Berryville teachers join writing project

U.s.-funded program focuses on the best strategies for classrooms

Berryville teachers are joining a national project focused on training teachers in rural schools on the best strategies to teach writing.

“The literacy standards now with the Common Core [State Standards] mandate that all teachers teach literacy skills in their classroom,” Berryville Middle School Principal Shelly Poage said. “This will help them teach writing standards more confidently and clearly.”

The Northwest Arkansas Writing Project, based at the University of Arkansas, is receiving $400,000 to participate in the National Writing Project College-Ready Writers Program, said Chris Goering, director of the Northwest Arkansas Writing Project. About two-thirds of the grant will go toward providing two years of training for Berryville Middle School and Berryville High School teachers.

“Being able to really write and write well is a skill for life,” he said. “Writing well means you are able to form coherent thoughts and write with an audience in mind.”

Many teachers are intimidated by writing and teaching writing, Goering said. Most English teachers will read in their free time, but fewer English teachers spend their free time writing.

“Writing is hard,” he said. “It’s not something that’s easy to do. Getting middle school or high school students to read is a challenge. Getting them to write is even more difficult.”

Over the past 10 years or more, teachers have given more attention to reading and less attention to writing, Goering said. Writing assignments also have focused more on students writing stories or reflecting on personal experiences.

Writing instruction is receiving renewed attention because of the emphasis on writing instruction in the new Common Core State Standards, Goering said. Arkansas public schools are in the second year of a three-year plan to implement the new state standards for literacy and math.

“Writing instruction is going to be more focused on argument, more focused on persuasive and more focused on drawing on multiple sources to make arguments,” Goering said.

The U.S. Department of Education awarded $16.45 million to the National Writing Project through the department’s Investing in Innovation competition. The National Writing Project, through the College-Ready Writers Program, aims to help teachers in 40 rural school districts in eight states expand their practice and teaching of analytical writing, according to a department news release. Most of the grant is federal funding, but $1.5 million is from private donors.

The National Writing Project began in 1974 in the Graduate School of Education at the University of California at Berkeley as an effort to improve the teaching of writing. The project has expanded to nearly 200 sites in 50 states.

Goering said Berryville was chosen to participate because the project targets rural schools, some teachers have already attended training programs offered by the National Writing Project, and the district’s performance on state exams show the school would be able to progress from the training, he said.

In 2012, 85.76 percent of Berryville students were considered proficient in literacy based on results from state Benchmark and End-ofCourse exams, according to the Arkansas Department of Education. The district had a graduation rate of 81.88 percent for 2012.

The National Writing Project is known for providing four-week sessions during the summer to help teachers improve writing instruction, Goering said. Teachers spend time completing writing assignments and experiencing some of the same struggles their students experience in the classroom.

Instead of spending time in training away from the district, most of the training will take place in Berryville at no cost to the district of about 1,975 students, Poage said.

Candy Phillips, a seventh-grade English language arts teacher at Berryville Middle School, still uses lessons she developed after attending several weeks of training through the Northwest Arkansas Writing Project in Fayetteville, she said.

“It was like being in my own writing class,” Phillips said. “It made us look at the way students learn and what they face when they’re trying to write.”

Instead of students writing a formulaic five-paragraph essay with an introduction, conclusion and three supporting paragraphs, Phillips’ students write for different purposes, such as scripts for videos and daily self-reflection pieces. The variety leads to greater creativity and pieces that have made her laugh and cry.

At the beginning of the year, they can’t read back what they have written because their writing doesn’t make sense, she said.

“At the end of the year, they can really say they can get their point across with a main idea,” she said.

The new training program for Berryville teachers will provide them with a personal plan for improving writing instruction, Goering said. Berryville teachers will see teachers model effective lessons, share what they are learning and spend time designing writing assignments.

They also will have time to write, he said.

“It helps a teacher see the multiple purposes for writing and that writing can be used in many productive ways,” Goering said.