Direct Instruction: Genre-specific Writing Strategies
Overview
Explicitly teaching strategies for different genres, like narrative or persuasive writing, helps students write for different purposes and audiences. Helping students recognize and appreciate the structures and Syntax used for different genres builds their Genre Knowledge. Learning these genre-specific qualities also helps them practice including varied kinds of information and elaborating in their writing, thus strengthening their Verbal Reasoning.
Example: Use This Strategy in the Classroom
Learn how this sixth grade teacher introduces the genre of argumentative writing. She builds upon students' understanding of the six traits of writing and explains what the traits look like in this genre. Watch how she also integrates other teaching methods, such as gestures and turn-and-talk, to reinforce what they have learned before encouraging them to write their own piece within this genre.
Design It into Your Product
Videos are chosen as examples of strategies in action. These choices are not endorsements of the products or evidence of use of research to develop the feature.
Watch how the Writing Prompt app provides different prompts along with specific genres to help learners decide what to write about. At 1:58, you can see the "sketches" option that provides three pictures as prompts and defines the genre and the type of writing it entails.
Additional Resources
Additional examples, research, and professional development. These resources are possible representations of this strategy, not endorsements.
Factors Supported by this Strategy
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