editorial Contest and Katherine Schulten, a Learning Network editor and the author of “ Student Voice: 100 Argument Essays by Teens on Issues That Matter .” They’ll show you how you can use our writing prompts, lesson plans and real-world texts to sharpen your students’ argument-making skills.

The Personal Narrative

When you think of The New York Times, personal narratives may not be the first thing that comes to mind. But the paper has a long tradition of publishing personal essays on everything from love to animals to life in college. In this webinar, you’ll learn how you can use these essays to teach narrative writing and inspire your students’ own stories. You’ll leave with ideas to get your students writing about their lives right away.

Informational/Science Writing

Informational writing is the style of writing that is most dominant at The Times and at any other traditional newspaper. While this genre may sound boring (to students and to teachers), in this webinar we offer The Times’s excellent science journalism as an example of how informational writing can be engaging, compelling and — dare we say — fun. You’ll get advice from science journalists and student writers about how to explain concepts in a clear, concise and compelling way.

In this webinar, you’ll learn how to write a review from the experts: the arts and culture critics of The New York Times. A.O. Scott, Jon Pareles, Jennifer Szalai and Maya Phillips share their tips for writing criticism that is engaging, fair and influential. We also give you mentor texts and writing prompts that can help your students generate and develop their opinions on movies, music, books, art, fashion, restaurants and more.

Documenting Teenage Lives Through Multimedia

The year 2020 was extraordinary. To meet the moment, we invited teenagers to show us — through writing, images, audio or video — how the year’s events had affected them. This webinar, which focuses on that exceptional year, can help you explore how multimedia projects can allow students to document their lives. We suggest ways to help students brainstorm ideas, both big and small, and use mentor texts from The Times to make those ideas shine.

The Journalistic Profile

Who are the fascinating characters in your community? In this webinar, we introduce you to the journalistic profile and discuss how finding, interviewing, photographing and writing about interesting people can give students useful academic and life skills. Two Pulitzer Prize-winning Times journalists — Corey Kilgannon, a reporter, and Todd Heisler, a photographer — also share their “craft moves” for writing and shooting profiles.

Writing for Podcasts

Write a narrative, do an interview, conduct an investigation or put on a radio play: Podcasts put a creative spin on virtually any kind of writing or research project that you want your students to do. In this webinar, you’ll get step-by-step advice from an educator, New York Times audio producers and teenage creators on how to help your students produce their own podcasts. And we’ll show you how our lesson plans, as well as student-made and Times mentor texts can help.

Independent Reading and Writing

How can you keep teenagers reading, writing, thinking and learning on their own, outside of the classroom? One idea we pose in this webinar is the “reading response.” Via our annual Summer Reading Contest, we invite students to read, watch or listen to anything in The Times and then respond by writing a comment. In this video, you’ll hear from educators who have taught with this contest, as well as from past student winners who say that responding to articles of their choice gave them the chance to make personal connections and explore their own voices.

Student Facing Videos

I just love this channel for upper grade students. There are tons and tons of videos to chose from. They are cartoony, oh so entertaining and teach important writing skills!

Watchwellcast

This channel has many entertaining and useful videos to teach skills like note taking, how to get out of a creative rut and how to be a better public speaker. It also includes videos you may want to show your students about health, relationships and more!

TEDed Writing

Vivien Reis

This channel is for secondary teachers. The author of The Elysian Prophecy gives awesome tips to budding writers on her channel. You’ll find everything from how to get ideas for a book to how to get rid of passive voice in writing on her channel!

Teaching Without Frills

This is a great channel filled with cartoons to teach elementary students narrative, how to and opinion writing. I highly recommend you check it out if you are an elementary teacher. I think even secondary teachers would find this channel useful too!

Writing Workshop

Well I can’t do a post about the best YouTube channels for writing teachers without mentioning my own channel! I have been posting student facing and professional development videos on my YouTube channel for about a year now and am continuing to build this video resource bank! You definitely need to check it out!

Professional Development Videos

Heinemann podcast.

Out of This World Literacy

I love Jen Bengal and actually met her in person! This channel has tons of excellent videos from Jen conducting writing conferences with her students to mini lessons in action!

Edutopia is a wonderful website all teachers should know about and the YouTube channel is filled with awesome videos of real classrooms in action. While the channel includes lots of excellent videos about teaching writing effectively, such as this one, it also includes other must see educational videos too! This is one of my favorite youtube channels for writing teachers!

Reading Rockets

I absolutely love the Reading Rockets Author Interviews because there are so many great tips about writing from real authors to show students! The YouTube channel has tons of genius ideas for writing teachers including collaborative journals and strategies for reluctant writers!

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How To Teach Writing: What Educators Need To Know

Here, we’ll go over the basics of how to teach writing and how to light the imagination in a way that lends itself to stellar student writing.

As a teacher, you want to inspire your students and help them grasp the writing process. Writing assignments can be subjective, and it can be tough to teach students to harness their creativity in a way that allows their writing skills to shine.

As a language arts teacher, you know there’s no right or wrong answer when completing a piece of writing, and you want your students to take risks and be bold–all while creating good writing with top-notch vocabulary and excellent sentence structure. Whether you’re an elementary school writing teacher, someone who works with children with learning disabilities, a high school English teacher, or a college professor working on teaching the process of writing to your students, you’re teaching your kids or young adults a skill that will serve them well throughout their academic careers and beyond.

Here, we’ll take a look at the steps required to develop an effective writing lesson, how to gauge whether your students are moving forward in becoming better writers, and digital tools that you can use to help your students grow their writing practice.

Before you begin:

How to teach writing to students, step 1. talk to your students, step 2. learn about your students’ writing skills, step 3. boost class confidence, step 4. start small, step 5. pay attention to skill level, step 7. provide feedback.

• 1. Grammarly
• 2. Google Docs
• 3. Purdue OWL
• 4. Hemingway Editor
• 5. Vocabulary.com

Teaching writing skills to students can be tricky; before you begin, plan ahead by creating a lesson plan. You can use our how-to guide below to plan your next lesson for teaching writing and learn how to teach this tricky subject easily. Include each step in your lesson plan and the list of activities you will assign your students; make sure to cover each topic in a different lesson, so you don’t overwhelm your students. 

Whether you’re working with elementary-age students or college-level young adults, many in your classroom likely have already had experiences shaping how they feel about the writing process. If your students have had negative experiences with writing in the past, it can be tough to get them to open up and be willing to try something new. Asking your students open-ended questions can help you to get a feel about where they are in their writing confidence. You may choose to ask questions out loud in a classroom setting, or you may choose to talk with your students one on one if time permits.

Some questions you may want to ask students to help you gauge how they feel about their writing skills include:

• What do you know about the writing process? Tell me everything!
• Last time you wrote a story, what was it about?
• What’s the biggest challenge when it comes to writing?
• If you’re going to write a story, how would you get started?

By asking these questions, you won’t just know more about your students’ confidence–you’ll also get an idea of what they’ve already been taught about the writing process and whether there are any gaps you’ll need to fill in as you teach them to become writers.

You may also want to let students know that they can come to talk to you with any questions or concerns they have about writing. Sometimes, students with learning disabilities or other issues that affect their writing ability may feel uncomfortable discussing these issues in front of their classmates. If necessary, you may want to work with a special education teacher who can address any unique learning needs in your classroom.

After you talk to your students about the writing process, you may want to provide them with a short writing assignment to help you get a better idea of where they’re at with writing. It’s up to you to decide how much guidance you’d like to give them. Some sample assignment ideas to help you get a good idea of where your students are at when it comes to writing include:

• Write a one-page story about something interesting that happened to you over the summer.
• Write about when you got into an argument with a family member and how the issue was resolved.
• Imagine it’s ten years from now. Where are you? What are you doing? Who is around you? Provide as much detail as possible.

In addition to giving insight into your student’s writing ability, asking these questions can also show how comfortable your students are with the writing process. You’ll notice that some students excitedly get to work while others give short or vague answers.

Take note of how your students do with this initial assignment so that you can praise their progress as they move forward with your writing lessons. Of course, progress will differ for each student; for some, learning to write in complete sentences may be a big accomplishment. For others, mastering a five-paragraph essay may be the goal.

Step 6. Teach The Process

After you understand how your students feel about the writing process and where they’re at in their journey to become better writers, it’s time to begin teaching the writing process. The exact process that you’ll teach your students will largely depend on their age and skill level, and you may find that you need to adjust your process as you continually get a better idea of your student’s skill levels. The framework provided here is at an elementary to middle school level.

The first step in the writing process is developing topic ideas. Then, during the brainstorming process, encourage students to write down anything that comes to mind without censoring themselves—allowing students to keep their brainstorming processes to themselves (rather than requiring them to share out loud or hand in their paper) can help them think freely and write what’s on their mind without a barrier of self-judgment.

After your students complete their first brainstorm, encourage them to return to their lists and cross out any ideas that don’t seem like they could be a good fit. Narrowing down their ideas to three options can be a helpful first step in getting started. Following the initial brainstorming process, ask students to take a few moments to flesh out their three ideas. Often, students find that they can tie two of their brainstorming ideas together, making it easier for them to share more of what they’re passionate about.

During this second stage of the brainstorming process, ask students to add details to the topics they’re debating, helping them see which option has the best chance of developing a compelling story.

After your students complete the brainstorming process and decide on a topic, it’s time to move forward with developing the first draft. Again, it would be best to let your students know that their first draft is a draft. There’s no need for the first draft of their story to be perfect.

Before actually beginning the draft writing process, you may decide to encourage your students to create an outline to guide their writing. For example, they may choose to list all of the points they’d like to make if they’re writing a persuasive piece or may want to list the events they want to describe if they’re writing a personal narrative. For students who have anxiety around writing, it can be especially helpful to get some of their ideas onto paper to act as a guide before they begin writing their first draft.

For many students, writing as freely as possible–including spelling and grammar mistakes–helps them develop the framework necessary to move forward with their writing piece. Remind students that they’ll be able to come back to their work later to clean it up and that there’s no need to get everything right on the first try.

After completing the first draft, give your students some time away from their writing before they begin to revise. Taking a few hours or a few days can give students the time to process what they’ve written and look at their work in a new light. For many students, a two- or three-stage revision process can be helpful.

During the first revision, students read the work themselves. Your students may find it helpful to read all or parts of their work out loud while working through their revision. Hearing their words out loud can help them find sections of text that are awkward or incorrectly phrased and can help them find areas that could be condensed or need to be better explained.

Following the first revision of their work, peer revision can be helpful. During the peer revision, students trade their writing with one another to get constructive criticism on their work. Be warned: this part of the writing process can be difficult for some students, especially if they’re not confident in their writing skills or have chosen to write about a personal topic. Before beginning the peer revision process, set ground rules with your class on how to give the author feedback that’s helpful and drives the writing process forward.

After completing the revision process, it’s time for your students to begin the editing process, where they’ll take the feedback they received during revisions and put it to good use. Editing can take time, and it’s smart to give your students leeway to move back and forth between the revision and editing processes. It’s key to let students know that the writing process isn’t always linear, and sometimes it’s essential to take a step back and reconsider how they’re developing their work.

As an educator, you may want to review your student’s work with them during the editing process before they move on to the publishing phase. Depending on the amount of correction needed and the types of writing your students are working on, you may want to ask them to go back and create a new draft before they enter the final phase of the process. While there’s no need to re-do the pre-writing activities associated with the beginning of the writing process, exploring the draft, revision, and editing phases can make for a smoother final copy.

The publishing process will look different from classroom to classroom, and it’s up to you and your students to decide how they’d like to publish their writing. Some educators put student work into a binder of stories to distribute at the end of the year. Sometimes, simply printing a final edit of their work for them to take home to their parents can be enough to help them feel like a writer. Talk to your students about how they’d like their work to be shared. Creating a classroom website or blog can also be fun for students to share their work with others.

As a teacher, providing feedback to young children and adults on their writing can be tough, especially when you know it’s something they’ve been working to improve. However, providing direct, kind, constructive feedback can go a long way in helping students to become better writers.

When possible, try complimenting students’ writing skills while providing constructive feedback. This helps students see many positive points in their work and can help them feel motivated to continue working on their writing in the future. You may also want to create a system in your classroom that allows students to provide anonymous feedback to one another. This can allow students to read the work of others without bias and can help students feel less nervous about their peers reading their work.

Digital Tools for Teaching Writing

Technology makes it easier than ever to teach writing, as long as you know how to use the tools you have at your disposal. Here, we’ve compiled a list of some of the most effective tools you can use to help your students boost their writing skills inside and outside the classroom.

1.  Grammarly

We know–correcting the tiny grammatical mistakes that your students make day in and day out can take a toll on you as an educator. Grammarly makes it simple for students to correct spelling and grammar mistakes and explains why certain words, phrases, and structures should be changed.

The free version of Grammarly works perfectly and provides your students with everything they need to grow as writers. In addition, when your students use a Grammarly account, their work is cloud-based and can be accessed from both school and home, making it simple for them to keep working on their writing no matter where they are.

2.  Google Docs

Like Grammarly, Google Docs makes it simple for students to keep working on their writing at school and at home. Google Docs allows multiple people to edit a document, allowing you and your students to work together to create a top-notch piece of writing. With Google Docs, you’ll also be able to make comments to your students about their writing, ask questions, and create a dialouge that allows you to understand their goals

3.  Purdue OWL

Older students will benefit from using the Purdue Online Writing Lab, or OWL, to give them the information they need to make their writing meet currently acceptable journalistic and academic standards. In addition to providing basic information on grammar, the Purdue OWL also offers citation instructions for both APA and MLA formats and can help students figure out how to create technically correct writing. Students must check against the OWL regularly, as APA and MLA requirements change from time to time.

4.  Hemingway Editor

Hemingway’s short, concise sentences and to-the-point descriptions made his writing clear and bold. Readers love Hemingway because he broke down cumbersome topics in a way that made them accessible, and many readers today strive to emulate the timeless author’s style of writing.

Another tool best suited for high school and college students, the Hemingway Editor, helps students find grammar errors and uses of passive voice, which many agree are best avoided in academic and professional writing. A word of caution: Hemingway Editor does not save work, so it’s key that students copy and paste their edited material into a Google Doc or other platform where their work will be saved.

5.  Vocabulary.com

Professional authors and students alike find themselves struggling with using the same words over and over again. Using a site like Vocabulary.com helps writers learn new words in ways that stick, making it easy to spice up writing without getting repetitive. The site is also helpful for looking up the meaning of a single word but has capabilities that go far beyond offering standard dictionary definitions. Cool bonus: the site is free!

Looking for more? Check out our guide on how to teach paraphrasing to students !

Amanda has an M.S.Ed degree from the University of Pennsylvania in School and Mental Health Counseling and is a National Academy of Sports Medicine Certified Personal Trainer. She has experience writing magazine articles, newspaper articles, SEO-friendly web copy, and blog posts.

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Teaching Writing

This strategy guide series identifies, defines, and provides examples of effective writing strategies and offers a list of resources related to each strategy.

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Strategy Guides in this series

This strategy guide explains the writing process and offers practical methods for applying it in your classroom to help students become proficient writers.

This strategy guide clarifies the difference between persuasion and argumentation, stressing the connection between close reading of text to gather evidence and formation of a strong argumentative claim about text.

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The Harvard Writing Project publishes resource guides for faculty and teaching fellows that help them integrate writing into their courses more effectively — for example, by providing ideas about effective assignment design and strategies for responding to student writing.

A list of current HWP publications for faculty and teaching fellows is provided below. Most of the publications are available for download as PDF files. If you would like to be added to the Bulletin mailing list or to receive printed copies of any of the guides listed below, email James Herron at  [email protected].

HARVARD WRITING PROJECT BRIEF GUIDES TO TEACHING WRITING

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Jen Kimbrell

Educator & Teacher Seller

in Teaching · December 10, 2023

Introduction to Teaching Expository Writing

If you’re anything like me, you’re always looking for fresh and effective ways to teach expository writing to our students. Today’s your lucky day because I’ve got something special in store for you. In this blog post, we’re diving deep into the world of Expository Writing Lesson Plans.

I want to share with you the difference between expository and informational writing. Plus, how to write lesson plans that aren’t your run-of-the-mill, snooze-worthy activities but the secret sauce to helping your students become confident writers. So, grab a cup of your favorite brew, and stay with me as I unlock the secrets to crafting engaging and effective expository writing lessons!

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Difference Between Expository and Informational Writing

A few weeks ago, I shared informational writing lesson plans to help make teaching writing to your students easier. One of the first things I must do is clarify the difference between expository and informational writing. Informational writing provides the reader with facts but never provides the author’s personal opinion.

Expository writing imparts information, shares ideas, and provides explanations and evidence. Expository writing is about sharing information, explaining ideas, presenting facts clearly, and organizing. It’s the writing you see in textbooks, travel guides, news articles, and informative reports.

Mastering expository writing is crucial because it:

• It helps students express their ideas and thoughts clearly.
• Equips students with the ability to inform and educate others.
• Fosters critical thinking skills as students conduct research.
• Prepares students for academic writing, which they’ll encounter from grade school to high school and beyond.
• Encourages personal interest and learning about various topics.

With elementary students, we want to teach our students how to organize their writing effectively.

Expository Writing Structure

These are the steps of writing an expository text:

• Brainstorm – Coming up with the idea
• Research – Looking for information about the idea
• Introductory Paragraph – Telling the reader about what the writing is about (the main idea)
• Body of the Essay – Organizing the facts and details for the topic
• Conclusion – Wrap up the writing and restate what the essay is about
• Publishing – Sharing the writing with a broader audience

Expository Writing Lesson Plans

Let’s dive into crafting a lesson plan for expository writing. This plan is designed for young writers in various grade levels. Let’s start with a lesson plan about brainstorming ideas.

Lesson Plan 1: Brainstorming Ideas

Objective: To teach young writers how to brainstorm ideas for expository essays. Sidenote: Ensure students understand expository writing and why it’s essential. Show writing examples to help students understand what they will write about.

I Do: Generate a list with your students or create a list of topics—model for students how you would choose a topic of interest. Then, write down everything you know about the topic on a sticky note or graphic organizer.

We Do: Ask students to choose a topic of their own. Give each student a sticky note and have them write down their chosen topic and share it with a partner their topic.

You Do: Have students write down everything they think they know about their topic.

Share Time: Have a class discussion where students share their chosen topics and ideas. Encourage them to ask questions and provide feedback to their peers.

Lesson Plan 2: Research

Objective: TLW learn how to research their topic.

I Do: Explain the importance of conducting research for informative writing. Discuss different sources, including books, articles, websites, and interviews. With younger students, you will want to have most of the resources ready for them. However, with older students, you want to model for them how to find reliable sources.

We Do: Have students research their topic and write their findings on sticky notes.

You Do: Then, have students return to lesson one to determine if what they thought they knew about the topic was correct.

Share Time: Have a class discussion about what they learned and any new questions about the topic. This strategy is called the RAN Strategy.

Lesson Plan 3: Introductory Sentence or Paragraph

Objective: To guide students in creating strong topic sentences (or paragraphs) for their expository writing.

I Do: Start with a mentor text to review the purpose of an expository essay’s topic sentence (thesis statement). Explain that it’s the main idea or focus of the essay. Show students how you would write a topic sentence based on the topic you chose from lesson one. K-2 students would write a sentence, but 3-5 would begin to create a topic paragraph. 

We Do: Work with students to create an anchor chart of strong and weak topic sentences. Be sure to add cue words like explains, describes, or presents to use in their sentences. Students add their topic to the four-square graphic organizer.

You Do: Have students practice writing their topic sentences for their chosen topics. These sentences should clearly state the main point they want to make in their writing.

Share Time: Have the students share their sentences or paragraphs and provide feedback. Ensure each sentence or paragraph is clear, specific, and related to the topic.

Lesson Plan 4: Body of the Essay

Objective: To guide students in organizing their research to write the body of their essay.

I Do: Teach students how to organize their research into categories. You should give younger students the categories upfront as a scaffold. Using the research you found in your model to show students how to put things in categories with key details underneath.

We Do: Have students work in pairs to organize their sticky notes from their research into categories.

You Do: Students will complete their four-square graphic organizer.

Share Time: Have the students share their four-square graphic organizer.

Lesson Plan 5: Concluding Sentence or Paragraph

Objective: To teach young writers how to craft a concluding paragraph for their expository essays.

I Do: Explain the purpose of the concluding paragraph. Emphasize the importance of summarizing the main points and leaving a lasting impression. Use a mentor text to showcase quality work and model how you would write your concluding sentence or paragraph.

We Do: Work with students to create an anchor chart of strong and weak concluding sentences or paragraphs. Be sure to add cue words like as you can see, in summary, or in conclusion to use in their sentences. Students add their conclusions and ideas to the four-square graphic organizer.

You Do: Students will write their concluding sentence or paragraph.

Share Time: Have the students share their sentences or paragraphs.

Lesson Plan 6: Publishing

Incorporating technology in your expository writing lesson plans can make learning more engaging. Have students type and edit their essays on word processing software for a more polished final product.

Here are some ways to utilize technology when publishing the writing:

• Book Creator  – Great app to help students organize their writing. Students can add images, drawings, videos, and recordings. Plus, there are a lot of great resources on the premium plan that are perfect for writing. I love the graphic organizers and the digital stickers. There are also a ton of templates students could use for their books. This would be great for nonfiction text features.
• Google Slides or Docs – Students can type their writing in Docs or create a book in Google Slides. 
• Canva  – Students can create eBooks and presentations in Canva. Another great thing about Canva is that it can integrate with Book Creator. I enjoy making books for my students and then adding the template to Book Creator, as seen in the book below.

An important piece of publishing is the act of allowing students writing to be seen by a broader audience. They need to understand that the act of writing is for a purpose and it is not that it is because the teacher told them to write. Therefore, be sure to allow opportunities to share their writing with the world around them.

Other Ways to Use Technology In Writing

Interactive Whiteboards – Use interactive whiteboards to visually illustrate the writing process, from brainstorming to the final essay.

Presentations – Create engaging presentations to explain key concepts, steps, and examples of expository writing. I like Canva.

Digital Research Tools – Introduce students to online research databases and tools to find credible sources. Use QR codes and LMS platforms to link younger students to appropriate sites.

Digital Graphic Organizers – Encourage students to use digital graphic organizers to plan their essays. You can add the four-square to Google Slides or the Book Creator app.

Additional Details and Tips

Teaching Grammar – Always work with students about the importance of writing a good sentence and the parts that make up a good sentence.

Personal Interest – Encourage students to choose topics that genuinely interest them. This will make the writing process more enjoyable and the final essays more engaging.

Class Discussion – Foster class discussions throughout the process. Students can share their ideas, ask questions, and learn from each other’s perspectives. I usually do this during the lessons’ We Do portion or Share Time.

The Writing Process – Emphasize the importance of the writing process, from prewriting and drafting to revising and editing.

Expository Writing Prompts – Use expository writing prompts to stimulate students’ thinking. These prompts can be related to personal narratives, historical events, or topics of personal interest.

I hope you found these expository writing lesson plans helpful and inspiring. Expository writing is a valuable skill that prepares students for academic writing and encourages them to explore and share their interests and ideas.

Whether you’re a teacher designing lesson plans for your students or a mom looking to help your child master the art of expository writing, these lesson plans are the perfect starting point.

So, get ready to unlock the secrets of expository writing and embark on an informative essay journey to enhance your writing skills and broaden your knowledge.

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The Top 10+ Writing YouTube Channels (2023)

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While the craft of writing hasn't gotten any easier for writers over time, the methods and avenues for learning and practicing writing skills have expanded in so many ways. Take a look at my list of more than ten top writing YouTube channels to see which one holds the best writing tips for your creative writing growth.

YouTube: Where Writers Go to Learn

The other day, as I was pilfering through a closet, I came across the first novel I ever wrote. Picking up the yellowed manuscript, I cracked it open. The handwritten words looped across the college ruled notebook paper. Red ink crowded the margins and whiteout chipped off some of the lines.

So much has changed in the decades since I penned my first tale. Not only what I write on, but how I prepare for the next leg of my writing journey.

There are so many sources of amazing information available on a variety of media. So many, in fact, it can feel overwhelming.

How do you know where to start? How do you know if the book, blog, podcast or YouTube channel is worth your time?

The world of writer YouTube channels has a name: authortube. There’s a wealth of channels with thousands of videos. Some focus on the writing craft, the nuts and bolts of writing. Others on self-publishing and the business of being a writer.

Fortunately for you, I’ve done the research, and found the top ten Youtube channels for writers. These channels are from authors, editors and entrepreneurs who are currently publishing videos on a regular basis to provide you with ongoing and up-to-date advice.

Top 10 Writing YouTube Channels

Check out these writing channels to give your writing a boost:

1. The Creative Penn

The Creative Penn  from New York Times best-selling author, Joanna Penn, covers a wide variety of topics. She offers tips on self publishing, marketing, and being a successful author.

While she is known for her thrillers, Joanna often collaborates with guest writers who provide advice on fiction, memoirs and nonfiction. You can find her posts weekly.

2. Mark Dawson

Mark is a prolific best selling indie author with over forty novels. His website and authortube channel, The Self Publishing Formula, offers tutorials and collaborations with other successful authors who use social media advertising to supercharge their careers.

Mark publishes videos weekly each with a new topic on the path to being a successful indie writer.

3. BooksandBigHair

India Hill Brown, author of The Forgotten Girl and The Drowned Girl, leads this booktube channel where she provides book reviews, unboxing and read-a-thons.

She also has videos offering advice on how to land a literary agent and how to set and accomplish your writing goals. India uses her own experiences as a writer and a mother to help influence her content.

4. Jenna Moreci

Jenna won over a huge fan base by offering her sarcastic, comedic writing advice in bite size pieces on her YouTube channel . She is a successful indie writer with thousands of short videos serving up writing do’s and don’ts; like How do I Write My First Chapter or Why Your Plot Twist Sucks.

This is not your mama’s Youtube channel, and I suggest you don’t let your kids watch either. But her wit and humor keep you coming back for some great tips and laughs. Jenna puts out new videos weekly.

5. Michael La Ronn

Michael heads up a channel called Author Level Up . Each week he posts videos about the writing craft, self-publishing and increasing your productivity. He offers livestream Q&A sessions as well so you can interact directly with Michael. Learn to write better and faster all while having fun.

6. Dave Chesson

Dave’s channel, Kindlepreneur, provides a series of short, easily digestible videos on increasing your notoriety as well as some great `”how to’s” on a variety of publishing topics like uploading your book to Amazon, writing a prologue, and book formatting.

Dave’s strength is moving books to readers. His website, kindlepreneur.com , is a book marketing website. Dave is also the founder of Publisher Rocket, a book marketing software. (See The Write Practice's review on Pub Rocket here .) Dave publishes videos weekly, so you can always be informed on the most up to date trends in the publishing industry.

7. Diane Callahan

Looking for something more creative? Diane’s channel, Quotidian Writer, offers a unique view on a variety of writing craft topics. Diane is a developmental editor of fiction and an author. Her videos themselves are works of art.

These short pieces feature images and reenactments while you learn. Diane puts her videos out every other month, so be sure to tune into her next installment or get caught up on her previous topics.

8. WordNerds

The channel Word Nerds focuses on live streaming videos with eight word nerd hosts from across several genres. It’s like a writer party each week where you can participate in the discussion with a writing community. With a library of nearly 1,500 videos on topics ranging from inspiration to interviews you’ll find something to spark your interest.

9. Alexa Donne

Alexa is a traditionally published YA author who uses her channel t o provide guidance on writing and publishing. Even though she’s a YA author, she hosts interviews with authors across several genres. Alexa offers straightforward advice to keep you focused on writing and your head in the game.

10. Abbie Emmons

Abbie’s upbeat videos will help inspire you to meet your writing goals and improve your writing process. She believes the rules are less important and puts her focus on empowering authors to find the meaning in their words and understanding their craft. In her words, “I teach writers how to make their stories matter by harnessing the power and psychology of storytelling.”

3 Bonus Channels!

All right, I couldn't stop at just ten. Here are three more top channels that are well worth your views:

11. The Write Practice

Joe Bunting’s channel, The Write Practice , focuses on improving your skill as a writer and helping you develop good habits to becoming a successful author. These short monthly videos provide easily executable lessons and creative ideas that are paramount to any writer regardless of your skill level or experience. Paired with the site's writing prompts, there's something to help every writer grow.

Joe is a best selling author and founder of The Write Practice website, a place for authors to gather and share their work and improve their craft. Joe has been helping people achieve their writing goals since 2011, so join in and let him help you on your journey.

12. Brandon Sanderson

Brandon Sanderson didn’t mean to become a Youtube sensation. The sci fi / fantasy author and university lecturer fell into it by accident. Brandon has his own current authortube channel, but the lecture series he posted in 2020 is well worth the watch. Brandon has a knack for teaching so these popular videos are not only easily understood and engaging but delivered in the classroom making it conducive to learning.

Lecture #1 Introduction on Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy

Lecture #2: Plot

13. Robert McKee

Robert McKee is arguably one of the most well-known and celebrated screenwriting lecturers. Former students have gone on to win Academy awards, Emmy awards and WGA awards. His renowned “Story Seminar” on the art of storytelling has been presented around the world. While his YouTube pieces aren't recent, his short videos offer timeless advice on structure and design for anyone who puts words to the page.

What Are Your Top Writing YouTube Channels?

There are so many fabulous creative voices out there, I’m sure I missed a few. Check out these channels to get started exploring authortube. And don't hesitate to try some new channels, too.

Just don't let watching authortube become a way to procrastinate writing your own book!

What's your favorite authortube channel? Let us know in the comments .

Choose one of the YouTube channels above and watch one video. Then, set your timer for fifteen minutes and put the lesson into practice.

Watch Joe's video on writing a premise here . Then, set a timer for fifteen minutes and write your idea out as a premise.

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6 YouTube Writing Activities for Students and Teachers

No doubt about it: YouTube has some amazing cat videos, but we have some creative YouTube writing activities your students will love more.

 But, if we can tread the line of its algorithm-generated sidebar suggestions and avoid falling into a black hole of mindless entertainment, we can uncover some powerful tools to help get our students writing.

 As a resource to enhance learning in the classroom, few free tools can match the sheer volume and diversity of the content that the world’s largest video-sharing platform offers.

 Not only is YouTube the world’s most popular video-sharing platform, but it’s the 2nd most popular search engine overall, with over 3 billion searches performed per month.

 And most importantly, our students love YouTube. Heck, it’s even more popular than Facebook.

 So, if you’re struggling to ignite your students’ enthusiasm for yet another writing task , why not check out our 6 Writing Activities Involving YouTube list below.

Things to Consider When Using YouTube in the Classroom

 But, before you or your students begin to use YouTube in the classroom, be sure you’ve thought through some of the potential safety issues that arise when using the platform with young people.

 The relative importance of these safety issues will depend largely on the age of the students you’re working with. But, be sure to take all the necessary precautions and acquire all the required permissions before getting started.

 Some safety issues to consider when using YouTube in the classroom include:

• Inappropriate content within videos
• Inappropriate content suggested by the algorithm
• Offensive Material in the comments section
• Privacy settings for videos posted by students.

With some thought and a little careful screening thought, YouTube can prove itself an invaluable and safe resource for use in classroom writing activities.

1. Learn to write and film a Script

Back in the day, the best a student could hope for was to see a script they had labored over being performed by a ragtag group of peers at the top of the class before the bell rang.

Often, a hurried, poorly rehearsed, and unsatisfactory affair. These days, the tech has taken us a long way from that!

If you’d told ’80s school children that one day every student would be able to record and broadcast their own movies to the world – and all from a magic box in their pocket – minds would’ve been blown!

Now, most of our students have access to a video camera of some description, whether on their cellphones, tablets, or laptops and can produce and broadcast from the palm of their hand.

Any scripts that a student writes can quickly be turned into a video and uploaded, edited, and broadcast on YouTube for the world to see – all in a matter of hours.

Of course, it may not be appropriate for the settings of these home-produced movies to be ‘Public’, but the chance to see their work on the screen can still be a powerful motivating tool for students. Even if the video will be listed as ‘Private’.

While the obvious text type to focus on with YouTube in mind might be a movie script or similar, there is plenty of scope for writing a script based on a wide variety of text types too.

For example, if you’ve been working on persuasive writing in class, the students could script and produce an advertisement that employs the persuasive techniques they’ve been working on.

The YouTube Studio even allows the students to edit their videos inside the app with the YoutTube Video Editor, so there’s no need to have a subscription to any expense editing software either.

When the students have finished writing, producing, and editing, why not schedule a time and date for the screening of all the video tasks at the end?

Don’t forget the popcorn!

2. Create a Video Essay

A recent study by the Pew Research Center revealed that 85% of young people use YouTube regularly. That’s more than even social media giants such as Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram.

It would be a mistake for us as teachers to dismiss YouTube as merely the world’s single largest repository for the meme-worthy cat videos and the like. For many of our young people, it’s their single biggest source of news and entertainment.

So important is YouTube as a medium that it has even birthed new and interesting genres never before seen, such as the video essay.

The video essay is a long-form exploration of hot topics within the culture. They’re unrestricted in many of the ways more traditional, TV-style documentaries are. They’re low budget, able to appeal to smaller, more niche audiences, and they aren’t limited in length by the demands of commercial breaks and scheduling considerations, for example.

The technological skills required to produce a basic video essay are minimal. While they often use images, clips, and other media to make their case. Most of the technology is intuitive and easy to use by design.

To get a sense of what a good video essay looks like, students could check out some great YouTube channels such as:

• Nerdwriter – explores the world of interesting ideas
• Vox – examines cultural and political issues
• Every Frame a Painting – provides in-depth film analysis.

There are a ton of sites catering to a wide range of interests. They also serve as useful tools for inspiring debate and discussion in the classroom.

The process of scripting a video essay has some similarities to that of writing a regular essay. Here’s a brief outline of the process:

a. Planning

The student needs first to identify the central argument they want to communicate and they’ll also need to identify the audience they want to communicate to.

They should write this down in a few clearly expressed sentences.

b. Storyboard

Then, the student will need to organize their ideas through a storyboard. The storyboard should provide a detailed outline of what the video essay will look like. This will be a great help to help the student visualize the final product.

Once the essay has been comprehensively outlined, it’ll be time to collect together the various media needed to help to make the argument.

These resources can be gathered from third party sources or produced by the student. They may take the form of still images, video clips, slides, interview audio, documents, and screenshots to name but half a dozen.

These media can then be edited together and music added as necessary. Students can use the YouTube Editor or a third-party video editor as required.

Writing/rewriting a final version of the script will be necessary. It will need to weave the various media together coherently before adding the voice-over.

Students should also be careful to reference and credit all sources appropriately in their final work version.

3. Use Video Writing Prompts with your students

Sometimes you just need a writing activity you can pull out of the hat in an instant. Something that will get the students writing quickly with the minimum of fuss.

Traditionally, these are the times we would have scrawled a writing prompt across the board in chalk and told the students to get on with it. Effective in its way perhaps, but not very inspiring.

With video writing prompts, you can have the convenience of a quick-start writing activity but with a bit more of a spark to get things going and little to no prep required.

Video writing prompts lay a little more groundwork for the students. The scene is set in a clever and interesting way with the help of dramatic music, imaginative visuals, and a theatrical voice-over.

 There are several channels dedicated to providing quality writing prompts for students. One of my favorites is Video Writing Prompts by John Spencer .

4. Teach Poetry

We teach our students that the origins of poetry lie in oral tradition. We emphasize the musicality of poetry when we teach literary devices such as alliteration and assonance.

However, too often poetry remains primarily 2-dimensional words printed on the page of a textbook.

Fortunately, now it needn’t be so. Using videos from YouTube we can help our students see and, more importantly, hear the words living and breathing in the mouths of people – often the poets themselves.

When your students are writing about a poem, as well as reading it together in class, they should get a chance to hear it read. You can find readings of many classic and modern poetry on YouTube – sometimes read by the poet themselves or a very talented actor.

This gives students a strong sense of the musicality of the poem they are writing about. Things like intonation, tone, and stress are much more apparent in spoken versions of poetry than when reduced to lifeless words on a page to be read silently.

A quick search of a poem’s title will reveal if a reading is available on the platform. Several public playlists have compiled poets and poetry together. One of the best playlists I have found is Poets Reading Poetry .

Link: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3E68BA005B5CC2DF

If your students have been working hard on their poems, you might want to host a class poetry slam. Students can get a good feeling for reading poetry out loud by checking out the content on the appropriately named Poetry Out Loud channel.

Link: https://www.youtube.com/user/poetryoutloudvideos

5. Go On a Virtual Field Trip with your students

It’s great to get out and about with your class. Going on a field trip together can not only provide some valuable time to bond as a group, but it can also provide useful experiences for students to draw on when completing writing tasks, especially recounts.

Often, however, our field trips and the time scheduled to study recounts (for example) don’t coincide. Virtual field trips are a useful tool in just such circumstances.

Virtual field trips on YouTube consist of a filmed guided tour of anything from an animal sanctuary to a world capital such as Paris.

You can also find animated historical tours like ancient Rome, for example, as well as public and private facilities such as libraries, art galleries, and museums.

Virtual Field Trips playlist offers a diverse playlist of virtual field trips and is an excellent place to get started.

Link: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOHtTtEFnefTWRSLkWPqIMN3gJU_fSauU

To write factual recounts on historical events, students could also use old newsreel footage as a useful source for their research.

A fantastic resource for this kind of footage is the British Pathé channel.

Here you’ll find everything from footage of the Titanic setting off from Belfast to the American Civil Rights marches of the 1960s.

Link: https://www.youtube.com/user/britishpathe

6. Teach Narrative Writing Through Video

YouTube is chock-full of short video stories, both live-action and animated.

There are original short movies and reworkings of classic tales, such as Aesop’s fables and the Brothers Grimm fairy tales.

These can be a valuable resource to draw upon when teaching the elements of a narrative arc.

When explaining elements such as characters, setting, rising action, problem, climax, falling action, and resolution, it can be easier when the class as a whole is familiar with the very same story.

Watching a video version of the same story together ensures everyone has a fresh and identical version of the story in mind.

It ensures everyone moves through the story at the same pace, allows you to pause the tale for discussion at significant moments, and enables you to rewatch specific parts together as necessary.

One great playlist for animated versions of Aesop’s fables is Aesop’s Fables – Bedtime Stories which contains 46 different stories.

Link: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBxwrApWIpdLR0UEFfgA0x8At4CG2LAu8

Another excellent channel with animated versions of all kinds of traditional stories is English Fairy Tales .

Link: https://www.youtube.com/c/EnglishFairyTales

Videos like those found on YouTube are a great tool for increasing student engagement in the classroom.

They give you as an educator another string to your bow when students grow weary of reading from a textbook or watching yet another slide presentation.

YouTube – it’s more than just cute cats and babies!

Link: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAWzhTb5vGii16D_SuKpBZQ

No Series: Writing to Learn

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Discussion and Supporting Materials

• Supporting Materials

Thought starters

• How does this strategy encourage deep understanding?
• Why is it important that students participate in low-stakes writing?
• How can you use this strategy in your classroom?

33 Comments

Derek Lewis Dec 9, 2021 7:20am

Can you tell me how to write a software development application? I've already looked everywhere for this information, but I just can't find it ...

Giancarlo Esposito Dec 9, 2021 7:31am

You are a little off topic, but okay) I myself was recently looking for such information, since there is one project in the plans for software development. Found on the Internet just such an article [url="https://www.dataxdev.com/blog/how-to-write-a-request-proposal-for-software-development/"]https://www.dataxdev.com/blog/how-to-write-a-request-proposal-for-software-development/[/url]. It describes in detail how to write an application for software development. At least the structure of the sentence itself, you can understand.

Katie Webber Jun 6, 2019 12:30pm

I agree that spelling is one of the main ways to learn.

Laurie Cooper Jan 21, 2019 12:15pm

Writing to learn has so many benefits, from helping students process, to improving their writing confidence and competence, to even helping teachers stop feeling as if they have to grade every piece of writing a student does. As an added benefit, you have formative information on those pages, especially for students who don't like to speak up. 

Raven Groom Jun 5, 2018 3:25pm

Keidi Boatfield Oct 25, 2017 7:12pm

Writing to Learn Transcript

Transcripts

+++ 00:00:06 +++ Card: Strategies: Writing to Learn Andrea Culver: Write down who do you think the target audience of this kind of music is? What age group do you think listens to this when it’s popular? Do you think it’s for adults? Do you think it’s for teenagers? Lower Third: Andrea Culver 9th Grade Pre-AP English 1 Sheldon Early College High School, Houston, Texas Andrea Culver: Writing to learn it’s essentially low stakes writing. So what you do is your students have paper and you ask a question and it’s usually pretty short. And they write, the respond to it. Andrea Culver: I want you to write about what we saw, what stuck with you, what do you think is important? What do you not care for?

+++ 00:00:37 +++ Andrea Culver: It’s just a way for them to process the information that you’re giving them and it’s a very low stakes environment. I don’t take a grade on writing to learn, the kids to know that. And they know that if they turn it, the only other person that’s going to see it is me. It gets them accustomed to putting their thoughts on paper in a way that isn’t scary. They don’t have to worry about what the rest of the class thinks. They don’t have to worry about what kind of grade they’re going to get. Andrea Culver: I’ll give you about 45 seconds, why do you think the Blues is called the Blues? How did it get its name? What do you think? If you don’t know, that’s okay, take a guess.

+++ 00:01:05 +++ Andrea Culver: In my classroom, sometimes we call them writing to think. And we’ve talked about the connotation that’s there with learn and with think. So when we write to learn it’s because you’re going to be writing something that I’m teaching you. When we write to think that’s when you’re organizing your own thoughts. Andrea Culver: What the students really get out of these kinds of activities is they’re able to process the information in a way that’s going to make them retain it. Andrea Culver: So tell me what stuck with you and I want to know what kind of music sounds like the most what you listen to today.

+++ 00:01:37 +++ Andrea Culver: By doing something like writing to learn where they’re addressing these things in a low stakes environment that gives them the opportunity to sort of learn for themselves or think it out for themselves.

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How Does Writing Fit Into the ‘Science of Reading’?

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In one sense, the national conversation about what it will take to make sure all children become strong readers has been wildly successful: States are passing legislation supporting evidence-based teaching approaches , and school districts are rushing to supply training. Publishers are under pressure to drop older materials . And for the first time in years, an instructional issue—reading—is headlining education media coverage.

In the middle of all that, though, the focus on the “science of reading” has elided its twin component in literacy instruction: writing.

Writing is intrinsically important for all students to learn—after all, it is the primary way beyond speech that humans communicate. But more than that, research suggests that teaching students to write in an integrated fashion with reading is not only efficient, it’s effective.

Yet writing is often underplayed in the elementary grades. Too often, it is separated from schools’ reading block. Writing is not assessed as frequently as reading, and principals, worried about reading-exam scores, direct teachers to focus on one often at the expense of the other. Finally, beyond the English/language arts block, kids often aren’t asked to do much writing in early grades.

“Sometimes, in an early-literacy classroom, you’ll hear a teacher say, ‘It’s time to pick up your pencils,’” said Wiley Blevins, an author and literacy consultant who provides training in schools. “But your pencils should be in your hand almost the entire morning.”

Strikingly, many of the critiques that reading researchers have made against the “balanced literacy” approach that has held sway in schools for decades could equally apply to writing instruction: Foundational writing skills—like phonics and language structure—have not generally been taught systematically or explicitly.

And like the “find the main idea” strategies commonly taught in reading comprehension, writing instruction has tended to focus on content-neutral tasks, rather than deepening students’ connections to the content they learn.

Education Week wants to bring more attention to these connections in the stories that make up this special collection . But first, we want to delve deeper into the case for including writing in every step of the elementary curriculum.

Why has writing been missing from the reading conversation?

Much like the body of knowledge on how children learn to read words, it is also settled science that reading and writing draw on shared knowledge, even though they have traditionally been segmented in instruction.

“The body of research is substantial in both number of studies and quality of studies. There’s no question that reading and writing share a lot of real estate, they depend on a lot of the same knowledge and skills,” said Timothy Shanahan, an emeritus professor of education at the University of Illinois Chicago. “Pick your spot: text structure, vocabulary, sound-symbol relationships, ‘world knowledge.’”

The reasons for the bifurcation in reading and writing are legion. One is that the two fields have typically been studied separately. (Researchers studying writing usually didn’t examine whether a writing intervention, for instance, also aided students’ reading abilities—and vice versa.)

Some scholars also finger the dominance of the federally commissioned National Reading Panel report, which in 2000 outlined key instructional components of learning to read. The review didn’t examine the connection of writing to reading.

Looking even further back yields insights, too. Penmanship and spelling were historically the only parts of writing that were taught, and when writing reappeared in the latter half of the 20th century, it tended to focus on “process writing,” emphasizing personal experience and story generation over other genres. Only when the Common Core State Standards appeared in 2010 did the emphasis shift to writing about nonfiction texts and across subjects—the idea that students should be writing about what they’ve learned.

And finally, teaching writing is hard. Few studies document what preparation teachers receive to teach writing, but in surveys, many teachers say they received little training in their college education courses. That’s probably why only a little over half of teachers, in one 2016 survey, said that they enjoyed teaching writing.

Writing should begin in the early grades

These factors all work against what is probably the most important conclusion from the research over the last few decades: Students in the early-elementary grades need lots of varied opportunities to write.

“Students need support in their writing,” said Dana Robertson, an associate professor of reading and literacy education at the school of education at Virginia Tech who also studies how instructional change takes root in schools. “They need to be taught explicitly the skills and strategies of writing and they need to see the connections of reading, writing, and knowledge development.”

While research supports some fundamental tenets of writing instruction—that it should be structured, for instance, and involve drafting and revising—it hasn’t yet pointed to a specific teaching recipe that works best.

One of the challenges, the researchers note, is that while reading curricula have improved over the years, they still don’t typically provide many supports for students—or teachers, for that matter—for writing. Teachers often have to supplement with additions that don’t always mesh well with their core, grade-level content instruction.

“We have a lot of activities in writing we know are good,” Shanahan said. “We don’t really have a yearlong elementary-school-level curriculum in writing. That just doesn’t exist the way it does in reading.”

Nevertheless, practitioners like Blevins work writing into every reading lesson, even in the earliest grades. And all the components that make up a solid reading program can be enhanced through writing activities.

4 Key Things to Know About How Reading and Writing Interlock

Want a quick summary of what research tells us about the instructional connections between reading and writing?

1. Reading and writing are intimately connected.

Research on the connections began in the early 1980s and has grown more robust with time.

Among the newest and most important additions are three research syntheses conducted by Steve Graham, a professor at the University of Arizona, and his research partners. One of them examined whether writing instruction also led to improvements in students’ reading ability; a second examined the inverse question. Both found significant positive effects for reading and writing.

A third meta-analysis gets one step closer to classroom instruction. Graham and partners examined 47 studies of instructional programs that balanced both reading and writing—no program could feature more than 60 percent of one or the other. The results showed generally positive effects on both reading and writing measures.

2. Writing matters even at the earliest grades, when students are learning to read.

Studies show that the prewriting students do in early education carries meaningful signals about their decoding, spelling, and reading comprehension later on. Reading experts say that students should be supported in writing almost as soon as they begin reading, and evidence suggests that both spelling and handwriting are connected to the ability to connect speech to print and to oral language development.

3. Like reading, writing must be taught explicitly.

Writing is a complex task that demands much of students’ cognitive resources. Researchers generally agree that writing must be explicitly taught—rather than left up to students to “figure out” the rules on their own.

There isn’t as much research about how precisely to do this. One 2019 review, in fact, found significant overlap among the dozen writing programs studied, and concluded that all showed signs of boosting learning. Debates abound about the amount of structure students need and in what sequence, such as whether they need to master sentence construction before moving onto paragraphs and lengthier texts.

But in general, students should be guided on how to construct sentences and paragraphs, and they should have access to models and exemplars, the research suggests. They also need to understand the iterative nature of writing, including how to draft and revise.

A number of different writing frameworks incorporating various degrees of structure and modeling are available, though most of them have not been studied empirically.

4. Writing can help students learn content—and make sense of it.

Much of reading comprehension depends on helping students absorb “world knowledge”—think arts, ancient cultures, literature, and science—so that they can make sense of increasingly sophisticated texts and ideas as their reading improves. Writing can enhance students’ content learning, too, and should be emphasized rather than taking a back seat to the more commonly taught stories and personal reflections.

Graham and colleagues conducted another meta-analysis of nearly 60 studies looking at this idea of “writing to learn” in mathematics, science, and social studies. The studies included a mix of higher-order assignments, like analyses and argumentative writing, and lower-level ones, like summarizing and explaining. The study found that across all three disciplines, writing about the content improved student learning.

If students are doing work on phonemic awareness—the ability to recognize sounds—they shouldn’t merely manipulate sounds orally; they can put them on the page using letters. If students are learning how to decode, they can also encode—record written letters and words while they say the sounds out loud.

And students can write as they begin learning about language structure. When Blevins’ students are mainly working with decodable texts with controlled vocabularies, writing can support their knowledge about how texts and narratives work: how sentences are put together and how they can be pulled apart and reconstructed. Teachers can prompt them in these tasks, asking them to rephrase a sentence as a question, split up two sentences, or combine them.

“Young kids are writing these mile-long sentences that become second nature. We set a higher bar, and they are fully capable of doing it. We can demystify a bit some of that complex text if we develop early on how to talk about sentences—how they’re created, how they’re joined,” Blevins said. “There are all these things you can do that are helpful to develop an understanding of how sentences work and to get lots of practice.”

As students progress through the elementary grades, this structured work grows more sophisticated. They need to be taught both sentence and paragraph structure , and they need to learn how different writing purposes and genres—narrative, persuasive, analytical—demand different approaches. Most of all, the research indicates, students need opportunities to write at length often.

Using writing to support students’ exploration of content

Reading is far more than foundational skills, of course. It means introducing students to rich content and the specialized vocabulary in each discipline and then ensuring that they read, discuss, analyze, and write about those ideas. The work to systematically build students’ knowledge begins in the early grades and progresses throughout their K-12 experience.

Here again, available evidence suggests that writing can be a useful tool to help students explore, deepen, and draw connections in this content. With the proper supports, writing can be a method for students to retell and analyze what they’ve learned in discussions of content and literature throughout the school day —in addition to their creative writing.

This “writing to learn” approach need not wait for students to master foundational skills. In the K-2 grades especially, much content is learned through teacher read-alouds and conversation that include more complex vocabulary and ideas than the texts students are capable of reading. But that should not preclude students from writing about this content, experts say.

“We do a read-aloud or a media piece and we write about what we learned. It’s just a part of how you’re responding, or sharing, what you’ve learned across texts; it’s not a separate thing from reading,” Blevins said. “If I am doing read-alouds on a concept—on animal habitats, for example—my decodable texts will be on animals. And students are able to include some of these more sophisticated ideas and language in their writing, because we’ve elevated the conversations around these texts.”

In this set of stories , Education Week examines the connections between elementary-level reading and writing in three areas— encoding , language and text structure , and content-area learning . But there are so many more examples.

Please write us to share yours when you’ve finished.

Want to read more about the research that informed this story? Here’s a bibliography to start you off.

Berninger V. W., Abbott, R. D., Abbott, S. P., Graham S., & Richards T. (2002). Writing and reading: Connections between language by hand and language by eye. J ournal of Learning Disabilities. Special Issue: The Language of Written Language, 35(1), 39–56 Berninger, Virginia, Robert D. Abbott, Janine Jones, Beverly J. Wolf, Laura Gould, Marci Anderson-Younstrom, Shirley Shimada, Kenn Apel. (2006) “Early development of language by hand: composing, reading, listening, and speaking connections; three letter-writing modes; and fast mapping in spelling.” Developmental Neuropsychology, 29(1), pp. 61-92 Cabell, Sonia Q, Laura S. Tortorelli, and Hope K. Gerde (2013). “How Do I Write…? Scaffolding Preschoolers’ Early Writing Skills.” The Reading Teacher, 66(8), pp. 650-659. Gerde, H.K., Bingham, G.E. & Wasik, B.A. (2012). “Writing in Early Childhood Classrooms: Guidance for Best Practices.” Early Childhood Education Journal 40, 351–359 (2012) Gilbert, Jennifer, and Steve Graham. (2010). “Teaching Writing to Elementary Students in Grades 4–6: A National Survey.” The Elementary School Journal 110(44) Graham, Steve, et al. (2017). “Effectiveness of Literacy Programs Balancing Reading and Writing Instruction: A Meta-Analysis.” Reading Research Quarterly, 53(3) pp. 279–304 Graham, Steve, and Michael Hebert. (2011). “Writing to Read: A Meta-Analysis of the Impact of Writing and Writing Instruction on Reading.” Harvard Educational Review (2011) 81(4): 710–744. Graham, Steve. (2020). “The Sciences of Reading and Writing Must Become More Fully Integrated.” Reading Research Quarterly, 55(S1) pp. S35–S44 Graham, Steve, Sharlene A. Kiuhara, and Meade MacKay. (2020).”The Effects of Writing on Learning in Science, Social Studies, and Mathematics: A Meta-Analysis.” Review of Educational Research April 2020, Vol 90, No. 2, pp. 179–226 Shanahan, Timothy. “History of Writing and Reading Connections.” in Shanahan, Timothy. (2016). “Relationships between reading and writing development.” In C. MacArthur, S. Graham, & J. Fitzgerald (Eds.), Handbook of writing research (2nd ed., pp. 194–207). New York, NY: Guilford. Slavin, Robert, Lake, C., Inns, A., Baye, A., Dachet, D., & Haslam, J. (2019). “A quantitative synthesis of research on writing approaches in grades 2 to 12.” London: Education Endowment Foundation. Troia, Gary. (2014). Evidence-based practices for writing instruction (Document No. IC-5). Retrieved from University of Florida, Collaboration for Effective Educator, Development, Accountability, and Reform Center website: http://ceedar.education.ufl.edu/tools/innovation-configuration/ Troia, Gary, and Steve Graham. (2016).“Common Core Writing and Language Standards and Aligned State Assessments: A National Survey of Teacher Beliefs and Attitudes.” Reading and Writing 29(9).

A version of this article appeared in the January 25, 2023 edition of Education Week as How Does Writing Fit Into the ‘Science of Reading’?

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Why writing by hand beats typing for thinking and learning

Jonathan Lambert

If you're like many digitally savvy Americans, it has likely been a while since you've spent much time writing by hand.

The laborious process of tracing out our thoughts, letter by letter, on the page is becoming a relic of the past in our screen-dominated world, where text messages and thumb-typed grocery lists have replaced handwritten letters and sticky notes. Electronic keyboards offer obvious efficiency benefits that have undoubtedly boosted our productivity — imagine having to write all your emails longhand.

To keep up, many schools are introducing computers as early as preschool, meaning some kids may learn the basics of typing before writing by hand.

But giving up this slower, more tactile way of expressing ourselves may come at a significant cost, according to a growing body of research that's uncovering the surprising cognitive benefits of taking pen to paper, or even stylus to iPad — for both children and adults.

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In kids, studies show that tracing out ABCs, as opposed to typing them, leads to better and longer-lasting recognition and understanding of letters. Writing by hand also improves memory and recall of words, laying down the foundations of literacy and learning. In adults, taking notes by hand during a lecture, instead of typing, can lead to better conceptual understanding of material.

"There's actually some very important things going on during the embodied experience of writing by hand," says Ramesh Balasubramaniam , a neuroscientist at the University of California, Merced. "It has important cognitive benefits."

While those benefits have long been recognized by some (for instance, many authors, including Jennifer Egan and Neil Gaiman , draft their stories by hand to stoke creativity), scientists have only recently started investigating why writing by hand has these effects.

A slew of recent brain imaging research suggests handwriting's power stems from the relative complexity of the process and how it forces different brain systems to work together to reproduce the shapes of letters in our heads onto the page.

Your brain on handwriting

Both handwriting and typing involve moving our hands and fingers to create words on a page. But handwriting, it turns out, requires a lot more fine-tuned coordination between the motor and visual systems. This seems to more deeply engage the brain in ways that support learning.

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"Handwriting is probably among the most complex motor skills that the brain is capable of," says Marieke Longcamp , a cognitive neuroscientist at Aix-Marseille Université.

Gripping a pen nimbly enough to write is a complicated task, as it requires your brain to continuously monitor the pressure that each finger exerts on the pen. Then, your motor system has to delicately modify that pressure to re-create each letter of the words in your head on the page.

"Your fingers have to each do something different to produce a recognizable letter," says Sophia Vinci-Booher , an educational neuroscientist at Vanderbilt University. Adding to the complexity, your visual system must continuously process that letter as it's formed. With each stroke, your brain compares the unfolding script with mental models of the letters and words, making adjustments to fingers in real time to create the letters' shapes, says Vinci-Booher.

That's not true for typing.

To type "tap" your fingers don't have to trace out the form of the letters — they just make three relatively simple and uniform movements. In comparison, it takes a lot more brainpower, as well as cross-talk between brain areas, to write than type.

Recent brain imaging studies bolster this idea. A study published in January found that when students write by hand, brain areas involved in motor and visual information processing " sync up " with areas crucial to memory formation, firing at frequencies associated with learning.

"We don't see that [synchronized activity] in typewriting at all," says Audrey van der Meer , a psychologist and study co-author at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. She suggests that writing by hand is a neurobiologically richer process and that this richness may confer some cognitive benefits.

Other experts agree. "There seems to be something fundamental about engaging your body to produce these shapes," says Robert Wiley , a cognitive psychologist at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. "It lets you make associations between your body and what you're seeing and hearing," he says, which might give the mind more footholds for accessing a given concept or idea.

Those extra footholds are especially important for learning in kids, but they may give adults a leg up too. Wiley and others worry that ditching handwriting for typing could have serious consequences for how we all learn and think.

What might be lost as handwriting wanes

The clearest consequence of screens and keyboards replacing pen and paper might be on kids' ability to learn the building blocks of literacy — letters.

"Letter recognition in early childhood is actually one of the best predictors of later reading and math attainment," says Vinci-Booher. Her work suggests the process of learning to write letters by hand is crucial for learning to read them.

"When kids write letters, they're just messy," she says. As kids practice writing "A," each iteration is different, and that variability helps solidify their conceptual understanding of the letter.

Research suggests kids learn to recognize letters better when seeing variable handwritten examples, compared with uniform typed examples.

This helps develop areas of the brain used during reading in older children and adults, Vinci-Booher found.

"This could be one of the ways that early experiences actually translate to long-term life outcomes," she says. "These visually demanding, fine motor actions bake in neural communication patterns that are really important for learning later on."

Ditching handwriting instruction could mean that those skills don't get developed as well, which could impair kids' ability to learn down the road.

"If young children are not receiving any handwriting training, which is very good brain stimulation, then their brains simply won't reach their full potential," says van der Meer. "It's scary to think of the potential consequences."

Many states are trying to avoid these risks by mandating cursive instruction. This year, California started requiring elementary school students to learn cursive , and similar bills are moving through state legislatures in several states, including Indiana, Kentucky, South Carolina and Wisconsin. (So far, evidence suggests that it's the writing by hand that matters, not whether it's print or cursive.)

Slowing down and processing information

For adults, one of the main benefits of writing by hand is that it simply forces us to slow down.

During a meeting or lecture, it's possible to type what you're hearing verbatim. But often, "you're not actually processing that information — you're just typing in the blind," says van der Meer. "If you take notes by hand, you can't write everything down," she says.

The relative slowness of the medium forces you to process the information, writing key words or phrases and using drawing or arrows to work through ideas, she says. "You make the information your own," she says, which helps it stick in the brain.

Such connections and integration are still possible when typing, but they need to be made more intentionally. And sometimes, efficiency wins out. "When you're writing a long essay, it's obviously much more practical to use a keyboard," says van der Meer.

Still, given our long history of using our hands to mark meaning in the world, some scientists worry about the more diffuse consequences of offloading our thinking to computers.

"We're foisting a lot of our knowledge, extending our cognition, to other devices, so it's only natural that we've started using these other agents to do our writing for us," says Balasubramaniam.

It's possible that this might free up our minds to do other kinds of hard thinking, he says. Or we might be sacrificing a fundamental process that's crucial for the kinds of immersive cognitive experiences that enable us to learn and think at our full potential.

Balasubramaniam stresses, however, that we don't have to ditch digital tools to harness the power of handwriting. So far, research suggests that scribbling with a stylus on a screen activates the same brain pathways as etching ink on paper. It's the movement that counts, he says, not its final form.

Jonathan Lambert is a Washington, D.C.-based freelance journalist who covers science, health and policy.

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Narrative Writing for Exam Route - IGCSE First Language English 0500/0990

Subject: English

Age range: 14-16

Resource type: Unit of work

Last updated

11 May 2024

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13 lesson unit for IGCSE First Language English 0500/0990 for Narrative Writing, specifically for Paper 2 Exam Route. The theme of this unit is fantasy narrative writing.

Included is a 275 slide PowerPoint and 85 page student workbook with all activities included, such as the do nows, planning sheets, extracts, etc.

Planned by an experienced 0500 teacher and IGCSE English examiner. Find me on Youtube by searching Taughtly for 0500 video lessons.

Find the coursework adaptation of this same unit here: https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/-13036344

Lesson topics:

• Introducing the fantasy genre
• Show don’t tell
• Characterisation
• Plot mountain
• Clues and tension
• A* exemplar
• Rank ordering three example stories
• Generating character and setting ideas for the exam
• Generating story ideas based on past paper questions
• Timed & paced exam practice
• Redrafting my story

Free sample lessons:

• Unpicking an exemplar A* story: https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/resource-13037017
• Identifying show don’t tell: https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/resource-13037005

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