When educators combed research on the writing / reading connection in 2010, they found three writing activities which improve reading comprehension.
- Having students write about the stories and texts they read by writing personal responses, analyses, or interpretations; by writing summaries; by writing notes; and by answering or asking questions in writing about what they have read.
- Having students learn about the process of writing; about how texts are structured; about how paragraphs and sentences are put together; and about how to spell.
- Having students write frequently.
All of these writing activities improve students’ reading. In future blogs, we will look at why these activities improve reading, and how these activities can be incorporated into a student’s schoolwork or work at home. We’ll start in the next blog with the last idea, that students should write more to improve their reading.
Meanwhile, for more information, see Writing to Read. At this site you can read the full report, Writing to Read; evidence for how writing can improve reading by Steve Graham and Michael Hebert for the Carnegie Corp. of NY, 2010.
You might also enjoy reading Shanahan on Literacy, a blog about reading by an expert in the field. In his current blog, Dr. Shanahan comments on ideas in this report.
comicphonics for early readers 