1. Design instructional activities ideas approaches to writing
Abstract
Writing well is not just an option for young people it is a necessity. Along with reading
comprehension, writing skill is a predictor of academic success and a basic requirement for
participation in civic life and in the global economy. Yet every year in the United States large
numbers of adolescents graduate from high school unable to write at the basic levels required
by colleges or employers. In addition, every school day young people drop out of high
school, many of them because they lack the basic literacy skills to meet the growing demands
of the high school curriculum. Because the definition of literacy includes both reading and
writing skills, poor writing proficiency should be recognized as an intrinsic part of this
national literacy crisis. This report offers a number of specific teaching techniques that
research suggests will help 4th- to 12th-grade students in our nation’s schools. The report
focuses on all students, not just those who display writing difficulties; although this latter
group is deservedly the focus of much attention. The premise of this report is that all students
need to become proficient and flexible writers. In this report, the term low-achieving writers
are used to refer to students whose writing skills are not adequate to meet classroom
demands. Some of these low-achieving writers have been identified as having learning
disabilities; others are the “silent majority” who lack writing proficiency but do not receive
additional help. As will be seen in this report, some studies investigate the effects of writing
instruction on groups of students across the full range of ability, from more effective to less
effective writers, while others focus specifically on individuals with low writing proficiency.
Recent reports by the National Commission on Writing have helped to bring the importance
of writing proficiency forward into the public consciousness. These reports provide a
jumping-off point for thinking about how to improve writing instruction for all young people,
with a special focus on struggling readers. Carnegie Corporation of Bangladesh used up-to-
date research to highlight a number of key elements seen as essential to improving reading
instruction for adolescents. Writing next sets out to provide guidance for improving writing
instruction for adolescents, a topic that has previously not received enough attention from
researchers or educators.

2. Design instructional activities ideas approaches to writing
Recommendations
Eleven Elements of Effective Adolescent Writing Instruction This report identifies 11
elements of current writing instruction found to be effective for helping adolescent students
learn to write well and to use writing as a tool for learning. It is important to note that all of
the elements are supported by rigorous research, but that even when used together, they do
not constitute a full writing curriculum.
Writing Strategies, which involves teaching students strategies for planning, revising, and
editing their compositions
Summarization, which involves explicitly and systematically teaching students how to
summarize texts
Collaborative Writing, which uses instructional arrangements in which adolescents work
together to plan, draft, revise, and edit their compositions
Specific Product Goals, which assigns students specific, reachable goals for the writing they
are to complete.
Word Processing, which uses computers and word processors as instructional supports for
writing assignments
Sentence Combining, which involves teaching students to construct more complex,
sophisticated sentences
Prewriting, which engages students in activities designed to help them generate or organize
ideas for their composition
Inquiry Activities, which engages students in analyzing immediate, concrete data to help
them develop ideas and content for a particular writing task
Process Writing Approach, which interweaves a number of writing instructional activities
in a workshop environment that stresses extended writing opportunities, writing for authentic
audiences, personalized instruction, and cycles of writing
Study of Models, which provides students with opportunities to read, analyze, and emulate
models of good writing
Writing for Content Learning, which uses writing as a tool for learning content material.
The Writing Next elements do not constitute a full writing curriculum, any more than the
Reading Next elements did for reading. However, all of the Writing Next instructional
elements have shown clear results for improving students’ writing. They can be combined in
flexible ways to strengthen adolescents’ literacy development. The authors hope that besides
providing research-supported information about effective writing instruction for classroom
teachers, this report will stimulate discussion and action at policy and research levels, leading
to solid improvements in writing instruction in grades.
Real writing
Through learning experiences designed by three English teachers, it can be concluded that the
teaching of writing employed by the English teachers at three high schools modeling the
competence based curriculum is categorized as the product-based approach of writing
instruction. It is characterized by the linear model of instruction in which learners do not
receive adequate time and opportunities to produce the final product of writing through
revising process. Besides, the students’ product of writing is expected to:

3. Design instructional activities ideas approaches to writing
 Meet certain prescribed English rhetorical style.
 Reflect accurate grammar.
 Be well-organized.
The teachers are influenced by the linear view of writing pedagogy viewing writing as a
linear process of finding ideas, drafting, and finished composition. Learning experiences
designed by the English teachers at three high schools are summarized. It can be identified
that Teacher always begins pre-writing activities by asking students to collect
information/data related to the writing tasks. To gather information for carrying out the
writing tasks, Teacher used the techniques of questioning, observation, interview, and
reflection. Asking students’ about their elementary education, asking students to observe
pictures, to interview a friend and to reflect on their conditions are the examples of pre-
writing activities designed. Having gathered the ideas to be written, then students are asked to
write those ideas in the forms of writing. Feedback is given from the samples of students’
writing. Similar to Teacher, in designing writing tasks, Teacher also frames the design of
teaching writing by adopting the conventional procedure, i.e. prewriting stage, drafting stage,
and feedback stage. The conventional procedure is characterized by its linear process of
writing. Summarizes learning experiences designed by Teacher. Describes the fact that in
designing learning experiences. Teacher is also influenced by the linear view of composing
process. Due to this, learning activities are formatted in three stages. In prewriting stage,
Teacher activated students’ background knowledge through picture and model text and
sharing ideas. In writing a message, the teacher used the picture of high school building as
stimuli; in discussing simple past tense the teacher asked students to observe the texts; in
discussing procedural texts the teacher asked students to observe the language and
organizational features of the model text. Having activated students’ background knowledge,
students were instructed to write, and collect the finished composition. On the basis of
learning experiences designed by the teachers as shown, it is concluded that the teachers in
the model schools still could not design learning experiences that are appropriate with the
targeted writing tasks they designed.
Intensive writing
Intensive writing Reflective writing, which is part of the elemental genre of personal recount,
is one of the most important types of writing that art and design students engage in. Many
applied subjects such as nursing use reflective writing to encourage students to be self-critical
and self aware. It is a particularly well theorized area. Who wrote one of the seminal books in
the area, identified the importance of reflection in and on action as a response to the positivist
tradition that dominated universities from the late 19th century. He sought to revalue the
ability of practitioners to act and to reflect on tacit knowledge, arguing that “practitioners
may become reflective researchers in situations of uncertainty, instability, uniqueness, and
conflict... Here the exchange between research and practice is immediate, and reflection-in-
action is its own implementation”. This is strikingly similar to characterization of the skills
gained through the practice of art. Thinking underpins many of the writing assignments in art
and design, as dealing with uncertainty, instability, uniqueness and conflict are both
characteristic of artistic creation and are outcomes that modern art frequently tries to

4. Design instructional activities ideas approaches to writing
encompass. In their approach to reflective writing, art and design differ from many other
practical or applied disciplines, such as nursing. In other disciplines, reflective writing tasks
are often highly structured; using frameworks such as Gibb’s reflective cycle. Because art
and design often try to generate instability, they draw on more playful approaches to
reflective writing. Reflective texts in art and design need to be open to the variety of
experiences, visual and verbal, that may influence students, and this would not be enhanced
by a highly structured form. One area that tutors and writing instructors in art and design
draw on is writing development, adapting strategies that are used to overcome writer’s block
and other inhibitions to writing. Writing is a practice, one that is different from artistic
practices but which as a process shares similarities. Some of the methods used to engage
students with writing tasks are derived from writing studies, while others advance from these
ideas, often by using materials other than pen and paper or computer. All are intended to
encourage reflection and writing in stages. For other courses and programmers, the approach
to the final essay or dissertation may be quite different, but the issues that tutors try to address
through the written texts are often similar: to establish through writing a relationship between
students’ practice and their values and interests. One example from the Writing PAD website
described the aims of the dissertation for students: write their own experiences
 To be personally reflexive, reflecting upon the ways in which their own values,
experiences,
 Interests, beliefs, political commitments, wider aims in life and social identities have
shaped their research to be aware of other knowledge’s and to understand and
evaluate their own place within those
 Knowledge’s both practically and theoretically.
Writing Assessment
In relation to the writing assessment, summarize the teachers’ assessment strategies. shows
that in assessing students writing performance Teacher only assessed students’ finished
composition. Moreover, he did not correct all the compositions rather took only four to five
samples of students’ compositions. The sentences that are not grammatically correct in the
sample compositions were discussed together in class. From samples of ungrammatically
correct sentences, the students are expected to be able to produce grammatically correct
sentences when they are assigned to write a composition. In short, correction on samples of
students’ composition serves as feedback in the form of whole-class feedback. In this case,
the teacher did not provide individual feedback. In addition to assessing the product
composition, Teacher consistently gave formative written test at the end of each unit. The
formative test materials consist of the four language skills listening, reading, speaking, and
writing. In each formative test, speaking was tested indirectly, i.e. by way of asking students
to apply knowledge of language forms in the contexts of dialogue. The writing test was also
given indirectly because in the test tasks students were not assigned to do real writing rather
to reorder the jumbled sentences to form a paragraph or to choose the correct forms of
language from the available options. The results of formative test were used to classify
students having achieved the basic competence of writing and those who have not yet
achieved the basic competence of writing. In summary, Teacher consistently assesses

5. Design instructional activities ideas approaches to writing
students’ product for the purpose of providing feedback. For measuring the students’
attainment of basic competence in writing, the Teacher consistently gave formative test at the
end of each unit. The result of the test is used to categorize students having mastered the
basic competence and those having not mastered the basic competence. Writing different
genres though a recent study of writing at university identified up to 22 different types of
academic writing, coursework assignments tend to be dominated by “the essay.” However, in
some disciplines, particularly emergent or practical disciplines, there is greater variation than
in disciplines that have a longer history of university study. Art and design are among the
disciplines in which students create a wide range of types of text or genres. Genre identifies
the purposes of texts, and, from that, suggests their structure and goals. Although Nesi and
Gardner identified a large number of genres, the number can be reduced to a set of
“elemental” or basic genres: personal recount
 Narrative.
 Taxonomic report (classifying and describing phenomena).
 Procedure.
 Explanation.
 Discussion or argument.
 As Coffin.
Precise classification of a text requires finer discrimination such as that done. In contexts in
which texts are important such as academia, genres are increasingly specialized and are
frequently combined in more complex texts. However, for the purposes of this chapter, the
broad categories can be informative. The essay falls in the category of discussion or argument
and is characterized by a thesis or position and arguments for and against an issue. It depends
on an array of evidence, and is usually supported by references and a bibliography. Art and
design students frequently find essay writing challenging; Swift argues that “the
conventional, academic essay form, which appears to encourage simplification and
authoritativeness, can be seen as part of a hierarchical education system set up to
disempowered rather than empower students”. Instead of setting tasks in the discussion genre,
lecturers in art and design frequently choose other genres, such as the personal recount
reflective writing, taxonomic reports classification and description, and procedures the stages
of a process. Reflective writing is extremely important and will be treated separately, but both
the taxonomic report and the procedure offer significant advantages for students writing in art
and design. Many students find them easier to write than discussion texts, as they can be
based on students’ experience rather than on the synthesis of other’s research, and they allow
students to create multimodal texts using images and drawings as well as words. Texts in
these genres are often structured chronologically or by the steps of the procedure, so
organizing the paper is simpler than the discussion genre. They can also be directly related to
students’ professional practice, leading to greater engagement with the writing task. For
example, at one institution Year students in Fashion Design were asked to choose a clothing
store and document its layout and allocation of space in relation to stock and target
customers. The essence of the task was a taxonomic report, in which students had to analyze
customers, merchandise, store, and implicitly, its competition. This complex analytic task,
though, was arranged so that students had to pay close attention to the design of the store in
order to make sketches and layout plans, as well as to think through the marketing of the

6. Design instructional activities ideas approaches to writing
clothing that the store stocked. The combination of multimodal presentation and descriptive
writing facilitated the development of the students’ analytic skills far better than essay
assignments that try to instill analytic skills more directly. Writing in the genre of procedures
can involve students explaining the steps of a craft or skill, or other staged process. In
describing procedures, often procedures that they are quite familiar with, students have to
analyze and make explicit tacit knowledge. Through tasks such as these, students’ writing
ability is improved along with their transferable skills.
Conclusion
In summary, Teacher also assesses the product of writing intended to provide feedback. For
measuring the attainment of basic competence in writing, Teacher 2 also consistently gave
formative test at the end of each unit. It is the paper-pencil test designed to measure four
language skills. In this case, speaking is tested indirectly through the objective test in multiple
choice and completion formats. Apart from that, some writing skill is also tested indirectly in
the formative test. Of the four formative tests, composition task was given once at the end of
unit 3. From the result of the test, it can be identified students who have mastered the basic
competence and those who have not mastered the basic competence. These tasks help
students understand how writing can support their art and design practice. Tutors in art and
design frequently assign tasks that get students to write small amounts of text, but to write
them more frequently. These tasks are often not directly assessed, but instead they contribute
to assignments that gather up the small bits of writing into a larger, coherent whole. This
reduces the marking load on the tutor, while making the writing task more manageable for
students. Multimodal texts are used in many disciplines, as images, graphs and charts provide
clearer and more concise ways to present information than writing. Art and design tutors also
ask their students to combine visual content with written, but they also prompt students to go
beyond these forms of information design to investigate the support that texts are written on
and the ways that texts might be presented. Drawing on the inherent strengths that students
bring to the study of art and design, these tasks elicit in some instances strikingly innovative
responses.