Author: Dr. Gerald Tindal
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The What Works Clearinghouse
For the past 20 years, the Institute of Education Science (IES) has funded research on a variety of educational practices that are evidence-based; in the past decade, these practices have been published as guides. In this blog, we review Teaching Secondary Students to Write Effectively (https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/PracticeGuide/22). The two figures in this blog appear in this…
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How to Show Writing Improvement
Dr. Gerald Tindal, University of Oregon Anyone who teaches writing, knows that student improvement is not only the goal, but also the most difficult accomplishment to achieve. In part, this difficulty arises because of the many genres and dimensions involved in evaluating writing. Furthermore, improvement is directly reflected in the measures we use (e.g., how…
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The Specificity of Words: Research Methods
America’s Test Kitchen (https://www.americastestkitchen.com) provides a scientific analysis of cooking various foods (meats, dishes, fish, breads, etc.) as well as cooking products in a series of seasons and episodes. In a recent review of baking stones and steels for making pizza that is just like the professionals, Lisa McManus describes how they tested several products.…
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The Structure of Writing: Shapes Control the Flow of Traffic
“Signs convey information to travelers not only by their messages and color, but through their shape as well. Special shapes are specifically assigned to certain types of signs so that travelers can recognize them quickly and react appropriately. In general, the greater number of sides on a sign, the more critical a message it conveys”…
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Transition Words and Phrases: Avoiding Box Car Writing
If you stand next to the tracks when a train is traveling by it’s likely to make you dizzy (particularly if you stand too close). Pretty soon, the monotony of box cars or oil tanks, passing in front of you, one after the other, creates a lull on thinking. You could try to count them,…
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Feedback on Student Writing: The Proverbial Chicken
Needless to say, which came first is impossible to answer, so we’ll arbitrarily claim it was the chicken. Otherwise, how did the egg get laid? Of course, this begs the question on the arrival of the chicken, but we’ll leave that to the dinosaur experts. Given this chicken sitting in my classroom, let’s get started.…