In one sense, the national conversation about what it will take to make sure all children become strong readers has been wildly successful: States are passing legislation supporting evidence-based teaching approaches, and school districts are rushing to supply training. Publishers are under pressure to drop older materials. And for the first time in years, an instructional issue鈥攔eading鈥攊s headlining education media coverage.

In the middle of all that, though, the focus on the 鈥渟cience of reading鈥� has elided its twin component in literacy instruction: writing.

Writing is intrinsically important for all students to learn鈥攁fter all, it is the primary way beyond speech that humans communicate. But more than that, research suggests that teaching students to write in an integrated fashion with reading is not only efficient, it鈥檚 effective.

Yet writing is often underplayed in the elementary grades. Too often, it is separated from schools鈥� reading block. Writing is not assessed as frequently as reading, and principals, worried about reading-exam scores, direct teachers to focus on one often at the expense of the other. Finally, beyond the English/language arts block, kids often aren鈥檛 asked to do much writing in early grades.

鈥淪ometimes, in an early-literacy classroom, you鈥檒l hear a teacher say, 鈥業t鈥檚 time to pick up your pencils,鈥欌�� said Wiley Blevins, an author and literacy consultant who provides training in schools. 鈥淏ut your pencils should be in your hand almost the entire morning.鈥�

Strikingly, many of the critiques that reading researchers have made against the 鈥渂alanced literacy鈥� approach that has held sway in schools for decades could equally apply to writing instruction: Foundational writing skills鈥攍ike phonics and language structure鈥攈ave not generally been taught systematically or explicitly.

And like the 鈥渇ind the main idea鈥� strategies commonly taught in reading comprehension, writing instruction has tended to focus on content-neutral tasks, rather than deepening students鈥� connections to the content they learn.

Education Week wants to bring more attention to these connections in the stories that make up this special collection. But first, we want to delve deeper into the case for including writing in every step of the elementary curriculum.

Why has writing been missing from the reading conversation?

Much like the body of knowledge on how children learn to read words, it is also settled science that reading and writing draw on shared knowledge, even though they have traditionally been segmented in instruction.

鈥淭he body of research is substantial in both number of studies and quality of studies. There鈥檚 no question that reading and writing share a lot of real estate, they depend on a lot of the same knowledge and skills,鈥� said Timothy Shanahan, an emeritus professor of education at the University of Illinois Chicago. 鈥淧ick your spot: text structure, vocabulary, sound-symbol relationships, 鈥榳orld knowledge.鈥欌��

The reasons for the bifurcation in reading and writing are legion. One is that the two fields have typically been studied separately. (Researchers studying writing usually didn鈥檛 examine whether a writing intervention, for instance, also aided students鈥� reading abilities鈥攁nd vice versa.)

Some scholars also finger the dominance of the federally commissioned National 69传媒 Panel report, which in 2000 outlined key instructional components of learning to read. The review didn鈥檛 examine the connection of writing to reading.

Looking even further back yields insights, too. Penmanship and spelling were historically the only parts of writing that were taught, and when writing reappeared in the latter half of the 20th century, it tended to focus on 鈥減rocess writing,鈥� emphasizing personal experience and story generation over other genres. Only when the Common Core State Standards appeared in 2010 did the emphasis shift to writing about nonfiction texts and across subjects鈥攖he idea that students should be writing about what they鈥檝e learned.

And finally, teaching writing is hard. Few studies document what preparation teachers receive to teach writing, but in surveys, many teachers in their college education courses. That鈥檚 probably why only a little over half of teachers, in one 2016 survey, said that

Writing should begin in the early grades

These factors all work against what is probably the most important conclusion from the research over the last few decades: 69传媒 in the early-elementary grades need lots of varied opportunities to write.

鈥�69传媒 need support in their writing,鈥� said Dana Robertson, an associate professor of reading and literacy education at the school of education at Virginia Tech who also studies how instructional change takes root in schools. 鈥淭hey need to be taught explicitly the skills and strategies of writing and they need to see the connections of reading, writing, and knowledge development.鈥�

While research supports some fundamental tenets of writing instruction鈥攖hat it should be structured, for instance, and involve drafting and revising鈥攊t hasn鈥檛 yet pointed to a specific teaching recipe that works best.

One of the challenges, the researchers note, is that while reading curricula have improved over the years, they still don鈥檛 typically provide many supports for students鈥攐r teachers, for that matter鈥攆or writing. Teachers often have to supplement with additions that don鈥檛 always mesh well with their core, grade-level content instruction.

鈥淲e have a lot of activities in writing we know are good,鈥� Shanahan said. 鈥淲e don鈥檛 really have a yearlong elementary-school-level curriculum in writing. That just doesn鈥檛 exist the way it does in reading.鈥�

Nevertheless, practitioners like Blevins work writing into every reading lesson, even in the earliest grades. And all the components that make up a solid reading program can be enhanced through writing activities.

If students are doing work on phonemic awareness鈥攖he ability to recognize sounds鈥攖hey shouldn鈥檛 merely manipulate sounds orally; they can put them on the page using letters. If students are learning how to decode, they can also encode鈥攔ecord written letters and words while they say the sounds out loud.

And students can write as they begin learning about language structure. When Blevins鈥� students are mainly working with decodable texts with controlled vocabularies, writing can support their knowledge about how texts and narratives work: how sentences are put together and how they can be pulled apart and reconstructed. Teachers can prompt them in these tasks, asking them to rephrase a sentence as a question, split up two sentences, or combine them.

鈥淵oung kids are writing these mile-long sentences that become second nature. We set a higher bar, and they are fully capable of doing it. We can demystify a bit some of that complex text if we develop early on how to talk about sentences鈥攈ow they鈥檙e created, how they鈥檙e joined,鈥� Blevins said. 鈥淭here are all these things you can do that are helpful to develop an understanding of how sentences work and to get lots of practice.鈥�

As students progress through the elementary grades, this structured work grows more sophisticated. They need to be taught both sentence and paragraph structure, and they need to learn how different writing purposes and genres鈥攏arrative, persuasive, analytical鈥攄emand different approaches. Most of all, the research indicates, students need opportunities to write at length often.

Using writing to support students鈥� exploration of content

69传媒 is far more than foundational skills, of course. It means introducing students to rich content and the specialized vocabulary in each discipline and then ensuring that they read, discuss, analyze, and write about those ideas. The work to systematically build students鈥� knowledge begins in the early grades and progresses throughout their K-12 experience.

Here again, available evidence suggests that writing can be a useful tool to help students explore, deepen, and draw connections in this content. With the proper supports, writing can be a method for students to retell and analyze what they鈥檝e learned in discussions of content and literature throughout the school day鈥攊n addition to their creative writing.

This 鈥渨riting to learn鈥� approach need not wait for students to master foundational skills. In the K-2 grades especially, much content is learned through teacher read-alouds and conversation that include more complex vocabulary and ideas than the texts students are capable of reading. But that should not preclude students from writing about this content, experts say.

鈥淲e do a read-aloud or a media piece and we write about what we learned. It鈥檚 just a part of how you鈥檙e responding, or sharing, what you鈥檝e learned across texts; it鈥檚 not a separate thing from reading,鈥� Blevins said. 鈥淚f I am doing read-alouds on a concept鈥攐n animal habitats, for example鈥攎y decodable texts will be on animals. And students are able to include some of these more sophisticated ideas and language in their writing, because we鈥檝e elevated the conversations around these texts.鈥�

In this set of stories, Education Week examines the connections between elementary-level reading and writing in three areas鈥�encoding, language and text structure, and content-area learning. But there are so many more examples.

Please write us to share yours when you鈥檝e finished.