Engaging Elementary MLEs in Writing in the Digital Era
By Nabat Erdogan & Jason Carter
Erdogan and Carter open their article by stating the issues for all students in developing good writing skills. This is especially challenging for multilingual learners of English. One of these is the “Scarcity of research on effective writing instruction for MLEs.”
The authors propose that blogging could help address this issue. They follow this up with explicit procedures used during a school year in ESL pull-out classes for grades 1-3 in a public-charter elementary school. These are listed in three parts.
- They began with goals and guidelines such as respect, consistency, commenting on peers’ submissions, and avoiding plagiarism.
- They then listed seven writing traits: ideas, voice, fluency, organization, conventions, word choice, and presentation, which they simplified. The teacher focused on one for each assignment.
- To help students assess their own and their peers’ writing, they used a five level rubric. Students were required to score their writing based on the rubric and then using the language on the rubric, explain why they gave their work that score. Layout and images are included in the rubric.
Erdogan and Carter noted that the benefits of blogging for young MLEs were more collaboration and engagement, positive attitudes, and learner-centered, authentic experiences. The blogs also became a digital portfolio that students could share with their families.
The authors close with “Tips for Teachers” such as setting norms, providing sentence stems, word banks, and dictionaries, and fostering collaboration.
Here are the complete lists of guidelines, writing traits, the rubric, and teaching tips.