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Teaching Writing Organization Using the ReadWriteThink Web Site By: Mae Guerra, Stan Sameshima, Ross White

Many of our students are failing to meet the requirements of the Colorado Model Content

Standard in writing organization. This standard includes the Colorado Department of

Education Writing Standard 2:

Students write and speak for a variety of purposes and audiences. In order to meet

the standard in writing, students will organize written and oral presentations

using strategies such as lists, outlining, cause/effect relationships,

comparison/contrast, problem/solution, and narration.

Students will complete these writing presentations by utilizing the webbing tool

called ReadWriteThink. The goal of this report is to provide an online tool such as the

Read-Write-Think webbing tool to help students improve their writing skills in

organization. If students do not improve their writing skills in the area of organization

students will fall deeper behind in the writing process and the learning gap will widen

every year.

Learner Analysis

In today’s world students feel more connected to their computers then ever

before. The type of students that teachers encounter in their classrooms today is referred

to as the Net Generation. The Net Generation (N-Gen) is defined as the population of

about 90 million young people who have grown up or are growing up in constant contact

with digital media (Tapscott, 1998). The Net Generation expects that technology will be

an important part of their education. Computers and the attendant technology have to be

regarded as essential—as thinking aids (Johnson, 2001) or mind tools (Jonassen 1996).

The Net Generation has grown up with information technology. The attitudes,

expectations, and learning styles of Net Gen students reflect the environment in which

they were raised—one that is decidedly different from that which existed when teachers

were growing up.

Most Net Gen learners prefer to learn by doing rather by being told what to do.

Net Gen students learn well through discovery—by exploring for themselves or with their

peers. This exploratory style enables them to better retain information and use it in

creative, meaningful ways. The Net Gen is oriented toward discovery, making

observations, and figuring out the rules. They thrive in rapid pace environments and

choose to not to pay attention if a class is not interactive, or simply too slow. (Prensky

2001) The use of interactive tools such as the Read-Write-Think program then becomes

essential to the students in this Net Gen.

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Tool Description

Our team has created a Wiki to facilitate the use of ReadWriteThink at the school

level. A Wiki is a web page that members are allowed to edit. The intended purpose of

the Wiki is to provide a place for educators from each school to share lesson plans and

ideas about how to effectively use the interactive tools of ReadWriteThink. Each school

will have identical Wiki to begin with, a page that provides links to, descriptions of, and

sample lesson plans for tools from ReadWriteThink. After the introduction of the

program, teachers from each school will be able to edit their school’s Wiki. In this space,

they can add additional links that pertain to teaching organization in writing or provide

comments on what was useful and what wasn’t. They can also attach relevant lesson

plans as word documents to the page. Since each school has its own curriculum,

philosophy, and grade levels, the within school Wiki system will streamline efforts to

meet the specific goals and needs of each school.

The Read-Write-Think online tool offers an array of online student materials to

support reading and writing in the K-12 classroom. These interactive tools can be used to

provide an opportunity for students to use technology while developing their reading and

writing skills. There are many materials on this site that students can use to help them

with their writing skills. The materials chosen to review are tools that are used primarily

for writing organization in the pre-writing stage. Some examples of these materials

include:

1. Circle Plot Diagram

2. Comic Creator

3. Comparison and Contrast

4. Essay Map

5. Webbing Tool

The Circle Plot Diagram tool is used as a prewriting graphic organizer for

students writing original stories with a circular plot structure as well as a post reading

organizer used to explore the text structures in a book. When used as a prewriting

exercise, the diagram can be printed out and shared with peers and teacher for feedback

and revision in this phase of the writing process.

The Comic Creator tool asks students to create their own comic strips for a variety

of purposes such as prewriting, pre- and post reading activities and literature responses.

This tool focuses on key elements of comic strips by allowing students to choose

backgrounds, characters, and props. After completing their comic, students have the

ability to print out and illustrate their final versions for feedback and assessment.

The Comparison and Contrast tool outlines the characteristics of the genre and

provides direct instruction on the methods of organizing, gathering ideas, and writing

comparison and contrast essays. The Comparison and Contrast tool includes an

organizing a paper section that explains to students how graphic organizers are used for

comparison and contrast.

The Essay Map is an interactive graphic organizer that enables students to

organize and outline their ideas for an informational, definitional, or descriptive essay.

This graphic organizer tool helps students develop an outline for main ideas that they

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want to discuss or describe in their essay. The tool uses many ways to utilize information

in a linear fashion in which students can visualize their thoughts before prewriting.

The Webbing Tool provides a quick way for students to trace out options and

rearrange connections in prewriting and post-reading activities. Students can use the

Webbing Tool to analyze readings as well as a prewriting activity and flowcharting tool.

Students can drag the circle or box shapes representing their ideas to arrange any layout

and relationship that they want. Each layer on the chart will have a different color border

for the shapes that you choose. Customized versions of the tool, which include additional

instructions and more focused choices, are included with some lessons.

Learning Processes

Writing is best understood as a set of distinctive thinking processes in which the

writer organizes during writing (Hayes & Flowers, 1981). In this perspective, writing is

not viewed as a simple step-by-step process but rather a hierarchal set of cognitive

processes. In simple terms, the act of writing involves the continual use and interaction

of several mental processes. A writer must plan, organize their thoughts, consider their

audience, revise and edit, as well as communicate a message clearly and coherently. For

students, organizing ideas in writing is often a difficult task.

Writing instruction for better organization is often facilitated by making this

process visual through the use of graphic organizers. These tools provide students with

scaffolding; a concrete format to organize their thoughts. Further scaffolding of

organizing in writing is provided by clear and explicit modeling of this skill from the

teacher. Collins (1998) views modeling as a key component of learning and points out

that the teacher must make the target processes highly visible to the student. Some

educators have labeled this modeling technique as “thinking out loud”. Therefore,

students might learn best learn how to organize there writing with the instruction that

includes both graphic organizers and teacher modeling.

Interactive graphic organizers are a new and exciting way to make learning visual

on the web. Like paper based organizers, these tools further scaffold student learning by

walking students through a step-by-step process to use graphic organizers. They also

serve to increase student engagement and motivation by allowing them to actively

manipulate information with technology. ReadWriteThink also provides students with a

range of interactive graphic organizers that are specific to the writing genre.

Ultimately, the intended goal of using an interactive graphic organizer is to

improve organization skills in writing. Teachers should evaluate whether or not the use of

these organizers are helping students to organize their thoughts. Evidence of this learning

should be evident in the thoughtful segregation of events and ideas by the student in the

drafts of writing they produce from their graphic organizers.

Instructional Strategy/Tool Use

Using an online interactive graphic organizer may be a more effective tool than

traditional paper-based organizers. March (2006) suggests that educators must use

technology to create learning experiences that are real, rich, and relevant. Indeed,

students may find an online tool more relevant to their learning simply because it is in a

format that they find familiar and important to their success. For many of them, this

interactive online organizer is relatively straightforward compared to complex video and

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computer games they frequently play. Furthermore, Prensky (2001) suggests that

computer games, like interactive graphic organizers, promote cognitive traits that are

consistent with children raised with technology.

Students also learn best when they have high levels of motivation. According to

Keller’s Arc Model of Instruction (1983), students will be more motivated when students

see modeling, have experience, and encounter variability in their learning. In theory,

students should be confident in their skills and excited to engage these graphic organizers

after a teacher explicitly models the process. Also, by using an interactive computer

format, students will be able to utilize their own prior experiences using similar programs

such as Kidspiration and Microsoft Word. And while many students are quick to

disengage from paper based graphic organizers, student motivation should be enhanced

by the variability induced by interactive graphic organizers.

For educators to utilize the interactive tools available on ReadWriteThink, their

students need access to the internet. Students are not allowed to save their work on this

program so teachers should allow enough time for students to complete and print their

graphic organizers. Given the constraints of time and availability of technology, teachers

should spend ample time preparing students for this activity. Teachers should decide if

their students need to fill out a blank organizer on paper before completing one in the lab.

This is especially true for students that need additional scaffolding. In this case, teachers

must find ways to adapt a paper version prior to the computer, since they cannot

manipulate the digital version on this website.

In an effort to assess student performance on these skills, educators should collect

the student print outs of their graphic organizers. Teachers will need to assess whether or

not students are accurately organizing ideas. In general, these graphic organizers are step-

by-step in nature, so teachers can assess where students are struggling by working

through the tool with the student. Also, teachers need to model and observe how they use

these organizers when writing their drafts.

Technology How-To

The ReadWriteThink webpage is divided into 4 parts. It has a section with about

700 lesson plans, a second section listing the IRA/NCTA English Language Arts

Standards, a third section containing a list of web resources, and a fourth section labeled

Student Materials, containing the tools that students may use online.

Within the ReadWriteThink website there are lesson plans that can be sorted into

K-2, 3-5, 6-8, and 9-12 grade levels. The lesson plans can by seen by clicking on the

column title, which seems more useful than the other available methods of sorting by

alphabetical order or date of creation. The lesson plans are very complete and well

written and you may be able to find the topic or activity you want for your grade level.

They vary from simple and basic printouts to very long and complex plans leading to

products containing audio and/or video links.

The ReadWriteThink web site also has “Web Resources Gallery” which has

nearly 700 links to literature lists, professional development information, copyright

information, software tutorials, online encyclopedias, dictionaries and all things

educational. There are dropdown menus at the top of the list to filter by grade level and

by the topics of All Web Resources, Instructional Resources, Professional Development,

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Reference Library, and Student Resources. By filtering for the grade level and category

desired the list will become a more useful size.

The most beneficial aspect of this website is the student materials section.. There

is a technical support page with downloads for any plug-ins that your browser may need

to use the site and there are fifty tools to choose from! Many are specific to organizing a

topic or specific literary element or product such as a riddle, poem, postcard, book cover,

letter, or fractured fairy tale, but some are tools useful for organizing writing with enough

flexibility to fit a variety of purposes. Among these are the Circle Plot Diagram, Comic

Creator, Compare and Contrast Guide, Essay Map, and the Webbing Tool.

When using the Circle Plot Diagram, students open the tool and fill in the events

in their story. The box with the event is then placed onto a diagram with arrows showing

the flow of events. The last event in the plot leads back to the beginning event creating a

circular plot. The diagram can be used to diagram events in a circular story, such as If

You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Numeroff. As a writing tool, it organizes your

circular plot story so you are ready to write!

The Comic Creator starts with a student choosing one, two, three or six panels.

The panels allow the students to choose a background, add a caption to the bottom, and

choose characters, dialogue balloons and props to add to each panel. To aid in preparing

for this, there is a “Comic Strip Planning Sheet” with blanks for the scene and actions, the

caption, the characters, and the props. After planning the comic strip can be created. As

with all the interactive pages on the site, students must complete the panels and print

before they log off of the site.

The Comparison and Contrast Guide does not create one specific graphic

organizer, but explains the purpose and organization of a “Comparison and Contrast”

paper. It is a tutorial or lesson similar to a PowerPoint that an older student could go

through one slide at a time or a teacher could go through with a younger student or

students. It presents and explains three strategies for writing a Comparison and Contrast

paper:

Whole-to-Whole or Block Similarities-to-Differences Point-by-Point

tell everything about one

item and then everything

about the other item

explain all the similarities

and then all the differences

tell similarity or difference

for each point or topic, one

at a time

Introduction

Item 1

Item 2

Conclusion

Introduction

Similarities

Differences

Conclusion

Introduction

Point #1

Point #2

Conclusion

Students are instructed to cover all the points and keep things in the same order

when moving from one step to the next. After explaining the three ways to structure the

writing, the guide then suggests three different graphic organizers to choose from. There

is a student resource for a Venn diagram with two circles, a Venn diagram with three

circles and a Compare and Contrast Chart to organize before writing. There are also lists

of transition words for comparing and contrasting and a checklist of “things to pay

attention to.”

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The Essay Map is a graphic organizer with room to actually write a short essay

using the available structure of the organizer. There is room to type an introduction, three

main ideas (the box will hold nine lines of type), each with three supporting details (three

lines of type), and all leading to one concluding paragraph. This tool is a limited in its

use, but could be useful for an intermediate age student who has trouble organizing a

paper.

The last tool described is the Webbing Tool. This tool is a free form tool to create

a graphic organizer. The student chooses between using circles or boxes and may create

as many as desired, place them anywhere, and connect them in any pattern. All of the

tools, with the exception of the Compare and Contrast tool, are simple to use and easy for

a student to begin using without any prior practice or instruction. The difficulty would be

in making sure that the student has enough time to finish the task and print the product,

since there is no way to save the work for a later time. Most of the tools allow for printing

an unfinished product which could be completed with a pencil. Except for this lack of

ability to save work for completion at a later time, the tools are extremely useful and

should be interesting for students to work with.

The twelve IRA/NCTA English Language Arts Standards are listed on a page and

links are provided to the International Reading Association and the National Council of

Teachers of English.

The Wikispaces.com page we created is visible to anyone searching the Web and

anyone may view or download the lesson plans or use the link to the ReadWriteThink

Website. It may be edited by anyone added to the membership, which for now are the

three creators. Plans are for the membership to grow as the staffs for various worksites

are added. When permission is granted any member may click on the edit button to add

or delete content whenever they want. The administrator or manager of the site may not

stop members from editing, but can revoke the editing privilege of a member. A manager

may also access a saved history of the site to restore the page’s previous content.

Recommendations/Future Actions

The future action isWe intend to bring back the information learned from the

ReadWriteThink web site to our individual schools. Staff members at our schools will be

trained to use the ReadWriteThink tool effectively through a staff development meeting.

In this meeting teachers will learn how to use the ReadWriteThink site through a web

page developed in Wikispaces. Wikispaces is a web site that allows its authors to create

simple web pages that groups, friends, and families can edit together.

In our Wikispace site, we have shared information learned from the

ReadWriteThink web site into an informative web page that explores different strategies

on how to help students write with better organization. Once we have shared this

information from the Wiki with our staff then the teachers will be able to add or edit

information from the Wiki. In this collaborative manner of adding and editing

information the Wiki will grow and expand into a bigger web page in which all staff

members can enter their knowledge about helping students write with better organization.

Conclusion/Reflection

Overall, interactive graphic organizers from ReadWriteThink are a compelling

tool for writing instruction. These organizers help scaffold student cognitions when

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writing and enable teachers to effectively model their own thinking about writing. The

interactive and technological components of these organizers suit the interests and prior

experiences of the modern student. They also enhance student motivation and

engagement. Ultimately, teachers need to think about how they would effectively

incorporate these tools into their existing writing curriculum. And regardless of the

lesson, teachers need to explicitly model the use of these tools for the organizers to be

effective.

On our team’s Wiki, teachers from our own schools will have access to lesson

plans that demonstrate the use of these graphic organizers. Teachers will not only have

access to this website, but they will be allowed to edit the Wiki within each individual

school. The hope is that teachers will use the graphic organizers from ReadWriteThink

and eventually, contribute their own graphic organizer lesson plans to the Wiki. This

within school sharing system on the Wiki is designed to increase the efficiency and

quality of the existing curriculum by providing school and grade specific lesson plans

that demonstrate effective use of interactive graphic organizers.

References

Colorado Department of Education (1995, July 13). Colorado model content standards

for reading and writing. Retrieved June 13, 2007, from Colrado Department of Education

Web site: http://www.cde.state.co.us/cdeassess/documents/standards/reading.pdf

Collins, A. (2001) Cognitive Apprenticeship: Making Thinking Visible. American

Educator, Winter Edition, pp.1-18.

Flower, L & Hayes, J. (1981). A cognitive process theory of writing. College

Composition and Communication, Vol. 32, No. 4. pp. 365-387.

Johnson, S.(2001) Emergence: The connected lives of ants, brains, cities, and software.

Toronto: Scribner.

Jonassen, D. (1996) Computers in the classroom: Mind tools for critical thinking. New

Jersey: Prentice Hall.

Keller, J. (1983) Development and use of the ARCS model of motivational design.

Enschede, The Netherlands: Toegepaste Onderwijskunde, Technische Hogeschool

Twent. (24 pages)

March, T. (2006) The New WWW: Whatever, Whenever. Whereever. Educational

Leadership, pp.14-19.

Prensky, M. (2001) Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, Part II: Do They Really Think

Differently?” On the Horizon, vol. 9, no. 6 (December 2001), pp. 15–24; available from

<http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/>.

Tapscott, D. 1998. Growing up digital: The rise of the Net Generation. New York:

McGraw-Hill.

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Appendix

Our team searched for an interactive tool to address the need for students to

improve the organization of their writing. After searching the Web we could only find

one site that with truly interactive tool for students, the ReadWriteThink.org Website.

We used the tools provided on the site and began sharing our findings by emailing each

other and attaching any documents that we were working on. We decided to write a few

simple lesson plans, specific to our intended audience, that incorporated the tools

provided on the site. We decided to post these to a Wiki where anyone could access them

and the three of us would all be able to edit the page. The Wikispaces.com site that we

are using will only allow for one “manager” of the page, who has control over who will

be allowed to edit the page. Now we are creating three copies of the page so that we will

each have control over the membership of our separate pages, so that we may add our

building staff or other colleagues to the membership. We would still be able to enlarge or

combine the memberships of our pages by sharing with each other as we feel appropriate.

Our report was done as a Word document and the Track Changes tool was used to mark

the changes we made to the document.