Students' Opportunities to Write in Upper Secondary School Language Arts Lessons

• In Event: Millennium Hotel Roundtable Session 14
  In Roundtable Session: Critical Transitions in Writing Lives: Young People Writing in and Beyond High School

Abstract

In order for students to develop as writers, they must experience supportive writing environments and be given time to engage in writing. Drawing on 182 video-recorded language arts lessons across 46 secondary classrooms in Norway, we use a language arts–specific manual (The Protocol for Language Arts Teaching Observation) to assess the degree to which students are provided with opportunities to write and how teachers frame this writing. A key finding is that in most LA lessons, there is no opportunity to produce connected text. Many writing assignments are short and fragmented, requiring only copying. However, our study provides insight into powerful examples of successful writing instruction with specific attention to purpose and genre

Authors

• Marte Blikstad-Balas, University of Oslo

• Astrid Roe, University of Oslo

• Kirsti Klette, University of Oslo