Science of Writing in Action
Below is a brief overview of Releasing Writers, with a focus on how we have integrated Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) into the POWeR Cycle Framework we have developed. We also invite you to read the free articles written by our team and further researchers listed here. In a nutshell, Releasing Writers is a structured and explicit writing approach that integrates together the most powerfully-supported evidence-based practices for teaching writing. These span across multiple research teams and over decades. Our approach provides students with strategies and deliberate skill practice to ensure they learn and master all levels of language (i.e., structured sentence expansion, variation and cohesion exercises).
This research study, led by Nathaniel Hansford, documents the gains in nearly 100 schools that have used Releasing Writers (formerly think SRSD) over the past decade.
ELA Proficiency Gain Outcomes from thinkSRSD Partner Schools
Below is an overview of the approach. Hear directly from teachers in full schools and districts that have used this approach and seen significant impact in ELA proficiency gains, as a result.
C’mon in! Step inside a Releasing Writers Gr 4 Special Education lesson that demonstrates cognitive and affective modeling (left), or into a Gr 4 General Education integration with HQIM lesson (right).
Releasing Writers in Action: How Our Approach Lightens the Cognitive Load and Supports Following Data
The field of the Science of Writing includes complex and evidence-based approaches to teaching writing. Releasing Writers translates these, carries them to the classroom and makes it easy for teachers to dive in.
Research from empirical studies, as well as from schools partnering with us at Releasing Writers (formerly think SRSD) show the significant transformation this approach makes possible when teachers adopted deeply structured approaches to teaching writing. While there are many elements, key characteristics are often already familiar to teachers. Starting with these, launches a successful start.
Exemplars & Tool Kits that Lighten Cognitive Load
The journey launches with a vision of possibility. Students see exemplars written by peers or in mentor texts, then receive lenses for analyzing these. Students are explicitly guided to notice key levels such as how text structure works, syntactic variation and word choice. They then engage in deliberate sentence expansion, variation and cohesion exercises.
Explicitly Build Self-Regulation
Inspired with vision, prepared with scaffolds, students watch models of how to go through the writing process and begin to use it themselves, with support. This support is designed to launch them as agentive, self-regulating writers who are in charge.
Scaffolds & Explicit Skill Building
These lenses then become scaffolds students use to create their own writing. Additional scaffolds such as how to follow the writing process are then offered. Students also engage in deliberate sentence level activities to help them compose more fluently.
Data=Based Instruction & Formative Assessment
Students finally learn how to evaluate writing. They work toward goals they set, writing for real purposes and enlisting support from their community of peers and adults Teachers, and students, regularly assess their writing, set goals and monitor progress toward these goals.
About Us
Releasing Writers is the community of teachers and researchers who use and study practical applications of the Science of Writing. We offer in-person professional development and e-learning courses taught by teachers with decades of experience using our framework. Since offering the very first open enrollment course in SRSD in 2008, our group has grown to lead courses on multiple evidence-based practices for teaching writing and to integrate these.
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