{"id":2976,"date":"2026-07-24T12:34:50","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T12:34:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/coloradospringsmoverss.com\/?p=2976"},"modified":"2026-07-24T12:34:50","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T12:34:50","slug":"how-douglas-county-schools-are-tackling-the-next-literacy-challenge-teaching-students-how-to-write","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coloradospringsmoverss.com\/?p=2976","title":{"rendered":"How Douglas County schools are tackling the next literacy challenge: Teaching students how to write"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Getting your Trinity Audio player ready…<\/strong><\/div>\n
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By Jackie Mader,<\/strong> The Hechinger Report<\/em><\/p>\n

HIGHLANDS RANCH \u2014 It was the middle of a writing lesson in Gabrielle Grace\u2019s first-grade class at Sand Creek Elementary in suburban Denver, and students were furiously jotting down details about their summer plans, the first step in composing a paragraph on the topic.<\/p>\n

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Except for 6-year-old Dean, who was already done.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis stuff was just too easy for me,\u201d he said. He pointed to his worksheet, fully filled out with a topic sentence (\u201cI do many things over the summer\u201d) and a list of his summer activities (\u201cpark, ipad and vacation\u201d).<\/p>\n

\u201cI wrote this, like, before the bell rang,\u201d he said nonchalantly.<\/p>\n

At the beginning of the year, many of Grace\u2019s students couldn\u2019t write a sentence. \u201cNow, they do this on their own,\u201d she said. \u201cTheir writing is very organized. They write in complete sentences. It\u2019s just like clockwork.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dean\u2019s writing prowess \u2014 and confidence \u2014 is what many elementary school teachers dream of. For years, teachers have bemoaned the state of student writing \u2014 and have struggled to manage students\u2019 complex, largely negative feelings about it. Across grade levels, educators say children struggle to write basic sentences, let alone use proper spelling and punctuation. In upper elementary grades, when students should be writing paragraphs and short essays, teachers are finding many students still lack fundamental skills and struggle to write at length.<\/p>\n

In recent years, concerned by low writing scores on state exams, some districts have started to rethink how they\u2019re teaching writing. For example, in the 61,000-student Douglas County School District, administrators have added more professional development for teachers in evidence-based writing approaches and are prioritizing explicitly teaching writing to students. Similar efforts are underway in Tennessee, Pennsylvania, California and Rhode Island.<\/p>\n

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Many school leaders say they\u2019re seeing promising results, indicating that America\u2019s children can write better \u2014 if they have the right instruction.<\/p>\n

\u201cWriting is the last bastion of education,\u201d said Randy Barth, CEO of SRSD Online, which trains teachers in the \u201cscience of writing,\u201d encompassing a growing body of research on effective writing instruction. \u201cWriting, I would say, is the last thing that the education system is putting money towards.\u201d<\/p>\n

For years, while America has been focused on math and reading \u2014 and in recent years, the science of reading \u2014 writing has largely been ignored.<\/p>\n

Unlike for reading and math, national data on writing proficiency for elementary-age students is sparse. America has not released nationwide standardized writing scores from elementary school grades since 2002, when 27% of fourth graders scored proficient or higher.<\/p>\n

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Nationwide, there\u2019s no good way to know how elementary students are doing when it comes to writing, said Vicki McQuitty, a professor in Towson University\u2019s elementary education program and director of the Maryland Writing Project, an initiative aimed at improving writing instruction. \u201cBut the word on the street is that kids can\u2019t write.\u201d<\/p>\n

An analysis of recent state test results seems to confirm this. In 2025, more than half of Texas\u2019 360,000 third graders received no credit for their responses on an essay prompt in the state\u2019s annual English language arts test that asked them to compare and contrast two texts. In California the same year, only 17% of third graders met the standard for well-organized writing on an essay asking them to demonstrate research skills when responding to a prompt. And in Florida, students on average scored 6 out of 12 possible points on the state\u2019s writing test.<\/p>\n

The results aren\u2019t much better as students age. For years, employers, college professors and high school teachers have complained that students struggle to write coherent, multi-paragraph essays when they arrive in their classrooms or apply for jobs.<\/p>\n

Elementary teachers, responsible for the heavy lift of early writing instruction, say they\u2019re up against a host of challenges. Writing is a demanding task for students, requiring a certain amount of background knowledge to understand the material, fine motor skills and vocabulary, among other skills.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think writing is the hardest thing to teach,\u201d said Chrissy Everett, a fourth-grade teacher at Prairie Crossing Elementary in the Douglas County district and an educator of 23 years, because it involves executive function skills and knowing \u201chow to piece it all together and what steps to do next.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the \u201cscience of writing\u201d isn\u2019t as deeply researched as the science of how children learn to read, experts generally agree on practices that are key to teaching students how to write. For example, students should be given time each day to write and taught different genres and purposes of writing. Educators should also explicitly instruct students in individual , starting with handwriting, spelling and vocabulary.<\/p>\n

Adrea Truckenmiller, an associate professor at Michigan State University\u2019s college of education, whose research has focused on writing, said students need to learn that a complete sentence includes a subject and a verb, not just a capital letter at the beginning and a period at the end. Later, they must be taught how to connect ideas by expanding and combining sentences. Finally, they can tackle essays, using worksheets and charts to plan their writing.<\/p>\n

But research shows teacher preparation programs vary in how much and what they teach aspiring educators about writing instruction. Many lack standalone writing instruction courses. \u201cEven teacher educators do not always feel comfortable teaching preservice teachers about writing,\u201d said McQuitty, from Towson. \u201cIt\u2019s always pushed to the back.\u201d<\/p>\n

Once in the classroom, teachers are under pressure to prepare students for standardized tests that emphasize reading and math, experts say, often to the detriment of other subjects.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just assumed writing instruction was happening, but every time I walk into a classroom my assumption is proven wrong,\u201d said Truckenmiller.<\/p>\n

Adding to the challenge is that after spending their early years scrolling iPads and pecking at keyboards, some kids struggle to even hold a pencil. Christina Bretz, an occupational therapist with Learning Without Tears, a company that sells early reading and writing curriculum and materials, said she recently met a kindergartener who had never seen crayons and only knew how to color by using his finger on an iPad.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs we\u2019re seeing more children use devices, we start to see less of them manipulating objects with their hands,\u201d said Bretz.<\/p>\n

In 2023, district leaders in Douglas County noticed scores on the elementary writing portions of state tests were far lower than on the reading portions. As they dug into the district\u2019s approach, \u201cwe found that teachers didn\u2019t know how to teach writing,\u201d said Janet Merrill, literacy coordinator for the school system.<\/p>\n

District officials realized teachers had largely been left on their own to teach writing and were using a hodgepodge of methods. \u201cIn the past, really just whatever a teacher could find from Teachers Pay Teachers or something online was where we were,\u201d Merrill said.<\/p>\n

Without districtwide common strategies, writing instruction varied greatly from class to class, and teachers often felt like they were starting each year from square one, Merrill said. Teachers largely focused on creative writing, asking students to write about a favorite vacation or birthday, Merrill said.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe did \u2018Describe your shoe\u2019 for like a month. And then you described your backpack,\u201d she added. \u201cIt\u2019s just this random writing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Merrill started researching science-backed ways to teach writing and learned about an approach that disability advocates in the district were championing, called Self-Regulated Strategy Development. Rather than focusing on creative writing, SRSD is prescriptive, encouraging students to respond to texts using evidence and giving them specific strategies for planning and organizing writing.<\/p>\n

With help from a group called Releasing Writers, the district rolled out a new approach to writing with 100 instructional coaches and teachers across its more than 70 elementary schools. Three years later, every elementary teacher in the district is following the same process: reading and analyzing examples of writing with their class; using a routine for analyzing and responding to a prompt; and relying largely on writing responses to texts, rather than creative freewrites. Teachers model the strategies and their easy-to-remember acronyms, like \u201cTIDE,\u201d which stands for \u201ctopic, important details, and ending.\u201d Students at every grade level repeat the same process, with slight variations for younger students.<\/p>\n

The district\u2019s new approach also teaches students to be resilient as they write. They start their drafting process by writing a positive phrase to themselves, which they can read when they\u2019re feeling frustrated or stuck.<\/p>\n

Around the corner from Grace\u2019s classroom, students in Kristin Allen\u2019s kindergarten class had just finished reading a story about a group of animals who made a gift for a turtle.<\/p>\n

Now, Allen was working with small groups of students to help them retell that story in writing. Before the four students sitting with her got started, Allen asked them what they should write at the top of their papers.<\/p>\n

The children thought for a moment and started scribbling down affirmations on their pages. Allen asked them to share.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can do this,\u201d said one child.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am smart,\u201d said another.<\/p>\n

Then Allen asked them to write a topic sentence about the story, followed by three details from it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe anumls make a gift for turtle,\u201d one girl wrote.<\/p>\n

Allen was quick to correct spelling and punctuation. She paid close attention to how students held their pencils. She encouraged them to leave spaces between words.<\/p>\n

This was Allen\u2019s first year back in the classroom after taking several years off to spend with her own children. Prior to that, she taught kindergarten in New Jersey for 10 years. When she first started teaching, \u201cI did not see anything like this,\u201d Allen said, motioning to papers covered with her students\u2019 writing, which in some cases included full paragraphs. \u201cSome people have the attitude that \u2018Oh, they\u2019re kindergarten, they\u2019re five and six, they can\u2019t\u2019.\u2019 They can.\u201d<\/p>\n

Allen was eager to learn the SRSD method. But not all teachers are. Merrill said some veteran teachers were reluctant, worrying that kids wouldn\u2019t love writing with such a prescribed process \u2014 but she\u2019s not sure students enjoyed the old process as much as their teachers believed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey saw this blank page and they just were like, \u2018I don\u2019t even know where to start.\u2019\u201d Merrill said. \u201cNow, students love writing because they have the skill to actually write.\u201d<\/p>\n

What helped convince teachers was seeing near-immediate effects from the early adopters who piloted the approach. After the first year, educators in higher grades noticed kids who had been taught via SRSD were entering middle school with better writing skills, and they started asking their colleagues what had changed in elementary classrooms.<\/p>\n

Federal research has found the SRSD approach across different genres, grades and assignments, and can be an effective intervention for students with learning disabilities. But despite the evidence behind SRSD and similar approaches based on the science of writing, they haven\u2019t made it into mainstream curricula and classrooms in part because there\u2019s still not widespread awareness of them among educators, experts say.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have this knowledge base concentrated in a really small number of people that hasn\u2019t been scaled yet,\u201d said Truckenmiller, from Michigan State University. In addition, schools have competing priorities, she said, often thinking they need to get reading instruction right first before focusing on writing.<\/p>\n

But in Douglas County, officials say focusing on writing is key to improving reading. And they\u2019ve already noticed a difference in test scores: After a year of rolling out the strategy in a handful of schools, the district said it saw state writing scores increase by 3 percentage points. Math scores increased too, which district officials attribute to students having the skills to better analyze questions and problems. This summer, at the request of educators in the district, Merrill and her colleagues will begin training all their middle school teachers in SRSD.<\/p>\n

Students have noticed the difference as well.<\/p>\n

Last year, \u201cyou just had to sit down and write,\u201d said Connor Miles, a fourth grader in Everett\u2019s class at Prairie Crossing Elementary. How did that make him feel? \u201cCompletely lost,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

One of Connor\u2019s classmates, 10-year-old Arya Melancon, said this year, teachers are better able to explain the process of writing. They are providing her and her peers with strategies and systems, and she likes sorting through evidence from texts and \u201cbuilding\u201d paragraphs and responses.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve definitely improved this year. We have a better understanding,\u201d she said. The difference was most glaring to her and her classmates when they sat down to take their end of grade state test in the spring, she added.<\/p>\n

\u201cLast year we were all scared of writing prompts,\u201d Arya said. \u201cThis year, we felt like we were ready.\u201d<\/p>\n

This story about writing skills was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Read more Rare Colorado IMAX 70mm projector fixed, now showing \u2018The Odyssey\u2019 in Denver<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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