A Descriptive Study of a Third-Grade ESL Classroom and What Children Do With Writing

A Descriptive Study of a Third-Grade ESL Classroom and What Children Do With Writing

  Understanding writing instructional practices is an important task, given that the quality of writing instruction makes a significant impact on English language learners" (ELLs) writing development. This study employed qualitative methodology to describe the current nature of writing tasks a distinguished, third-grade, ESL teacher employed for ELLs. Data were collected over a three-month period at an elementary school in the Midwest in the US. Different sources of information such as classroom observations and students" artifacts were collected and analyzed. According to the separate and combined schemes of Moffett, Dvorak, and Britton, the writing tasks observed were described in details and analyzed. The third-grade ESL teacher engaged her students in various writing tasks with different functions such as practice, expressive, and transactional writing. She also focused on providing more opportunities for composition-oriented writing activities with fewer transcription-oriented writing activities. The study calls for more attention to provide writing opportunities through various, but balanced, writing tasks for ELLs. Such balanced writing opportunities may be represented through offering transcription-oriented and composition- oriented writing opportunities, such as handwriting, transcribing, paraphrasing, and crafting. Additionally, providing writing opportunities for a variety of functions of writing, such as practice, expressive, poetic, and transactional writing, would do well for reinforcing students" balanced writing development.