Cerelia Hampton is the English department supervisor for Bremen High School District 228 in Bremen Township, Ill., whose four high schools serve 5,000 students. She shares her insights about making writing less intimidating, integrating writing into every subject, and assessing the writing process, not just the final product.
SmartBrief: What are the most effective ways to make writing less intimidating to students?
Cerelia Hampton: There are a couple things we do in our district. One of them is utilizing the Quick Write prompts in our NoRedInk platform as bell-ringers or five-minute activities to get students used to writing. These prompts can be as simple as “Tell me your favorite music artist and why they’re your favorite.”
When it comes to longer writing assignments, instead of saying, “All right, kids, we’re going to write a two-page paper. It’s due on Friday,” I highly encourage teachers to chunk the writing for students. Always start with a brainstorming or pre-writing phase. This could be as simple as students using a Google doc or a sheet of paper to jot down all of their ideas. Then comes organizing their writing, which could be with some sort of graphic organizer, depending on what type of writing they’re doing. Then they move into the drafting phase, followed by revision, editing for things like commas and periods, and, last but not least, creating a final draft.
SmartBrief: What strategies can teachers use to boost students’ writing stamina and fluency?
Hampton: I really think it’s just practice, practice, practice. For example, to prepare for the ACT writing section, which is 40 minutes, we prepare our students by having them practice, even at the freshman level. Being able to write for a sustained period of time is very different from doing a Quick Write, so maybe the first time teachers might ask students to write for just five minutes, then the next time it’s 10 — and so on and so forth until they’re ready to sit therefor 40 minutes and share their perspective on a given topic.
Chunking to avoid daunting projects
SmartBrief: How do you scaffold writing instruction for students of varying proficiency levels?
Hampton: This starts with giving teachers the autonomy they need to adapt instruction for the students in their classrooms. For example, they may chunk the process and use different organizers by student. If a teacher knows that they have a group of students who are really flying high, then they don’t need a graphic organizer. The teacher might have another group, however, that is struggling, so they need more guidance on what they need to do for each and every sentence or each and every paragraph. It really depends on the level of the course, the teacher and what they have in their toolbox.
SmartBrief: Why is teaching writing across the curricula important?
Hampton: There are times when our curricula overlap, which is really nice. One example is that our juniors take American History at the same time they’re taking American Literature. That makes it really easy to make those connections between courses — but the writing style may be a little different. For example, in social studies, teachers often want students to write succinctly and clearly to answer specific questions. But in English, they want students to express themselves using descriptive and emotive language. The goal in both writing scenarios is to make sure that students are not only able to connect the content to their own lives and each other, but also that they understand, “Here’s how I write for social studies, here’s how I write for math, here’s how I write for English,” and so on.
SmartBrief: What tools and practices do you suggest to help those non-ELA teachers incorporate writing into their subjects?
Hampton: When I meet with other supervisors in the district, we talk a lot about literacy. What does it look like in math? What does it look like in science? For math, it can be simply explaining your answers instead of just writing the number 8. Teachers can ask, “OK, but how did you get there? Tell me about your process. What were the steps that you took?”
In addition to that, we have our document-based questions in our social studies department that are very popular. Students have an assigned document that they read, and then they have to answer questions based on the material. It isn’t just your basic “who is…” or “what was…” questions. For example, students might be asked to “briefly explain” how a historical development contributed to the author’s views.
Teachers on board with process vs. project
SmartBrief: How have you managed the shift from assessing only a final writing project to assessing the process? Was there resistance from teachers?
Hampton: There was no resistance among teachers. I feel that if you polled English teachers, most of them would say that the process is just as important as the product, if not more. Our teachers have a series of conversations and check-ins with students during each phase of the writing process.
In the pre-writing phase, it could be a quick one-on-one with the student to ask, “What topic did you choose for your research paper?” The teacher can keep notes so they know what each individual student is working on. In the organization phase, it’s really looking at that graphic organizer. If we’re sticking with the example of a research paper, it’s checking that students have done their research and that they have every component so that they can be successful in their drafting process. Feedback on the drafting stage can be done through the Guided Drafts feature in the platform we use. Teachers can add their rubric in there so that students are aware of the writing criteria and how their papers will be graded.
SmartBrief: What role does peer review play in your process of teaching writing?
Hampton: Peer editing is a key part of our process, but it can be challenging for students, especially if they don’t feel confident in their own writing. Teachers focus on being very specific and giving guidelines as to what students are looking for during the peer editing process. It could be as simple as, “We’ve gone over commas all year, so I just want you to read through this paper and look for those comma splices that we talked about.” Maybe it is, “We’re working on MLA citations, so I want you to go through your partner’s paper and make sure that they’ve cited everything correctly, and make some notes if they haven’t.”
Using the stoplight method to guide AI usage
SmartBrief: How has the district approached guiding students and teachers about using AI in writing?
Hampton: Our district is working on a stoplight model. Teachers can say, “Green means go. This is an assignment for which you could use AI.” Maybe students are brainstorming ideas about what they want to write, so that’s appropriate. With a yellow light, students need to use some caution. One example could be utilizing programs that might improve or change a student’s writing. Then there’s a red light: “No, it is not OK to ask ChatGPT to write your research paper.”
On the teacher’s side, we do use a feature in our platform that allows teachers to assign a Quick Write, then have the AI create a rubric and grade the writing. This really helps the teachers with their workload.
SmartBrief: What’s next for writing instruction in Bremen?
Hampton: One of the classes we’re continuing to hone is the College- and Career-Ready Composition course for seniors. It’s a very different type of writing than our students are used to. It requires them to write about themselves, about where they want to go and what they want to do. College- and Career-Ready can be a challenging class for our students who are used to one type of writing and then are trying something different in their last year with us.
My goal is for our district to adopt a portfolio model for students so their writing can be shared from year to year and teachers can see what kind of writer each student was as a freshman versus as a senior. We’re not there yet, but we are working to get there.
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