Teaching Secondary Students to Write Effectively

Recommendation 2 

(continued)

3. Important text features, which include text 

format, organization, and genre, as well as 

spelling and syntactical combinations 

that are accepted in a particular language 

or culture. 

4.  Procedural knowledge, which includes 

integrating complex processes to write 

compositions and using strategies for 

accessing information when reading text. 

Combining writing and reading together in all 

disciplines enables students to develop their 

writing in diverse contexts. By practicing their 

writing skills across the curriculum, students 

have more opportunities to practice differ-

ent types of writing. For example, in science 

class, students can write informational text 

about their lab experiments; in history class, 

students can write argumentative pieces 

about different historical perspectives. More-

over, the panel believes that the benefits of 

writing across the disciplines extend beyond 

the writing itself—writing can improve read-

ing comprehension, critical thinking, and 

disciplinary content knowledge.

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