Grade 4 Writing Expository PromptREAD the information in

Grade 4 Writing
Expository Prompt
READ the information in the box below.
Thomas Edison is famous for inventing many things, including
the lightbulb.
THINK about inventions that you believe are useful.
WRITE about one invention that is important in your life. Tell
what the invention
is and explain what makes it important.
Be sure to —
●
●
●
●
●
● clearly state your central idea
● organize your writing
● develop your writing in detail
● choose your words carefully
● use correct spelling, capitalization, punctuation, grammar,
and sentences

STAAR Grade 4 Expository
Texas Education Agency
Student Assessment Division
April 2019
Score Point 1
The essay represents a very limited writing performance.
Organization/Progression
●
●
●
q The organizing structure of the essay is inappropriate to the
purpose or the specific
demands of the prompt. The writer uses organizational
strategies that are only
marginally suited to the explanatory task, or they are
inappropriate or not evident
at all. The absence of a functional organizational structure
causes the essay to lack
clarity and direction.
q Most ideas are generally related to the topic specified in the
prompt, but the central
idea is missing, unclear, or illogical. The writer may fail to
maintain focus on the

topic, may include extraneous information, or may shift
abruptly from idea to idea,
weakening the coherence of the essay.
q The writer’s progression of ideas is weak. Repetition or
wordiness sometimes causes
serious disruptions in the flow of the essay. At other times the
lack of transitions and
sentence-to-sentence connections causes the writer to present
ideas in a random or
illogical way, making one or more parts of the essay unclear or
difficult to follow.
Development of Ideas
●
●
q The development of ideas is weak. The essay is ineffective
because the writer uses
details and examples that are inappropriate, vague, or
insufficient.
q The essay is insubstantial because the writer’s response to the
prompt is vague or
confused. In some cases, the essay as a whole is only weakly
linked to the prompt.
In other cases, the writer develops the essay in a manner that
demonstrates a lack of
understanding of the expository writing task.
Use of Language/Conventions
●

●
●
q The writer’s word choice may be vague or limited. It reflects
little or no awareness
of the expository purpose and does not establish a tone
appropriate to the task. The
word choice may impede the quality and clarity of the essay.
q Sentences are simplistic, awkward, or uncontrolled,
significantly limiting the
effectiveness of the essay.
q The writer has little or no command of sentence boundaries
and age-appropriate
spelling, capitalization, punctuation, grammar, and usage
conventions. Serious and
persistent errors create disruptions in the fluency of the writing
and sometimes
interfere with meaning.
April 2019
Score Point 2
The essay represents a basic writing performance.

●
●
●
q The organizing structure of the essay is evident but may not
always be appropriate
to the purpose or the specific demands of the prompt. The essay
is not always clear
because the writer uses organizational strategies that are only
somewhat suited to
the expository task.
q Most ideas are generally related to the topic specified in the
prompt, but the writer’s
central idea is weak or somewhat unclear. The lack of an
effective central idea or the
writer’s inclusion of irrelevant information interferes with the
focus and coherence of
the essay.
q The writer’s progression of ideas is not always logical and
controlled. Sometimes
repetition or wordiness causes minor disruptions in the flow of
the essay. At other
times transitions and sentence-to-sentence connections are too
perfunctory or weak
to support the flow of the essay or show the relationships among
ideas.
●

●
q The development of ideas is minimal. The essay is superficial
details and examples that are not always appropriate or are too
briefly or partially
presented.
q The essay reflects little or no thoughtfulness. The writer’s
response to the prompt is
sometimes formulaic. The writer develops the essay in a manner
that demonstrates
only a limited understanding of the expository writing task.
●
●
●
q The writer’s word choice may be general or imprecise. It
reflects a basic awareness of
the expository purpose but does little to establish a tone
word choice may not contribute to the quality and clarity of the
essay.
q Sentences are awkward or only somewhat controlled,
weakening the effectiveness of
the essay.
q The writer demonstrates a partial command of sentence
boundaries and age-appropriate

conventions. Some distracting
errors may be evident, at times creating minor disruptions in the
fluency or meaning of
the writing.
April 2019
Score Point 3
The essay represents a satisfactory writing performance.
●
●
●
q The organizing structure of the essay is, for the most part,
appropriate to the purpose
and responsive to the specific demands of the prompt. The essay
is clear because
the writer uses organizational strategies that are adequately
suited to the expository
task.
q The writer establishes a clear central idea. Most ideas are
related to the central idea

and are focused on the topic specified in the prompt. The essay
is coherent, though it
may not always be unified due to minor lapses in focus.
q The writer’s progression of ideas is generally logical and
controlled. For the most part,
transitions are meaningful, and sentence-to-sentence
connections are sufficient to
support the flow of the essay and show the relationships among
ideas.
●
●
q The development of ideas is sufficient because the writer uses
details and examples
that are specific and appropriate, adding some substance to the
essay.
q The essay reflects some thoughtfulness. The writer’s response
to the prompt is
original rather than formulaic. The writer develops the essay in
a manner that
demonstrates a good understanding of the expository writing
task.
●
●
●

q The writer’s word choice is, for the most part, clear and
specific. It reflects an
awareness of the expository purpose and establishes a tone
appropriate to the task.
The word choice usually contributes to the quality and clarity of
the essay.
q Sentences are varied and adequately controlled, for the most
part contributing to the
q The writer demonstrates an adequate command of sentence
boundaries and
age-appropriate spelling, capitalization, punctuation, grammar,
and usage conventions.
Although some errors may be evident, they create few (if any)
disruptions in the
fluency of the writing, and they do not affect the clarity of the
essay.
April 2019
Score Point 4
The essay represents an accomplished writing performance.

●
●
●
q The organizing structure of the essay is clearly appropriate to
the purpose and
responsive to the specific demands of the prompt. The essay is
skillfully crafted
because the writer uses organizational strategies that are
particularly well suited to
the expository task.
q The writer establishes a clear central idea. All ideas are
strongly related to the central
idea and are focused on the topic specified in the prompt. By
sustaining this focus,
the writer is able to create an essay that is unified and coherent.
q The writer’s progression of ideas is logical and well
controlled. Meaningful transitions
and strong sentence-to-sentence connections enhance the flow
of the essay by
clearly showing the relationships among ideas, making the
writer’s train of thought
easy to follow.
●
●
q The development of ideas is effective because the writer uses
details and examples

that are specific and well chosen, adding substance to the essay.
q The essay is thoughtful and engaging. The writer may choose
to use his/her unique
experiences or view of the world as a basis for writing or to
connect ideas in
interesting ways. The writer develops the essay in a manner that
demonstrates a
thorough understanding of the expository writing task.
●
●
●
q The writer’s word choice is purposeful and precise. It reflects
a keen awareness of the
expository purpose and maintains a tone appropriate to the task.
The word choice
strongly contributes to the quality and clarity of the essay.
q Sentences are purposeful, varied, and well controlled,
enhancing the effectiveness of
the essay.
q The writer demonstrates a consistent command of sentence
boundaries and
age-appropriate spelling, capitalization, punctuation, grammar,
and usage conventions.
Although minor errors may be evident, they do not detract from
the fluency of the
writing or the clarity of the essay. The overall strength of the
conventions contributes

to the effectiveness of the essay.
Sample A
Sample B
Sample C
Sample D
FEATURE ARTICLE
Journal of Adolescen t & Adul t L i teracy 5 7 (1) September 2
013 doi :10 .10 0 2 /JA A L . 2 0 4 © 2 013 In ternat ional
Reading A ssociat ion ( pp. 31– 4 0 )
31
Writing “Voiced” Arguments
About Science Topics
A N S W E R I N G T H E C C S S C A L L F O R
I N T E G R A T E D L I T E R A C Y I N S T R U C T I O N

Mary Beth Monahan
What happens when sixth graders write “voiced” arguments
about
a science-sleuth simulation? They push us to coordinate
teaching
strategies from disciplinary and content area literacy.
With the release of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS)
and the attendant emphasis on an “integrated
model of literacy” (National Governors Association
Center for Best Practices [NGA Center] & Council
of Chief State School Officers [CCSSO], 2010, p. 4),
content area teachers will need support in meeting
the challenge of providing robust instruction that
incorporates reading, writing, listening, speaking,
and viewing as vehicles for engaging students in their
subject matter and building deep content knowledge
(Conley, 2008). Content area teachers will also
be charged with the responsibility of developing
students’ proficiency in writing academic arguments
across the curriculum.
According to the
CCSS website, “The
ability to write logical
arguments based on
substantive claims,
sound reasoning, and
relevant evidence is
a cornerstone of the
writing standards” (For more information, see www
.corestandards.org/about-the-standards/ key-points-
in-english-language-arts).
The challenge is thus twofold: to design

instruction that integrates the English language
arts and thereby advances student engagement
with and command of content area material and to
teach students about the general and disciplinary-
specific practices of argumentation. Given that the
CCSS emphasize literacy development as a “shared
responsibility” (NGA Center & CCSSO, 2010), it
will be necessary for language arts and content area
teachers to coordinate instructional efforts so that
students develop a facility with writing arguments in
different subjects, as the practices for argumentation
vary according to the particular expectations of each
discipline (Hyland, 2008).
It will also be important for teachers to note that
the standards for argument are largely silent on the issue
of voice, except for the provision that writers “establish
and maintain a formal style” (NGA Center & CCSSO,
2010, p. 42). Yet, what often makes arguments
compelling is, in fact, voice: how writers come across
as “confident” and “authoritative” (Hyland, 2008, p. 6).
Mary Beth Monahan is a research
assistant professor at the Vermont
Reads Institute at University of
Vermont, Burlington, USA; e-mail
[email protected] gmail.com.
JAAL_204.indd 31JAAL_204.indd 31 8/13/2013 2:50:25
PM8/13/2013 2:50:25 PM
32
J

O
U
R
N
A
L
O
F
A
D
O
LE
S
C
E
N
T
&
A
D
U
LT
L
IT

E
R
A
C
Y
57
(1
)
S
E
P
T
E
M
B
E
R
2
01
3
FEATURE ARTICLE
Likewise, writers’ credibility (i.e., how they project
trustworthiness vis-à-vis sound reasoning, sufficient
evidence, credible sources, and understanding of

the subject—in effect, the CCSS writing standards
for argument) is conveyed through voice (Toulmin,
1958). Teachers would do well to engage students in
exploring voice in argumentative discourse and how
voicing practices vary across disciplines.
Promoting voiced arguments can be a challenge,
one that I attempted to meet as a sixth-grade teacher
responsible for all subjects. The purpose of this article
is to share the results of an action-research project that
I undertook to evaluate my success in helping sixth
graders produce voiced arguments about topics from
our science curriculum (e.g., states of matter, physical
and chemical changes, the water cycle). Specifically,
I offer an account of my instructional approach,
student writing samples, and a discussion of the
potential benefits and limitations of this approach.
Background on the Study:
Promoting Voiced Expository
Writing
My motivation for developing this approach—a
scientific inquiry based on an integrated model of
literacy that included extensive opportunities for
argumentative writing—grew from my commitment to
supporting my students in meeting the standards for
writing arguments. According to the CCSS (NGA
Center & CCSSO, 2010), sixth graders must be able to
Write arguments to support claims with clear
reasons and relevant evidence: (a) Introduce
claim(s) and organize the reasons and evidence
clearly; (b) Support claim(s) with clear reasons
and relevant evidence, using credible sources
and demonstrating an understanding of the
topic or text; (c) Use words, phrases, and clauses

to clarify the relationships among claim(s) and
reasons; (d) Establish and maintain a formal
style; (e) Provide a concluding statement
or section that follows from the argument
presented. (p. 42)
In addition, my interest in developing an
instructional program focused on voiced arguments
grew from my mounting concern with students’
attitudes toward expository writing and the
painful admission that the research reports they
produced lacked voice—conviction, commitment,
and command of the subject matter. I created a
survey to gauge students’ perceptions of writing
informational essays, and the results only intensified
my commitment to forging an alternative approach.
In the words of students: Writing an essay is like
• Getting beat up by a bully
• Going against a 12-foot wave
• Smelly cheese
• Piling up facts
• Writing a paragraph
These analogies revealed just how painful and
perfunctory students found expository writing to be.
For many, such writing was no more than a paragraph
or a pile of facts. These descriptions troubled me more
than the “smelly cheese” variety, because if students
perceived informational writing in such finite terms,
then their roles as authors would be equally limited to
those of a paragraph maker and fact reporter. I wanted
more for my students—I wanted them to inhabit their
texts in terms that afforded agency, authority, and
even power as essayists. In short, I hoped they might

project different voices when writing.
And so began my campaign to raise students’
voices and the teacher-research study that gave rise
to the instructional approach described herein.
From the outset of this classroom-based inquiry,
however, I encountered a problem: how to define
voice to teach students to write voiced essays about
science content.
Hyland’s (2008) work on “disciplinary voice”
offers such a definition. Based on his review of 240
research articles from 10 leading journals in nine
disciplines, Hyland concluded that “academic writing
always has voice” (p. 6) to the extent that it conveys
writers’ self-representations and stances toward
readers. Disciplinary voice is thus both individual
and communal; the authors Hyland studied
didn’t “sacrifice personal voice” but instead made
“choices” to “align” themselves with “one disciplinary
community rather than another” (p. 6).
According to Hyland (2008), academic discourse
in no way “eradicates personal choice,” because writers
“still decide how aggressive, conciliatory, confident
or self-effacing” (p. 6) they want to be. Writers
make these decisions by determining the “level of
authorized personality” (p. 7) that is sanctioned
Teachers would do well to engage
students in exploring voice in
argumentative discourse...

PM8/13/2013 2:50:26 PM
33
W
ri
ti
n
g
“
V
o
ic
e
d
”
A
rg
u
m
e
n
ts
A

b
o
u
t
S
c
ie
n
c
e
T
o
p
ic
s:
A
n
sw
e
ri
n
g
t
h
e

C
C
S
S
C
al
l
fo
r
In
te
g
ra
te
d
L
it
e
ra
c
y
In
st
ru

c
ti
o
n
within their discourse community. Although Hyland
found that “writers in the humanities and social
sciences take far more personal positions than those
in the science and engineering fields” (p.13), he
nonetheless asserts that “academic writing can’t not
have voice” (p. 6).
Hyland (2008) thus dismantled the false
dichotomy between personal and public voice,
promulgated by the historical debate among
composition theorists (Elbow, 1994), that had
stymied my own writing instruction. I had struggled
with this same tension: whether to promote student
voice (Spandel, 2009) or to groom my students to
appropriate the formal registers of academic discourse
(Bartholomae, 1985). However, according to Hyland,
this is a false choice, because disciplinary voice
is ultimately a matter of writers “recognizing and
making choices from the rhetorical options in their
fields” so that they are able to “convey a persona and
appeal to readers from within the boundaries of their
disciplines” (p. 6).
Clark and Ivanič’s (1997) account of voice
as “discoursal self ” also explains how writers
construct self-representations as they develop greater
consciousness and control over the particular
discourse practices that are invoked at the moment
of writing. Within any discourse—literary or
scientific—“prototypical identities” are available to

writers who, in taking up the conventions of that
discourse, also take up its attendant values, beliefs,
and epistemologies. The selves that writers bring
to the page ultimately depend on which discourses
are available and, moreover, on the choices writers
make from the options at hand. According to Clark
and Ivanič, students’ voices—their possible textual
identities—will remain limited, both if access to a
range of discourses is denied and if those discoursal
choices are made unconsciously.
The discourse that held the most promise of
raising new and improved voices was argumentative
writing, given that the CCSS privileges argumentation
as the means by which authors exercise their agency
and power as critical, independent thinkers. In this
mode of writing, I reasoned, students would be more
likely to project themselves as forceful thinkers and
confident knowers. Having been greatly persuaded
by Bakhtin’s (1981) and Kesler’s (2012) accounts of
voice as “dialogic” (born in conversation with others),
I also viewed argumentation itself as the most likely
medium for voiced writing. Finally, by engaging
students in a lively exchange of ideas through oral
and written arguments featuring science content,
I was also able to redress the following shortcomings
of previous instruction that had likely diminished
students’ voices.
Up to this point, my approach to expository
writing involved teaching students to write research
reports on self-selected topics. This had the
unfortunate consequence of setting students up
to build knowledge about their individual topics
independent of one another. Lacking any opportunity

to engage in shared inquiry around a common topic,
students did not benefit from the exchange of ideas
that often deepens understanding. Not surprisingly,
their reports suffered from superficial knowledge
and treatment of topics that inevitably limited their
voices as writers—their confidence and command of
the material. What is more, this teaching approach
privileged only one purpose of expository writing: to
inform.
However, as Britton, Burgess, Martin, McLeod,
and Rosen (1975) explained in their seminal work on
“transactional” writing, expository texts serve several
purposes—to instruct, inform, or persuade—and
these purposes also shape the writer’s voice quite
differently. Thus, by narrowly focusing my instruction
on writing to inform, I had unwittingly limited my
students’ voices.
Committed to expanding students’ access to
a range of discourses and voice options, as Clark
and Ivanič (1997) suggested, I developed a unit
around the one purpose of expository writing I had
overlooked: writing to persuade. Teaching my sixth
graders about argumentative writing in conjunction
with our shared investigation of science topics, I
believed, would not only promote different voices
than the research reports had, but would also
engage students in a joint effort to build substantive
content area knowledge by exchanging views on the
topics under study.
A Description of My Instruction
With these aims in mind, I launched a 6-week voice
unit wherein students played the roles of “science
sleuths” and developed arguments to solve the

following problem (which was dramatized in a video
from a commercially available program): How can a
company’s frozen drink weigh more than its liquid
drink, even though the two products have exactly the
same ingredients and volume? Over the course of the
simulation, students developed three distinct theories
PM8/13/2013 2:50:26 PM
34
J
O
U
R
N
A
L
O
F
A
D
O
LE
S
C

E
N
T
&
A
D
U
LT
L
IT
E
R
A
C
Y
57
(1
)
S
E
P
T
E

M
B
E
R
2
01
3
FEATURE ARTICLE
to explain the weight difference—frost on the bottle,
cracks in the bottle, or a combination of both frost
and cracks (“frocra”)—which they debated with their
peers and subsequently wrote about.
A problem-based inquiry appealed to me for
several reasons. Foremost, it was a motivating
challenge for my students, who were determined to
solve the mystery at hand. Students begged to see
the episode during lunch and after school, and their
level of engagement was compelling in itself. But
more than that, I designed the unit to capitalize on
the following principles of effective argument and
integrated literacy instruction.
In his recent work on teaching argument,
Hillocks (2011) claimed that “good arguments begin
with looking at the data that is likely to become the
evidence and which gives rise to a thesis statement
or major claim” (p. xxi). The simulation, in effect,
required students to begin with data that they would
analyze and interpret, and in the process use as
evidence, to support their eventual thesis about the
likely cause of the weight difference.

Additionally, to reap the benefits of integrated
literacy instruction, I built in opportunities for
students to “manipulate” the science content by
reading, writing, listening, speaking, and viewing
related material (Chamberlain & Crane, 2009). First,
we viewed the science-sleuth video multiple times,
using various graphic organizers to help students focus
their attention on critical features: the problem, likely
causes of the problem, and how different characters
explain the problem. During these successive
viewings, students recorded information (e.g.,
data presented in the program, direct quotes from
characters) in their science logs and prepared a range
of quick-writes to clarify their evolving understanding
of the problem and the content (Hohenshell & Hand,
2006).
Students also participated in a variety of
discussion formats—think-pair-shares, small-group
conversations with fellow and rival theorists, and
whole-class debriefings. The writing served as a
springboard for the discussion and helped students
to be better prepared to take an active role in the
exchange of ideas. Likewise, the discussion afforded
students an oral rehearsal for their writing, allowing
them to practice articulating their theory, presenting
relevant supporting evidence, and addressing
counterclaims (Adler & Rougle, 2005). Students also
read about the topics under study and responded to
the readings by writing, drawing, and discussing the
featured scientific concepts.
While focusing on the science-sleuth program
and integrating the English language arts to advance

students’ content knowledge during science class,
I also provided explicit instruction on argument
during language arts. Consistent with Ray’s (1999)
“inquiry” approach, I first immersed students in a
range of “mentor” texts, so they could “notice and
name” the defining features of argument.
During this immersion phase, I presented a
series of lessons about the general model of argument
outlined by Toulmin (1958) but invited my students to
define each component in terms that made sense to
them: claim (“taking a stand”); evidence (“how you
support your theory with facts, quotes, and data”);
counterclaim (“the other side”); and rebuttals (“shoot
downs”). Because my primary aim was to address
the CCSS writing standards for argument, I did not
engage students in exploring what it means to write
arguments like scientists. This, however, would be
an important next step, particularly because Hyland
(2008) found that of all the disciplines he investigated,
engineering and science had the fewest markers of
“textual voice”—expressions of writers’ “judgments,
opinions, and commitments” (p. 7). I will address
this limitation of my instructional approach when
discussing the implications of this study.
Students also participated in a debate using notes
they had recorded on a graphic organizer that included
the components of argument identified above. The
informal writing in preparation for the debate allowed
students to map out their arguments, to consolidate
their thinking, and to have a reference at hand to
scaffold their participation in the discussion. During
the debate, representatives from the frost, crack, and
frocra theories each had the opportunity to deliver
opening statements that laid out their claims and

evidence. Then, each group addressed rival theorists’
counterclaims and presented rebuttals. After the
debate, students did a reflective write, adding any new
evidence, counterclaims, or rebuttals to their graphic
organizer.
Finally, to support students in writing their
arguments about the science-sleuth program, I
demonstrated how to write introductory, supporting,
and concluding paragraphs. Based on this model,
we generated a rubric that listed requirements for
The writing ser ved as a
springboard for the discussion...
PM8/13/2013 2:50:26 PM
35
W
ri
ti
n
g
“
V
o
ic

e
d
”
A
rg
u
m
e
n
ts
A
b
o
u
t
S
c
ie
n
c
e
T
o
p
ic

s:
A
n
sw
e
ri
n
g
t
h
e
C
C
S
S
C
al
l
fo
r
In
te
g
ra

te
d
L
it
e
ra
c
y
In
st
ru
c
ti
o
n
the essay: Theory, Reasons, Direct Evidence, Solid
Defense, and Paragraphing. Students then composed
their arguments independently, and I continued
to provide individualized support through writing
conferences.
Participants and Methods
This study is based on the work of 26 sixth graders—
13 girls and 13 boys—who attended an upper elementary
(grades 4–6) school in an affluent community of
central New Jersey. There were 21 Caucasian students,
two Asian American students, two Eastern Indian
students, and one African American student. The class

average on the California Achievement Test was at the
87 percentile (stanine 7), which indicates an “above
average” profile of academic achievement.
Applying Strauss and Corbin’s (1998) grounded
theory method of analysis, I coded all 26 essays to
identify salient themes that suggested a theory of
voiced writing grounded in the students’ work rather
than based on a priori categories. Examining each
student’s argumentative essay, I noted “patterned
regularities” (Wolcott, 1994)—recurrent textual
properties—that struck me as interesting, surprising,
or significant expressions of voice.
I then analyzed 11 essays that stood out as “more
clearly voiced” to discover any features across these
texts that suggested possible dimensions of voiced
writing. I focused on students’ word choice (e.g.,
how they described their own and others’ theories,
reasons, and evidence); sentence construction (the
subjects and verbs in their sentences, as well as
how they used words, phrases, and clauses to show
the relationship between their and others’ claims);
tone (conciliatory or adversarial); register (formal or
informal style); and point of view (first, second, or
third person). By focusing on these textual properties,
I was able to delineate the themes of voiced argument
that consistently emerged within the 11 texts.
I then compared my findings from these 11 essays
with the 15 others that I had rated as “less clearly
voiced” to draw out any meaningful distinctions
between the two text sets. When certain voice themes
emerged in the more voiced essays only, I assumed
that they were definitive indicators of voice. I also used
themes that appeared in both sets of essays to qualify

any claims about voiced writing that were based on
my initial analysis of the 11 more voiced texts.
When presenting the findings of this study in
the next section, I will identify student work samples
by gender to illustrate the nearly equal distribution
of male (six) and female (five) authors of the more
voiced essays.
Findings
Based on my analysis of the 26 essays, I discovered
three main themes that the more clearly voiced
texts had in common: (1) I-ness, (2) relationship with
rivals, and (3) relationship with content knowledge.
Specifically, the writers’ I-ness (or presence in their
texts as authors of ideas taking responsibility for their
claims and openly implicating themselves as sources
of knowledge) was born in a nexus of relationships,
in concert with and in conflict with a number of
conversational or “dialogic” partners.
First Theme: I-ness
The first voice property to surface in the 11
more clearly voiced texts was the students’ use of
“I-statements”—first-person references—to establish
themselves as the agents of the actions within their
texts. The following examples from three students’
essays illustrate this trend: (1) “I have challenged this
theory by recognizing its flaws”; (2) “I have proved
that the crack theory could not work, not once but
twice”; (3) “There is one point that the crack theorists
made on their behalf that I would like to contradict.”
Students adopted the first-person point of
view and, with it, the respective roles of proving,

challenging, and contradicting. By using active
rather than passive verbs, these students made their
positions as authors clear, and, consistent with Clark
and Ivanič’s (1997) description of “authorial presence”
(p. 152), they also assumed full responsibility for the
assertions they delivered within each clause. I-ness,
as manifested in the students’ subject and verb
choices, meant that they had produced voiced essays
by positing a “self as author” with “something worth
saying” (p. 152). With these reporting verbs, the
authors also made “their commitment to [their] own
the ideas” known (Clark & Ivanič, 1997, p. 134). They
didn’t equivocate or maintain a neutral stance in their
texts. Instead, they took a side and even rallied against
other theories.
As one I-statement after another made clear, these
essayists achieved a far wider range of authorship
than did their counterparts. They authored by
“coming up with” theories, “discovering problems,”
“seeking answers,” and “finding” solutions. Their
visibility as authors—as the sources of ideas, data, and
PM8/13/2013 2:50:26 PM
36
J
O
U
R

N
A
L
O
F
A
D
O
LE
S
C
E
N
T
&
A
D
U
LT
L
IT
E
R
A

C
Y
57
(1
)
S
E
P
T
E
M
B
E
R
2
01
3
FEATURE ARTICLE
conclusions—far exceeded those of the less voiced
texts. Through sentence construction, verb choices,
and point of view, my sixth graders had established
I-ness: creating a space for themselves inside their
texts and insinuating themselves as authorities on the
issue at hand.
Second Theme: Relationship With Rivals

In one voiced essay after another, students used
vivid adjectives to describe their own theories (e.g.,
“undoubtedly superior”) and those of others (e.g.,
“totally pathetic”). They also chose colorful nouns,
referring to some theorists as “leaders” and to others as
“total failures.” Finally, these students made dramatic
verb choices, describing how they “completely
destroyed” and even “disintegrated” rivals’ claims.
Interestingly, several authors of the more clearly
voiced essays used the expression “competing theories”
when referring to the frost and crack theories. These
linguistic patterns that expressed opposition were
noteworthy because, within qualitative research, it is
important to represent the data in the terms offered
by the respondents (Merriam, 1998). As defined by
my sixth graders, the second voice dimension was
the “language of competition.” Because this label
emerged from the essays, and specifically from the
students’ adjectives, nouns, verbs, and tone—all of
which implied a contest of some sort—the expression
seemed “best fitted to the data” (Merriam, 1998,
p. 183) in the early phase of my analysis.
These combative terms and adversarial tone were
hard to ignore; I had never seen students use such
contentious language in expository writing. Nowhere
was this type of language more evident than in their
disparaging remarks about rival theorists. In fact,
every one of the 11 essays included some kind of
derogatory comment. According to a student who
wrote an especially voiced essay, the crack theory
was “unequivocally weak.” In another voiced essay,
the author asked, “Is the solution the insufficient
crack theory which only the minority desperately and
weakly try to defend?”

Moreover, one student valorized his theory by
proclaiming that it showed “more complex reasoning,
a finer understanding to what occurred and, of
course, a plentiful amount of evidence.” With these
remarks, the student not only glorified his theory,
but he also promoted himself as one capable of
such advanced thinking. Another student fashioned
her theory, and herself, in equally flattering terms,
remarking: “The frost theory is comparatively
flawless.” The words more, finer, and comparatively
clearly established a relationship between competing
theories.
These language patterns that defined one theory
in terms of the other indicated that many students
had used their relationship with other theories
to extol the virtues of their own. Upon closer
analysis, it was clear that students had relied on the
competition to embolden their claims to knowledge
and to promote their theories and themselves as
the authors of those theories. It is commonplace
within qualitative research to draw connections
between existing categories and, in the process, to
develop such “links” into a workable theory that
both describes and interprets the available data
(Hamersley & Atkinson, 1983). I determined that
such a connection existed between the categories
“I-ness” and “language of competition”: Students
had forged their I-ness out of the competition itself,
fortifying their authorial presence by standing in
opposition to other theorists.
Thus, it appeared that I-ness depended on, and
was only fully realized in, the students’ adversarial

relationships with other theorists. I therefore renamed
the second dimension of voice “relationship with
rivals,” which described the actual functions of
students’ language patterns and, in effect, made clear
the link between this category of voiced writing and
I-ness.
Third Theme: Relationship With Content
Knowledge
“Relationship with content knowledge,” the final
category of voiced writing to surface in the data, refers
to students’ manner of relating to the science-sleuth
subject matter and to classmates’ treatment of that
material. The authors of the more clearly voiced essays
made the most of their peers’ insights to advance their
own understandings. They fully participated in the
rich dialogue of claims and counterclaims within
their essays by interacting with others (both fellow
and opposing theorists), thereby producing texts that
exhibited a dialogic relationship with the science
content knowledge.
Students had relied on the
competition to embolden their
claims.
PM8/13/2013 2:50:26 PM
37
W

ri
ti
n
g
“
V
o
ic
e
d
”
A
rg
u
m
e
n
ts
A
b
o
u
t
S

c
ie
n
c
e
T
o
…
FEATURE ARTICLE
Journal of Adolescen t & Adul t L i teracy 5 7 ( 3 ) November
2 013 doi :10 .10 0 2 /JA A L . 2 21 © 2 013 In ternat ional
Reading A ssociat ion ( pp. 215 – 2 2 2 )
215
How Rhetorical Theories of
Genre Address Common Core
Writing Standards
Ross Collin
How can content area teachers address Common Core writing
standards? This article advises teachers to apply rhetorical
approaches to the study of genre.
In public schools throughout the United States, teachers are
being called to redouble their ef-forts to help students learn to
read and write
texts in different content areas. This project is central

to the Common Core State Standards, which seek,
among other goals, to “specify the literacy skills and
understandings required for college and career readi-
ness in multiple disciplines” (English Language Arts
Standards/Home). Thus, in the 45 states where the
Core Standards have been adopted, literacy educa-
tion is expanding to include the study of discipline-
based forms of communication. These reforms align
with recent proposals for focusing teachers’ atten-
tion more squarely on the literacies of specific disci-
plines (see Moje, 2008; Pytash, 2012; Shanahan &
Shanahan, 2008).
Consistent with
the Common Core’s
emphasis on literacy
learning in multiple
domains, the initia-
tive’s writing standards
prompt students to
compose texts for di-
verse audiences and
purposes. Common Core thereby promotes a rhetori-
cal view of writing. By rhetoric, I mean the study of the
effectiveness of different forms of communication in
different domains. A rhetorician, for example, might
focus on the domain of politics and study how various
politicians advance their agendas by using and adapt-
ing the conventions of campaign flyers. Given the
Common Core’s emphasis on rhetoric, all teachers of
writing—not only English language arts (ELA) teach-
ers—require a pedagogical framework that shows how
different forms of composition help writers build the
world and act in the world in different ways. Teachers
require a framework, for instance, that enables them

to highlight the forms, functions, and possibilities of
letters to the editor and to distinguish these features
from the forms, functions, and possibilities of lab
reports.
Such a framework is provided by rhetorical under-
standings of genre. This claim invites four questions:
1. How has genre typically been defined in
schools?
2. What is a rhetorical understanding of genre
and why is it preferable to other genre theories?
3. How does the rhetorical approach re-
spond to the Common Core’s promotion of
Ross Collin is an assistant professor
of English education at Virginia
Commonwealth University,
Richmond, USA; e-mail [email protected]
vcu.edu.
216
J
O
U
R
N
A

L
O
F
A
D
O
LE
S
C
E
N
T
&
A
D
U
LT
L
IT
E
R
A
C
Y

57
(3
)
N
O
V
E
M
B
E
R
2
01
3
FEATURE ARTICLE
writing for multiple purposes in multiple
domains?
4. What does the rhetorical approach look like in
the classroom?
To answer these questions, I review the Common
Core’s overall mission and its standards for writing.
I show how the Common Core promotes a rhetori-
cal view of composition and calls upon teachers and
students to explore writing in a range of contexts. I
then argue that popular genre pedagogies underex-

plain how people use genres to build and act in the
world in disparate ways. These pedagogies, therefore,
are unsuitable for writing lessons organized around
the Core Standards. Next, in my discussion of rhe-
torical theories of genre, I explain how genres may be
understood as flexible resources people use to build
and act in different contexts. The rhetorical approach,
therefore, shares the Common Core’s interest in mat-
ters of audience, purpose, and discipline. Finally, I
draw upon studies of young adult writers to present
snapshots of what a rhetorical approach to the teach-
ing of genre looks like in classrooms.
Before I begin, a few caveats are in order. Along
with many other educators and researchers, I have real
concerns about the Common Core. I am concerned,
for instance, that the Common Core emerged out of
policy circles instead of classrooms, relies on unveri-
fied assumptions about standards and learning, and
endorses simplistic views of the connections between
education and job growth (for these and other cri-
tiques, see Brady, 2012; Karp, 2012; Ravitch, 2012).
Although these concerns must be addressed, I brack-
et them in the present study and work to direct this
unfolding initiative in a positive direction.
Common Core Writing Standards
Half of the Common Core’s standards are grouped
into the category “Standards for English Language
Arts and Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science,
and Technical Subjects.” The overview of this cat-
egory states:
Just as students must learn to read, write, speak,
listen, and use language effectively in a variety

Questions of rhetoric are central
to Core Standards for EL A and
content area literacy.
of content areas, so too must the Standards
specify the literacy skills and understandings
required for college and career readiness in
multiple disciplines. Literacy standards for grade
6 and above are predicated on teachers of ELA,
history/social studies, science, and technical sub-
jects using their content area expertise to help
students meet the particular challenges of read-
ing, writing, speaking, listening, and language
in their respective fields. (English Language
Arts Standards/Home)
Central to the standards for ELA and content area
literacy, then, are questions of rhetoric. Students are
to learn multiple forms of communication necessary
for effective participation in multiple domains.
The Common Core’s overall emphasis on rheto-
ric is elaborated in several of the 10 writing standards
for ELA and for history/social studies, science, and
technical subjects. Consider the following standards
for both groupings:
• W.2e Establish and maintain a formal style
and objective tone while attending to the
norms and conventions of the discipline in
which they are writing.
• W.4 Produce clear and coherent writing in
which the development, organization, and style

are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.
• W.5 Develop and strengthen writing as need-
ed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or
trying a new approach, focusing on address-
ing what is most significant for a specific pur-
pose and audience. (English Language Arts
Standards/Writing)
Consider also the following standards written specifi-
cally for history/social studies, science, and technical
subjects:
• WHST.1 Write arguments focused on disci-
pline-specific content. (emphasis in original)
• WHST.2d Use precise language and domain-
specific vocabulary to manage the complex-
ity of the topic and convey a style appropriate
to the discipline and context as well as to the
expertise of likely readers. (History/Social
Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects
Standards/Writing)
To meet these writing standards, teachers
must focus students’ attention on the ways differ-
ent contexts—including different disciplines, tasks,
217
H
o
w

R
h
e
to
ri
c
al
T
h
e
o
ri
e
s
o
f
G
e
n
re
A
d
d
re

s
s
C
o
m
m
o
n
C
o
re
W
ri
ti
n
g
S
ta
n
d
ar
d
s
audiences, and purposes—call for different types of

communication. Specifically, teachers must work
with students to explore how the form and content
of a type of communication shape and are shaped by
context. Such questions about text types and form-
content-context relations call to mind notions of
genre. In the next section, I review familiar under-
standings of genre and explain how they conflict with
the vision of writing advanced by the Common Core.
Alternate Ways of Understanding
and Teaching Genres
Schools circulate many and varied genres, from
hall passes to IEP forms to geometric proofs to five-
paragraph essays. But the term genre is usually heard
only in English classes. In such classes, genre study
is most often an exercise in description and classifi-
cation (for more of this critique, see Bawarshi, 2003;
Devitt, 2004). For instance, when studying the genre
of the sonnet, students often learn different types of
sonnet rhyme schemes (e.g., the Occitan sonnet’s
pattern of a-b-a-b, a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d-c-d versus the
Shakespearean sonnet’s pattern of a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d,
e-f-e-f, g-g). Also, students often learn how different
subgenres of the sonnet develop themes in differ-
ent ways across their 14 lines. When faced with an
unfamiliar sonnet, students may then draw on their
knowledge and place the poem in its proper category.
In this typical way of teaching literary form, genres
are imagined as templates or delivery systems used
to present the author’s unique thoughts and feelings.
Consistent with standard Western views of creativity,
what is most important is the author’s personal senti-
ment, which originates deep in the soul. Of second-
ary importance is the form in which that sentiment
is packaged and sent out into the world. Style counts,
but mostly as an aid to personal expression.

This view of creativity was central to early, expres-
sivist approaches to teaching the writing process (e.g.,
Elbow, 1975; Graves, 1983; Murray, 1968). Expressivist
approaches to composition often begin with rounds of
free writing, during which students put aside questions
of form and pour out all their ideas on a given theme.
Only after students write freely and reflect on their
thoughts do they fit their writing into specific genres.
Thus, as described, genre is imagined as a delivery sys-
tem for preformed ideas. Although expressivist peda-
gogies can foster powerful writing, they seldom focus
on the rhetorical concerns of domain, task, audience,
and purpose central to the Common Core.
Building out from expressivist pedagogies,
Hillocks (1986) and his associates (e.g., Smagorinksy,
Johannessen, Kahn, & McCann, 2010) present a
structured process approach to teaching composition.
This approach requires students to work together (a)
to engage in different writing tasks such as descrip-
tion, argumentation, and narration and (b) to produce
texts of different genres suited for different audiences.
For instance, a science teacher might prompt students
to review data about global warming and draft amicus
briefs to file in support of a fictional environmental
group’s lawsuit against a mining company. Crucially,
however, the structured process approach separates
form and function and emphasizes the latter over the
former—that is, generic conventions are of secondary
importance to completing writing tasks. The science
class mentioned above, for example, would not spend
too much time studying the form of the amicus brief.
Instead, they would focus their efforts on writing out
their own ideas in their own language.

While the structured process approach back-
grounds questions of form, Calkins, Ehrenworth, and
Lehman (2012) argue that generic conventions might
be studied throughout the writing process (for a com-
patible approach, see Gallagher, 2011). Describing
how teachers might teach students to write the kinds
of informational texts endorsed in the Core Standards,
they explain:
The teacher settles upon an image of informa-
tional writing that he or she believes is within
reach for the class, and the class as a whole talks
about and annotates and analyzes the [model]
text, coming to understand how it is made. We
furthermore suggest teachers prioritize [model]
texts in which there is a logical and visible
infrastructure, perhaps shown through a table
of contents that supports logically structured
chapters, perhaps shown through headings and
subheadings and topic sentences. (p.156)
Thus, from the very beginning of the writing
process, classes identify generic conventions and con-
sider how they might use those conventions to create
generic texts. Students learn to view generic conven-
tions as integral to composition. This approach veri-
fies the importance of form, but it does not clarify
form’s function. That is, this approach does not show
how writers use generic conventions to build and act
in specific contexts. It does not, for example, help
students discover how scientists use the conventions
of the lab report (e.g., passive constructions) to build
and act in the situation “scientists conducting and

218
J
O
U
R
N
A
L
O
F
A
D
O
LE
S
C
E
N
T
&
A
D
U
LT

L
IT
E
R
A
C
Y
57
(3
)
N
O
V
E
M
B
E
R
2
01
3
FEATURE ARTICLE
reporting on experiments.” This approach shows only

that writers use generic conventions, not why.
Working outside the writing process movement,
researchers in the orbit of the University of Sydney
have developed a writing pedagogy focused on genre
(see Christie, 1985; Cope & Kalantzis, 1993; Martin
& Rose, 2008; Martin & Rothery, 1986; Reid, 1987).
A key goal of this pedagogy is to help students from
marginalized groups learn important genres such
as petitions, letters to the editor, and job application
forms. To meet this goal, the Sydney School advances
a three-step process called the teaching-learning cycle.
In the first step, a teacher and her students review sev-
eral examples of a selected genre and discuss how the
form and content of the genre fit the context in which
the genre is typically used. For example, a social stud-
ies teacher and her students might examine several pe-
titions and note how their overviews are usually brief
and made up of simple sentences. These conventions
make sense for the contexts in which petitions are usu-
ally presented, read, and signed: quick exchanges on
the street and brief stops online. In the second step of
the teaching-learning cycle, the teacher and her stu-
dents work together to create a sample text by studying
more closely the genre’s contexts of use, developing
content area knowledge, and coauthoring and revising
drafts. Finally, individual students work on their own
to compose texts in the given genre. To compose their
own pieces, students use the generic conventions the
class identified in model texts. For instance, in a social
studies class, students writing petition overviews would
mobilize their knowledge of the genre and compose
brief overviews made up of simple sentences.
Relative to process pedagogies, the Sydney
School approach brings educators closer to the kinds

of writing practices endorsed by the Common Core.
The Sydney School’s attention to the relationships
between form, content, and context fits with the
Common Core’s emphasis on writing in different
ways in different domains. Several critics, however,
take issue with the Sydney School’s formulation of
genre and its relation to context (see Freedman &
Medway, 1994; Luke, 1996). These critics argue that
the approach reifies model texts as “correct” iterations
of genres. Thus, features of a context that conflict
with the features of model texts too easily fall from
view. For example, if a student begins her study of
petitions by examining model texts with brief, sim-
ply worded overviews, she may not consider writing a
longer, more complex overview even when doing so
makes sense for a specific context (e.g., when target-
ing insiders with a petition about a highly technical
matter). The Sydney School approach, therefore, can
promote rigid ways of understanding genres and limit
exploration and critique of the contexts in which writ-
ing takes place. Given these limits, the Sydney School
approach is not a good match for the Common Core.
Rhetorical Views of Genre: Theory
and Pedagogy
Theory
Over the past thirty years, rhetoricians have recon-
ceived genres as “typified rhetorical actions based in
recurrent situations” (Miller, 1984; see also Bawarshi,
2003; Collin, 2012, 2013; Devitt, 2004; Devitt, Reiff,
& Bawarshi, 2004; Russell, 1997). Following Burke
(1969), rhetoricians often define situation as a com-
plex of five interconnected dimensions: scene, acts,
agents, agency, and purposes (see Fig. 1). Crucially,

rhetoricians often identify a reciprocal relationship
between genre and situation: One activates and
shapes the other. That is, a genre provides the conven-
tions, or typified rhetorical moves, that enable people
to bring to life a situation’s scene, acts, agents, agency,
and purposes. At the same time, a situation creates
the context in which a genre and its conventions be-
come meaningful.
FIGURE 1 Burke’s Definition of a Situation
Five dimensions of a situation Example situation: Sociologist
observing events
1. Scene: Domain or thematic background 1. Scene: Sociology
2. Acts: What is happening 2. Act: Observation
3. Agents: Types of people involved 3. Agents: Sociologist and
research subjects
4. Agency: What agents can and cannot do 4. Agency:
Sociologists can understand social structures and
processes
5. Purposes: Reasons for activities 5. Purpose: Understand
observed events
219
H
o
w

s
s
C
o
m
m
o
n
C
o
re
W
ri
ti
n
g
S
ta
n
d
ar
d
s
Consider the genre of the sociologist’s field jour-

nal. This genre is based in the recurrent situation
“sociologist observing events” and features a range of
conventions (e.g., incomplete sentences such as “man
rose and left table” and split pages with just-the-facts
notes in one column and questions/notes to self in an-
other column). To create the situation in a particular
time and place, a person with knowledge of the genre
and its conventions can pick up her field journal and
begin to write observation notes (act). In so doing, the
writer construes herself as a sociologist (agent) work-
ing in the larger domain of sociology (scene); imagines
others as research subjects (agents); sees her surround-
ings as a puzzle to be solved (purpose); and views her-
self as being capable of solving that puzzle (agency).
Importantly, the writer makes notes in accordance with
sociology’s ways of seeing and thinking: She pays atten-
tion to certain phenomena (e.g., patterns of interaction
between men and women) and ignores others (e.g.,
small fluctuations in the weather). Thus, as part of
her efforts to build and act in the situation “sociologist
observing events,” the writer takes up the genre of the
field journal and uses its conventions to make notes.
To teach this genre to her class, a social studies teacher
might demonstrate how the genre’s conventions (e.g.,
split-page notes) enable her to bring to life the scene,
acts, agents, agency, and purposes characteristic of the
situation “sociologist conducting observations.” Longer,
more developed examples of this genre pedagogy are
presented in the “Examples” section of this article.
Although the Sydney school approach also iden-
tifies connections between genre and situation, the
rhetorical approach goes a step further to emphasize
the dynamic character of the interactions of genre and
situation. That is, the rhetorical approach views genre
and situation as coevolving constructions. When one

changes, it pressures—but does not force—the other
to change. For instance, when a sociologist engages
in participant observation, she performs as a different
kind of agent than she does when engaging in more
traditional observation. Thus, in her field journal, she
might adapt the genre’s conventions and make more
notes about her own moods and opinions. Relative
to a traditional observer’s field journal, then, a par-
ticipant observer’s journal would feature more first-
person constructions in the just-the-facts side of the
notebook page (e.g., “I traded jokes with hall moni-
tor”). In this way, a shift in situation elicits a shift in
genre. A social studies teacher might help her class
understand the dynamic relations between genre
and situation by having her class use field journals to
document interactions in the school’s cafeteria. Half
the class could engage in traditional observation,
and the other half could engage in participant obser-
vation. When writing in their journals, all students
would use conventions such as incomplete sentences
and split-page notes. Students conducting participant
observations, however, would use more first-person
constructions in the just-the-facts columns of their
notes than would their peers conducting traditional
observations. After returning to class, students could
compare and contrast the types of notes they wrote
in their field journals. They could discuss how dif-
ferences in their situations—traditional versus partici-
pant observation—explain differences in their generic
texts.
Finally, the rhetorical approach views genres
and situations as objects of struggle. It recognizes
that interested parties struggle over the ways genres
and situations are changed. For instance, sociologists

who reject participant observation as unscientific and
overly subjective often critique field journals that fea-
ture entries on the observer’s moods and opinions. In
contrast, proponents of participant observation often
critique traditional field journals for eliding the ways
observers affect the actions they witness. Struggles
over genre and situation, then, are often flashpoints
in larger conflicts over identity (who is and who is not
a real sociologist?) and the construction of a domain
(what is and what is not real sociology?). A social stud-
ies teacher might stage this debate by assigning stu-
dents to different sides of the argument and having
them use their own field journals as evidence in the
debate. Students would be compelled to (a) reflect
on the shifting character of sociology and sociologists
and (b) consider how the beliefs of the domain are
realized and struggled over in its genres.
Given its attention to the complex relations be-
tween text and context, the rhetorical approach to
genre studies provides a framework for the kinds of
writing promoted by the Common Core. The latter
calls writers to learn to use “formal style…while attend-
ing to the norms and conventions of the discipline in
which they are writing” (W.2e); match “development,
organization, and style” to “task, purpose, and audi-
ence” (W.4); “write arguments focused on discipline-
specific content” (WHST.1; emphasis in original); and
use “domain-specific vocabulary to manage the com-
plexity of the topic and convey a style appropriate to
the discipline and context” (WHST.2d). Each of these
concerns is brought to the fore in the rhetorical ap-
proach to genre studies.

220
J
O
U
R
N
A
L
O
F
A
D
O
LE
S
C
E
N
T
&
A
D
U
LT

L
IT
E
R
A
C
Y
57
(3
)
N
O
V
E
M
B
E
R
2
01
3
FEATURE ARTICLE
Pedagogy

Rhetorical theories of genre have been translated into
a powerful writing pedagogy by Devitt, Reiff, and
Bawarshi (2004; for a compatible approach to teach-
ing disciplinary genres, see Pytash, 2012). Drawing
upon their years of experience teaching writing class-
es, the authors present a four-step process for studying
genre. Building out from this model, I add a critical
turn and an extra move to create a five-step approach
to rhetorical genre studies.
Unlike the Sydney School’s teaching-learning cy-
cle, which can begin with teachers presenting model
texts out of context, the rhetorical approach begins with
students finding sample texts in their natural environ-
ments (step 1). Next, students collect data on how the
genre is used to bring to life a situation’s scene, acts,
agents, agency, and purposes. Using techniques such
as observation, interviewing, and document collection,
students consider (a) who uses the genre and (b) how ac-
tors employ the genre to assume disciplinary identities,
think in domain-specific ways, and work toward specific
goals (step 2). In step 3, students analyze multiple gener-
ic texts to identify patterns of form and content. They
pay attention to word choice, sentence structure, topic,
layout, and rhetorical appeals (i.e., appeals to reason,
emotion, and identity). Next, in step 4, students con-
sider how a genre’s patterns of form and content help
people realize a situation’s scene, acts, agents, agency,
and purposes. That is, they study how patterns of form
and content enable people to set a thematic background
(scene); take on social roles (agents); recognize certain
possibilities (agency); perform specific actions (acts)
for specific reasons (purposes); and think in domain-
specific ways. In a critical turn, they consider how
genres make it easier or more difficult to perform cer-
tain actions and identities in a discipline. (Adapted from

Devitt, Reiff, and Bawarshi, 2004, pp. 93–94). Finally,
in step 5, students compose generic texts of their own.
Using their knowledge of the genre and its contexts, stu-
dents compose texts that enable them to build and act
in situations appropriate to the genre.
Examples
In a high school English class, students might inves-
tigate the genre of the feature article in an online
journal. Students could examine articles published
on popular sites such as Salon.com, Slate.com, and
NationalReview.com. Each student could collect
a number of feature articles for analysis (step 1). To
learn about the situation “publishing a feature ar-
ticle in an online journal,” students could conduct
e-mail interviews with journalists and editors (step 2).
Through their interviews, students might learn that
journalists and editors often evaluate the effectiveness
of an article by counting the number of unique clicks
it draws. While completing steps 3 and 4, students
may find article titles are often more dramatic than
article content—all the better to draw the maximum
numbers of readers to the piece. Students may also
find that journalists, convinced of readers’ fickle na-
tures, front-load and condense information in their
articles to make their points before readers move on.
Thus, students might learn, the writer of a fea-
ture article in an online journal can use and adapt
the genre’s conventions to place herself in the do-
main of online journalism (scene); report/analyze
news (act); present herself as a journalist (agent) who
understands the world (agency) and who clarifies the
world’s events (purpose) for fickle readers (agents).
Taking a critical turn, students can discuss the dif-

ficulty of presenting nuanced arguments in a genre
characterized by dramatic titles and brief formula-
tions of ideas. Finally, students might draw upon the
conventions of the genre and write their own pieces
for a class-produced online journal. Some students
could be prompted to draw as many readers as pos-
sible to their articles and to deliver content quickly to
fickle readers. When writing their articles, these stu-
dents might use the genre’s conventions of dramatic
titles and front-loaded structure. Other students could
be instructed to present nuanced analyses and to re-
flect the complexities of their analyses in the titles of
their articles. After all students publish their articles,
students in another class could be assigned to visit the
online journal and read three articles of their choos-
ing. Students in the first class could count the number
of clicks received by each article and then interview
students in the other class about why they read or
passed on specific articles. The class could discuss
how the genre’s conventions helped or hindered them
in attracting readers and writing nuanced arguments.
In a high school chemistry class, students might
study the genre of the lab report and consider how its
conventions help scientists work in the situation “sci-
entists conducting and reporting on experiments.”
Students could gather reports from other science
labs in their school or from labs in local colleges and
universities. Also, students could visit working labs
and gather reports from professional chemists (step
1). During their visits, students might observe scien-
tists and interview them about how they compose
reports to realize the situation “scientists conducting

221
H
o
w
R
h
e
to
ri
c
al
T
h
e
o
ri
e
s
o
f
G
e
n
re

A
d
d
re
s
s
C
o
m
m
o
n
C
o
re
W
ri
ti
n
g
S
ta
n
d

ar
d
s
and reporting on experiments” (step 2). Through
their investigations, students might find that scientists
use passive voice to background the role of individu-
als in experiments (steps 3 and 4). The passivation of
individuals is consistent with the discipline’s interest
in replication of results. For results to be valid, they
should be achievable by any scientist who follows the
steps outlined in the lab report. Continuing, students
might find that by using the genre’s conventions, writ-
ers perform as scientists (agents) conducting experi-
ments (act) in the domain of chemistry (scene). As
scientists, they feel capable of understanding chemi-
cal processes (agency), and they seek to devise experi-
ments that yield significant, replicable …
eScholarship provides open access, scholarly publishing
services to the University of California and delivers a dynamic
research platform to scholars worldwide.
Previously Published Works
UC Irvine
A University of California author or department has made this
article openly available. Thanks to
the Academic Senate’s Open Access Policy, a great many UC-
authored scholarly publications
will now be freely available on this site.
Let us know how this access is important for you. We want to
hear your story!

http://escholarship.org/reader_feedback.html
Peer Reviewed
Title:
Learning to write in middle school? Insights into adolescent
writers' instructional experiences
across content areas
Journal Issue:
Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 57(2)
Author:
Lawrence, Joshua, UC Irvine
Galloway, Emily, Harvard Graduate School of Education
Yim, SooBin, UC Irvine
Lin, Alex Romeo, UC Irvine
Publication Date:
August 14, 2013
Series:
UC Irvine Previously Published Works
Permalink:
http://escholarship.org/uc/item/3sn8v329
Keywords:
Adolescent literacy
Abstract:
Despite the emphasis on increasing the frequency with which
students engage in analytic writing,
we know very little about the ‘writing diet’ of adolescents.
Student notebooks, used as a daily
record of in-class work, provide one source of evidence about

the diversity of writing expectations
that students face. Through careful examination of the
notebooks written by four middle-graders
in 12 content area classrooms (290 texts), the present study help
us to understand the ways in
which these writers were acclimatized in one school year to the
norms of writing in these diverse
disciplinary contexts. In particular, results of this study suggest
that adolescent writers may be
afforded little opportunity to produce cognitively challenging
genres, such as analytic essays.
Notably, in content area classrooms, students engaged in very
little extended writing.
Copyright Information:
All rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. Contact the
author or original publisher for any
necessary permissions. eScholarship is not the copyright owner
for deposited works. Learn more
at http://www.escholarship.org/help_copyright.html#reuse
http://escholarship.org
http://escholarship.org/uc/uci_postprints
http://escholarship.org/uc/uci
http://escholarship.org/reader_feedback.html
http://escholarship.org/uc/search?creator=Lawrence%2C%20Jos
hua
http://escholarship.org/uc/search?creator=Galloway%2C%20Em
ily
http://escholarship.org/uc/search?creator=Yim%2C%20SooBin
http://escholarship.org/uc/search?creator=Lin%2C%20Alex%20
Romeo
http://escholarship.org/uc/uci_postprints

http://escholarship.org/uc/item/3sn8v329
http://www.escholarship.org/help_copyright.html#reuse
FEATURE ARTICLE
Journal of Adolescen t & Adul t L i teracy x x ( x ) x x 2 013
doi :10 .10 0 2 /JA A L . 219 © 2 013 In ternat ional Reading A
ssociat ion ( pp. 1–11)
1
Learning to Write in Middle
School?
I N S I G H T S I N T O A D O L E S C E N T W R I T E R S
’
I N S T R U C T I O N A L E X P E R I E N C E S A C R O S
S
C O N T E N T A R E A S
Joshua Fahey Lawrence, Emily Phillips Galloway, Soobin Yim,
Alex Lin
Learning to write analytic genres may be particularly
challenging for
middle grade students because of the infrequency with which
they are
tasked with producing these types of texts.
Math Notebook (10/16)
What I look for in the equations is the quadratic
term which is X2, X2, and the factor form and the
factor form and the expanded form. This one is
quadratic (y = X2 X2,+ 6X + 8)
(written explanation of mathematical reasoning)

Social Studies Notebook (10/16)
The organization of the federal courts; the court
of appeals.
At the next level of the federal court system is the
court of appeals which handle appeals from the
federal district courts. In fact, the courts of ap-
peals are often called circuit courts.
(notes from textbook and class)
English Language Arts Notebook (10/16)
Character traits
What the author tells us (direct characterization).
W hat the character says (indirect
characterization)
W hat the character thinks or feels (indirect
characterization)
W hat the character does (indirect
characterization)
Science Notebook (10/16)
Objective: write procedures for the experiment to
test the blue and gray cubes. At least 8 detailed
steps. Possible vocabulary include, syringe,
plunger, tubing, clamp.
—All entries from Millie, Grade 8

Joshua Fahey Lawrence is an assistant professor at the
University of
California, Irvine, USA; e-mail: [email protected] uci.edu.
Emily Phillips Galloway is a doctoral candidate at the Harvard
Graduate
School of Education, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA; e-mail:
ecp450 @
mail.harvard.edu.
Soobin Yim is a doctoral student researcher at the School of
Education at
the University of California, Irvine, USA; e-mail:
[email protected] uci.edu.
Alex Lin is a doctoral student researcher at the School of
Education at the
University of California, Irvine, USA; e-mail: [email protected]
uci.edu.
Authors (left to right)
PM8/5/2013 12:53:45 PM
2
J
O
U
R

C
Y
X
X
(X
)
X
X
2
01
3
FEATURE ARTICLE
On a single school day, one middle school student wrote these
text segments in her content area notebooks. These
entries demonstrate not only the wide range of top-
ics that adolescent writers must engage with as they
traverse their content area classes, but also the variety
of writing genres they must produce. Writing is both
a support for content learning (writing to learn) and
a method for assessing students’ content knowledge
(writing to demonstrate learning); however, it also
represents a primary medium through which stu-
dents as members of a disciplinary classroom share
perspectives, make reasoned arguments, and engage
in dialogue (Hyland, 2005; Moje, 2008). Often, when
writing for the latter purpose of producing what we
have dubbed analytic genres, learners are required to
interpret phenomena, add causal links, or present an
argument in writing (Schleppegrell, 2004).

Thick compendia of content standards, such as
the Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSS;
2010), delineate the writing genres, including many
analytic genres, which adolescents are expected to
proficiently produce at the end of each academic year.
However, there is little institutional evidence of the so-
called “writing diet”—conceptualized as the types of
writing tasks completed by students during any given
school day or assiduously across the school year—that
supports the development of skilled writing. Yet, this
information might contextualize the difficulties faced
by novice writers in producing analytic writing genres
on high-stakes assessments (Salahu-Din, Persky, &
Miller, 2008).
To provide much-needed information about the
instructional experiences of young writers, in this
study we examined a corpus of written work pro-
duced by three seventh-grade and one eighth-grade
student in 12 content area classrooms (science, social
studies, math, and English) during evenly spaced in-
tervals over one school year in a large urban middle
school. In doing so, we begin to capture the texture
of the writing diet of one sample of American ado-
lescents. Specifically, the study catalogues the writ-
ing genres found in students’ notebooks, commonly
used as a daily record of in-class work, and examines
The ability to convey complex
thinking in writing is important in
all disciplinar y traditions.
the proportion of analytic writing produced by these

novice writers. Certainly, notebook entries are not
the only form of literacy in classrooms, but in some
schools, including the one in this study, they are an
important daily activity across content areas. In the
following sections, we present a frame for understand-
ing the nature of adolescent writing tasks and then
share our findings. We also consider how we may
better support students in developing analytic writing
skills.
What Do We Know About the
“Writing Diet” of Adolescent
Learners?
Recent large-scale studies using self-reported survey
data from the National Assessment of Educational
Progress suggest that, although teachers across do-
mains recognize the power of writing as an assess-
ment tool and support for learning content, they do
not place an instructional emphasis on the produc-
tion of extended composition by students; instead,
they focus on notes, summaries, and short-answer
questions (Applebee & Langer, 2011). Teachers of up-
per elementary school students report that they teach
writing for an average of 15 minutes per day and
place little focus on teaching analytic writing genres
(Gilbert & Graham, 2010). This suggests that stu-
dents are offered little opportunity to gain proficiency
in composing complex texts (Jeffrey, 2009).
If knowledge is, as argued by Moje and Lewis
(2007), the “residue of participation” in disciplin-
ary communities, then knowledge of how to craft
these high-level texts demands that students are of-
fered ample opportunity to participate in these writ-
ing tasks. We do not contend that adolescent writers
are (or should be) engaged in producing genres that

perfectly mirror those completed by disciplinary
experts. However, we do think that students should
be engaged in producing increasingly complex texts
in each content area, because the ability to convey
complex thinking in writing is important in all dis-
ciplinary traditions (Hyland, 2005; Lee & Spratley,
2010). Yet, aside from select studies based primar-
ily on teacher and student self-report of writing
instructional practices (Applebee & Langer, 2011),
the nature of the disciplinary writing tasks that
American middle grade students complete on a dai-
ly basis has not, to our knowledge, been examined
through document analysis, as we have done in this
study.
PM8/5/2013 12:53:46 PM
3
L
e
ar
n
in
g
t
o
W
ri

te
i
n
M
id
d
le
S
c
h
o
o
l?
I
n
si
g
h
ts
I
n
to
t
h

e
A
n
al
y
ti
c
W
ri
ti
n
g
S
k
ill
D
e
ve
lo
p
m
e
n
t

o
f
A
d
o
le
s
c
e
n
ts
A
c
ro
s
s
C
o
n
te
n
t
A
re
as

Defining the Nature of Writing Tasks
Genres or Writing Task Types
We began to explore the writing lives of the learn-
ers in our sample by cataloging the genres in which
they wrote across content areas during 40 school days.
When writing, thoughts must be encoded into pat-
terns of organization, known as genres or text types
(Martin, 2009). Because the term genres is polyse-
mous in the literature, in this study we use it to de-
scribe written texts that adopt certain grammatical
forms and patterns of organization that reflect the
text’s social function (e.g., to recount, to persuade,
to report) (Biber & Conrad, 2009; Martin & Rose,
2008; Nunan, 2007). Schleppegrell (2004) divides
genres of academic discourse into three groups: per-
sonal (poem, narrative, journal), factual (summary,
notes), and analytic (persuasive essay, thesis-support
essay, analysis of a poem, lab reports as interpretations
of observed evidence). Aligned with the language of
the CCSS (2010), proficiency in analytic or analytical
writing is positioned as an important skill for all learn-
ers to acquire.
Analytic Writing: Complex Genres Demanding
Repeated Practice
The analytic genre, which is cognitively and linguis-
tically distinct from these other writing task types,
presents particular challenges to adolescent writers
(Graham & Perin, 2007b). These challenges arise,
in large part, because analytic writing requires writ-
ers to package knowledge in particular syntactic, lexi-
cal, and discursive structures and to use new patterns
of text organization (Beck & Jeffery, 2009; O’Brien,
Moje, & Stewart, 2001; Schleppegrell, 2004). While

young writers generally demonstrate proficiency in
organizing narrative texts by late elementary school
(9–10 years old), skill at organizing expository texts
seems to continue to develop well into high school
(Berman & Nir-Sagiv, 2007). Unlike personal or
factual genres, analytic genres require students to
more frequentlymake use of logical markers of dis-
course (“as a result,” “therefore”), relational verbs
(“lead to,” “influenced,” “cause”), and ways of or-
ganizing text (name entity, define, give causes) to
construct a reasoned argument or to explain causes
and effects by drawing on available evidence (Beck
& Jeffrey, 2009). On a cognitive level, analytic writ-
ing in the disciplines further requires knowledge of
what “counts” as evidence within each discipline and
skill in constructing a logical argument, which is a
new and challenging task for many adolescent writers
(Shanahan & Shanahan, 2008).
Because learning to write is essentially a subpro-
cess of the developmental sequence known as later
language development (Nippold, 2007), we might
imagine that, like early language skills, writing skill
is developed through recursively transacting with a
particular genre, both receptively and productively.
From this perspective, we may expect that a support-
ive instructional approach to teaching writing would
include multiple opportunities to read and write a
particular genre (Graham & Perin, 2007a, 2007b).
Yet, developing analytic writing skill is not the sole
instructional goal of most content area teachers.
Presumably, when content learning is the primary
instructional emphasis, writing serves the purpose of
supporting students in retaining this knowledge, as
when students are asked to create a glossary, produce

a summary, or engage in a quick-write after reading
(Applebee & Langer, 2011). Yet, how content area
teachers negotiate these complementary instructional
demands to simultaneously develop students’ skill as
writers and funds of disciplinary knowledge requires
further documentation in the literature that seeks to
describe classroom practice.
To better understand the context in which writ-
ing skill is acquired, this descriptive study was guided
by the following questions:
1. What were the writing tasks (or genres) writ-
ten across disciplines (math, science, social
studies, English) by a small sample of middle
school students in one academic year?
2. What was the proportion of analytic writing
completed by students across disciplinary
classes?
Research Design and Methods
Methods
Research site. As you walk toward the site of our re-
search, Vale Middle School, at 7:30 any weekday morn-
ing during the school year, you will encounter a scene
typical of many urban schools in the Northeast. Fifty
to seventy students play basketball on a crowded court
adjacent to the school. Members of Vale’s student body,
which is predominately black and Hispanic, talk, laugh,
yell, and joke around. Teachers inside prepare for a
long day (7:45 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.). During the school
day, the environment at Vale is orderly. Classroom pro-
cedures are evident, including the cross-disciplinary
use of notebooks to organize daily learning.

PM8/5/2013 12:53:46 PM
4
J
O
U
R
N
A
L
O
F
A
D
O
LE
S
C
E
N
T
&
A

D
U
LT
L
IT
E
R
A
C
Y
X
X
(X
)
X
X
2
01
3
FEATURE ARTICLE
Each of the three floors of Vale houses a dif-
ferent grade level (grades 6–8). At each grade
level, interdisciplinary teams of four content area
teachers, plus special education teachers and para-

professionals, are responsible for the academic in-
struction of about 100 students (divided among
four homerooms). Every teacher sees each of the
four homerooms every day. One of the key reasons
we conducted our research at this school was the
widespread use of notebooks in the cross-disci-
plinary teams whose students provided notebook
data.
Before initi ating this study, we attempted to un-
derstand how teachers used notebooks instructionally.
A survey of all seventh- and eighth-grade students in
the school revealed that notebook use was at simi-
lar levels across classes, although more prevalent in
the eighth grade. Our interviews with the students
revealed that they used notebooks as the primary
vehicle of writing in classes across contents areas,
except in math, where they regularly supplemented
notebook writing with handouts kept in folders (thus,
we include these data in our analysis). English lan-
guage arts (ELA), social studies, and science teachers
reported regularly using notebooks and revealed that
they had participated in professional development
that touted notebook use. Although math teachers
did not attend any professional development around
using notebooks, they reported using notebooks on
a daily basis. In keeping with teacher and student
reports, we saw regular notebook use in all classes
that we observed. In short, although not all impor-
tant literacy outcomes and activities were captured
in student notebooks, all evidence suggests that the
majority of the daily literacy work done in each class
was reflected in notebooks and (in the case of math
class) worksheets that were collected in a folder. Thus,
although we don’t make claims about final prod-
ucts, such as science fair reports or work presented

in published compilations, we do feel confident that
the notebook data reported in this study reflect the
day-to-day support and practice given to students for
these summative writing projects, and it is this sup-
port, which constitutes the writing diet of adolescent
learners, that we are primarily interested in.
Participants. This study f ocused on students who
were taught by three interdisciplinary teams. Two
were seventh-grade teams; one was an eighth-grade
team. The corpus of data represents the writing pro-
duced across 12 content area classrooms. We asked
teachers in each team to identify students who were
conscientious note takers and regularly in attendance,
among their roughly 100 students. Four students
identified by teachers consented to participate in our
study by providing us with notebooks in each content
area at the end of the school year and participating in
an interview.
Netty and Sandra (all names are pseudonyms)
were students taught by one seventh-grade team. Both
were African American. Netty received a designation
of “needs improvement” on the state assessments of
reading and math. Teachers reported that Netty was a
strong student when on task. According to state tests,
Sandra was a relatively strong math student (“profi-
cient”) but scored “needs improvement” on her ELA
standardized assessment. Her teachers characterized
her as social and hard-working. Her notebooks fea-
tured writing (and doodles) produced with colored
pens.
Achilles was a seventh-grade African American
boy who was a gregarious and serious student. He
had an individualized educational plan for math

and ELA and did not reach proficiency on state stan-
dardized measures of math and English (“needs im-
provement” and “warning,” respectively). Teachers
described him as making strong progress during the
year of this study. Millie was a competent and seri-
ous Latina eighth grader who scored “proficient” on
both reading and math standardized tests. Teachers
identified Millie as an academic standout who was
making strong progress during the year in which we
conducted this study.
Although students in this study demonstrated a
range of math and reading skills, they shared a repu-
tation for regularly attending school and being active
participants in classroom instruction, and, as a con-
sequence, they wrote in their notebooks on a daily
basis.
Data collection. A total of 1 7 notebooks were collect-
ed from these four students. Additionally, we collected
four math folders. To get a fairly sampled representa-
tion of notebook data from content area classes, we
chose to analyze one week from each month of the
school year, resulting in 40 days identified for analy-
sis. In total, we coded 290 pages of student notebook
How content area teachers develop
students as writers requires further
documentation in the literature.
PM8/5/2013 12:53:46 PM

5
L
e
ar
n
in
g
t
o
W
ri
te
i
n
M
id
d
le
S
c
h
o
o

l?
I
n
si
g
h
ts
I
n
to
t
h
e
A
n
al
y
ti
c
W
ri
ti
n
g

S
k
ill
D
e
ve
lo
p
m
e
n
t
o
f
A
d
o
le
s
c
e
n
ts
A
c
ro

s
s
C
o
n
te
n
t
A
re
as
entries taken in math (n = 32 pages), ELA (n = 146
pages), social studies (n = 46 pages), and science (n =
66 pages) classes. It is impossible for us to rule out the
prospect that some worksheets or other materials were
mislabeled or lost by students. However, we believe
that if there is missing data, it is at random; we have
no reason to think the trends from recovered work
would differ from those that we coded.
We used some components of the Text Inventory,
Text Interview, and Texts In-Use Observation Survey
(TEX-IN3) (Hoffman, 2001) to characterize the
literacy context of each classroom in which study
participants were enrolled (n = 12). The TEX-IN3
provides systematic procedures for (a) capturing the
range and quantities of text available in each class-
room; (b) observing teachers and students as they
make use of text during instruction; and (c) inter-

viewing teachers and students to gain insights into
their understandings of the types and functions of
texts used instructionally. We conducted our evalu-
ation based on multiple visits to each classroom,
during which we observed a high rate of notebook
usage.
We slightly modified the TEX-IN3 to conduct
semistructured interviews with all the ELA teachers
(n = 3), as well as one eighth-grade science teacher,
one eighth-grade math teacher, and one seventh-
grade social studies teacher. The interviewer began
each interview by showing a series of cards with text
types drawn from the TEX-IN3 listed on the back
(e.g., journals, textbooks, trade books, open-ended re-
sponse), asking the teacher to describe how impor-
tant the specified text type was for students to read
or, when applicable, to write in their content area. In
addition, we asked teachers to discuss how notebooks
were used instructionally.
Interviews with each of the four students were
also conducted. These interviews also focused on text
types read and written during each class. Students
were asked to bring their notebooks from each disci-
pline, to describe the kinds of work they did, and to
comment on the kinds of texts they read and the sorts
of writing they did in each class. We also adminis-
tered student surveys to all students in the seventh and
eighth grades at the beginning and end of the school
year. These surveys explored student in-school and
out-of-school reading and writing habits and provided
validation that those classrooms and students pro-
filed in this study were representative of the literacy
habits of the Vale population at large (see Lawrence,
2012).

Notebook Coding
Through the coding process, each of the three cod-
ers conducted several layers of independent analysis
and, in a series of 17 team meetings over a 6-month
period, discussed discrepancies, resolved disagree-
ments, and established scoring norms. Methods for
analyzing student writing followed a grounded theory
coding methodology, which makes use of a two-tiered
analysis: an initial open coding of the data and, then,
a thematic coding (Charmaz, 2006). A review of the
existing literature yielded several typologies that were
applied in the first tier of data analysis: (a) the writing
tasks (genres) students were composing (class or text
book notes, summary of text, short answer) and (b) if
the writing was analytic.
Genres written. Notably, linguists attempting to gen-
erate taxonomies of writing tasks have not reached a
clear consensus (Nunan, 2007), nor would we expect
the writing of novices to map clearly to the genres
produced by experts in a discipline. Given this, a set
list of genres and their characteristics could not sim-
ply be applied to the data. Rather, we were guided
in delimiting writing tasks (genres) by posing a series
of three questions formulated by Nunan (2007): (1)
Do the two texts share the same social/communica-
tive purpose? (2) Do they have the same patterns for
organizing discourse? (3) Do they exhibit the same
grammar and vocabulary?
In the first tier of coding, 17 distinct genres were
identified in students’ notebooks. Through a recur-
sive process of applying these categories to the student
writing samples, these categories were expanded to in-
clude additional genres, and the previous entries were

recoded to reflect these additions. For example, as we
coded students’ writing in math and science classes,
the category “genre written” was expanded to include
“computations” and “explanations of mathematical or
scientific thinking.” The resulting list of codes was
not based on any preestablished criteria for features
that a specific genre must include, and we will discuss
the implications of this coding decision below.
Nature of genres written: Analytic. Drawing on pre-
vious distinctions in the literature (Schleppegrell,
2004) and through engagement with the data, we des-
ignated analytic genres as those that required students
to orchestrate numerous perspectives, texts, or sources
of evidence and to interpret phenomena, add causal
links, or present an argument. In the corpus, exam-
ples included argumentative essays, the presentation
PM8/5/2013 12:53:46 PM
6
J
O
U
R
N
A
L
O

F
A
D
O
LE
S
C
E
N
T
&
A
D
U
LT
L
IT
E
R
A
C
Y
X

X
(X
)
X
X
2
01
3
FEATURE ARTICLE
of evidence in an essay, lab reports including student-
generated explanations of scientific phenomena, and
extended explanations of thinking observed in the
math and science writing samples (Table 1). Frequent
discussions among raters resulted in adequate coding
reliability on ratings of 15% of the samples (Kappa =
0.78, p < 0.001).
Results
RQ1. What are the writing tasks (or genres) writ-
ten across disciplines (math, science, social studies,
English) by a small sample of middle school
students in one academic year?
Of the 17 genres in our total sample (Table 1),
we found the greatest range in English language arts
notebooks (Figure 1). Although students had an abun-
dance of class notes (17.7%), journal entries (13.7%),
and summaries (12.9%), we also observed significant
evidence of reading responses, poems, evaluations,
essays, and other types of writing. Drawing from

teacher interview data, some of the curricular themes
in English classes were organized around writing
and responding to different genres, which was prob-
ably one reason we found such a diversity of writing
tasks in students’ ELA notebooks. Some writing tasks,
such as journal entries, appeared consistently across
the school year in our sample. Other genres, such as
poetry, did not appear until March, when there was a
spike in use of this genre in seventh-grade ELA class-
es. Perhaps not surprisingly, data from the TEX-IN3
in ELA suggested that these classrooms also had the
greatest diversity of texts read.
Genre diversity was also reflected in students’ sci-
ence notebooks (Figure 2). The most prominent genre
type was written explanations of scientific reasoning
TABLE 1 Frequency of Genre of the Text Written by Subjects
Across All Students
Genre of the Text Written Description of Genre
Analytic Writing Genres
Written explanation of math/science
reasoning
Written explanation of thinking in math or science
Reading response Summary of reading & textual references
(evidence)
Evaluation Summary of reading & textual references & analysis
Essay Extended written piece, including a thesis & supporting
arguments/evi-
dence + conclusion

Newspaper article Recount of information from more than one
perspective
Lab report Written account of scientific process and explanation
of conclusions
Nonanalytic Writing Genres
Notes from textbook/class Summary, paraphrase, or recount of
information
Short answer to teacher prompt Short written answer; no use of
textual evidence/supporting arguments
Graphic representation Picture, map, chart
Computation (numbers) Numeric notations; no extended
explanation of thought process
Journal Emotive response to text citing no textual
evidence/sharing a personal
experience, making no connection to the text
Summary Recount of events evidencing no evaluative stance or
use of textual
evidence
Poem Original poem
Annotation of poem Underlining, defining unknown words
within the text
Short stories Original fiction or nonfiction story
Multiple choice Work related to multiple-choice assessment

items
Preview and prediction Short written predictions with no use of
textual evidence or supporting
arguments
Vocabulary list/glossary Word lists for vocabulary study
JAAL_219.indd 6JAAL_219.indd 6 …
Grade 4 Writing
Expository
Scoring Guide
March 2016
Copyright © 2016, Texas Education Agency. All rights
reserved. Reproduction of all
or portions of this work is prohibited without express written
permission from Texas
Education Agency.
State of Texas
Assessments of
Academic Readiness
A
A
Grade 4 Writing

Expository Prompt
READ the information in the box below.
No matter how old we are, we can always have fun.
THINK about the fun things you get to do as a fourth grader.
WRITE about one reason you like being in the fourth grade.
Tell what you like and
explain why you like it.
Be sure to —
●● clearly state your central idea
●● organize your writing
●● develop your writing in detail
●● choose your words carefully
●● use correct spelling, capitalization, punctuation, grammar,
and sentences
STAAR A Grade 4 Expository
March 2016
Score Point 1
The essay represents a very limited writing performance.

●q The organizing structure of the essay is inappropriate to the
purpose or the specific
demands of the prompt. The writer uses organizational
strategies that are only
marginally suited to the explanatory task, or they are
inappropriate or not evident
at all. The absence of a functional organizational structure
causes the essay to lack
clarity and direction.
●q Most ideas are generally related to the topic specified in the
prompt, but the central
idea is missing, unclear, or illogical. The writer may fail to
maintain focus on the
topic, may include extraneous information, or may shift
abruptly from idea to idea,
weakening the coherence of the essay.
●q The writer’s progression of ideas is weak. Repetition or
wordiness sometimes causes
serious disruptions in the flow of the essay. At other times the
lack of transitions and
sentence-to-sentence connections causes the writer to present
ideas in a random or
illogical way, making one or more parts of the essay unclear or
difficult to follow.
●q The development of ideas is weak. The essay is ineffective
details and examples that are inappropriate, vague, or
insufficient.
●q The essay is insubstantial because the writer’s response to
the prompt is vague or

confused. In some cases, the essay as a whole is only weakly
linked to the prompt.
In other cases, the writer develops the essay in a manner that
demonstrates a lack of
understanding of the expository writing task.
●q The writer’s word choice may be vague or limited. It reflects
little or no awareness
of the expository purpose and does not establish a tone
word choice may impede the quality and clarity of the essay.
●q Sentences are simplistic, awkward, or uncontrolled,
significantly limiting the
●q The writer has little or no command of sentence boundaries
and age-appropriate
conventions. Serious and
persistent errors create disruptions in the fluency of the writing
and sometimes
interfere with meaning.
STAAR A Grade 4
March 2016 Expository — 1
Score Point 1
In this response, the writer references the boxed information on
the prompt page (No matter how old
we are, we can always have fun) to create a central idea (no
matter how old you get, you will still love

Grade 4 Writing Expository PromptREAD the information in

Grade 4 Writing Expository PromptREAD the information in

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

Similar to Grade 4 Writing Expository PromptREAD the information in

Similar to Grade 4 Writing Expository PromptREAD the information in (20)

More from jesseniasaddler

More from jesseniasaddler (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

Grade 4 Writing Expository PromptREAD the information in