Teaching Secondary Students to Write Effectively

Writing processes

Actions that writers take in the process of writing, 

including planning, goal setting, drafting, evaluat-

ing, revising, and editing

• Number of revisions made to a story

• Average specificity of goals for revision during 

process of revising a story

Overall writing 

quality

The overall effectiveness of the writing. This 

might include assessments of intermediary out-

come domains—ideation, genre (or text) ele-

ments, organization, output, sentence structure, 

word choice, use of evidence, and audience.

• Assessment of Literary Analysis, holistically scored 

for quality and depth, clarity, organization, use of 

textual evidence, sentence variety, and correct use 

of language conventions

• Score on standardized statewide English place-

ment test

any recommendation, but non-writing out-

comes could plausibly be affected by writing 

instruction. Three studies that were eligible 

because they examined writing outcomes 

also examined reading outcomes (studies 

that only included non-writing outcomes 

were not eligible for review). In these stud-

ies, the analyses of reading outcomes met 

WWC design standards with or without 

reservations. One of these studies evaluated 

an intervention that included practices 

from Recommendations 2 and 3, and found 

positive effects for measures of reading 

vocabulary and reading comprehension.

102

 

One study evaluated an intervention that 

included practices from all three recom-

mendations, and found an indeterminate 

effect on a reading portion of a state stan-

dardized test.

103

 The third study evaluated 

an intervention that included practices from 

Appendix D 

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