EXPLORING THE PRE-WRITING STRATEGIES WITH STRUGGLING READERS Kurtz 1

Exploring Pre-Writing Strategies with Struggling Readers: Using Brainstorming,

Clustering, and Outlining to Promote Student Literacy

Rachel Kurtz

Manhattan College: Education 403

EXPLORING THE PRE-WRITING STRATEGIES WITH STRUGGLING READERS Kurtz 2

Abstract

This essay explores the observations I encountered during my time in an urban charter

school in North Bronx. While I observed Ms. Edwards 11th grade English Language Arts

class, I had the opportunity to work with a group of six students to improve a struggling

area in their literacy. The main issue I found was confusion and a lack of direction in their

writing assignments, specifically an essay they were working on based on the novel, The

Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. Through my research, I discovered that pre-writing

strategies, such as outlining, gives students the opportunity to deeply consider the format

and flow of their writing. While choosing which pre-writing strategies to use with the

group, I decided to use three, dedicating each lesson to one strategy that builds off the

next. These included: a brainstorm list, the clustering technique, and an outline template.

As I carried out my plan, I found a few limitations and inconsistencies; however, I found

greater advances in the students writing and consideration of cohesiveness than prior to

working with the group. Although I address some improvements that could be made with

my plan, from the results of the group I believe that using this study can promote writing

consistency and flow for many struggling writers.

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Introduction to The Study

During my time observing in an urban charter high school, I had the opportunity

to observe Ms. Edwards English class and work with a few 11th grade students to target a

specific problem I found consistent within the group. I was assigned six students who all

struggled in the class and were not up to par with their reading levels almost all of the

students had an 8th grade reading level or lower. Within my first few days working with

these students, I quickly learned that they were struggling with their class assignment

which asked them to write an argumentative essay following the prompt: Does ones

environment at birth dictate their future? based on their current reading, The Bluest Eye

by Toni Morrison. However, despite their reading levels, their comprehension of the

reading was not their main struggle in completing this assignment; rather, it was the

writing process of the essay. Most of the students were confused and had little

understanding of what their thesis was, how to create a cohesive flow to their essay, how

to include and refute their counter-claim, and what major themes and points of the book

they could use to support their thesis. I decided that I wanted to focus the next few

lessons on pre-reading strategies, exploring how the outlining process can help these

students make more coherent and focused argumentative essays.

Research

Charles K. Stallards study (1974), An Analysis of the Writing Behavior of Good

Student Writers explores the many different strategies good student writers employ

through a close analysis of their writing process. Stallard distinguished eight different

aspects of behavior in good student writers, including: planning behavior, revision

behavior, rate of writing, audience awareness, consideration of purpose, stylistic concerns

EXPLORING THE PRE-WRITING STRATEGIES WITH STRUGGLING READERS Kurtz 4

such as paragraphs development and total organization of the behavior, attitudes toward

writing, and the practice of stopping to read at intervals during the process of writing (p.

210). Stallard specifically examines the effectiveness of outlining in planning behavior,

studying the process of one girl in his group of study who outlined her essays before

writing them. He explains that her method was unconventional; she would write four

sentences in which she would number 1-4, stating the main ideas and themes she wanted

her essay to focus on. Although her method is unconventional and may not be effective

for all students, Stallard explains her essay had a cohesive flow and included each of the

themes in the order that she had listed them. When comparing two groups, the group of

good writers and a random group, the calculated mean of time dedicated to pre-writing

for the random group came out to 1.20min, while the good writers mean came out to

4.18min (p. 211). Although it is a small difference, it made a significant change within

the cohesiveness and flow of their writing. Applying this to my study, I want to continue

Stallards research, specifically focusing and dedicating more time to the pre-writing

process, using a group that are not random or proficient writers, but rather focusing on

struggling readers and writers.

Steve Grahams and Dolores Perins Writing Next - Effective Strategies to

Improve Writing of Adolescents in Middle and High Schools (2007), explores eleven

elements of effective writing techniques, including pre-writing. Graham and Perin

explain that pre-writing activities should generate or organize ideas for their

composition [these] activities include gathering possible information for a paper

through reading or developing a visual representation of their ideas before sitting down to

write (p. 18). They list various different ways pre-writing can be useful, such as
EXPLORING THE PRE-WRITING STRATEGIES WITH STRUGGLING READERS Kurtz 5

facilitating and leading a group or individual discussion and brainstorm of the topic.

Applying this to my study, I found that the concept of brainstorming might be a necessary

step even before the outline graphic organizer, in order to allow students to jot down and

discuss their ideas, before attempting to organize it into their essay.

Jeannie L. Steeles and Patty Steels The Thinking-Writing Connection: Using

Clustering to Help Students Write Persuasively (1991), explores the effectiveness of the

clustering strategy in order to teach students how to become aware of conceptual

relationships to effectively communicate them in their writing. The clustering technique,

as the Steeles explain, is a powerful technique which allows students to discover or

uncover what they think about a subject; it provides organization to thought without

slowing the flow of thoughts; it can help the thinker assess the quality of thought and

serve as a guide for writing (p. 42). In this process, students will begin with a nucleus

word in the middle of the page, think about what other concepts come to mind when

thinking of this word, and connect each concept with a line back to the nucleus. The

Steeles explain that clustering is an extremely useful tool for pre-writing, giv[ing]

students a way to organize thinking for writing (p. 44). By using the clustering technique

in my study, I can allow students a way to see the relationships between their

brainstorming ideas with the larger concepts and themes that their theses are attempting

to unpack.

Devising a Plan

Based on my research, I devised a plan constructed of three parts. Although we

have had a few lessons together, I decided to start from the beginning. I wanted to break

up the next three lessons into three steps: brainstorming (listing), clustering, and outlining
EXPLORING THE PRE-WRITING STRATEGIES WITH STRUGGLING READERS Kurtz 6

with a template. For the first day, we would be working solely on brainstorming themes,

quotes, and any relevant information that they know is related to their topic and that they

might want to include. By the second day, we will be taking those brainstorming lists and

figuring out which concepts are the predominant themes and pair each theme with a

cluster technique. Lastly, the third day would be focused on taking the clusters and

placing them into the outline template, turning the clusters into body paragraphs. I

realized during the making of this plan that these strategies might be better suited for

working with each student individually, but decided to continue my plan regardless

because I could use group discussion and peer review as a way to help facilitate

brainstorming and conceptual thinking, like Steve Graham and Dolores Perin mention in

Writing Next - Effective Strategies to Improve Writing of Adolescents in Middle and

High Schools (2007). Additionally, because I had not completely read The Bluest Eye in

its entirety, since I was jumping into a classroom that had just finished the novel, I

decided it might be helpful to keep students who are much more familiar with the text

than I am in the conversation so that they can contribute points and themes that I might

miss.

Implementing the Plan

The first day, as planned, started with brainstorming a list of events, quotes,

themes, and of anything that they found significant to their thesis. Immediately, I realized

one aspect of my plan that I had forgot: each student had a different thesis focusing on a

specific character that Ms. Edward assigned him or her. I decided that since I was

working with a group of six, we could designate 5-10 minutes to each students

brainstorm, being that there was one hour total of class time. Students seemed to be very
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engaged during this part of the lesson, being that they were able to receive ideas from

their classmates, while also pitching material to help with their classmates essays. One

student in particular, Emmanuel, was assigned the character, Cholly Breedlove, to

analyze and answer the prompt: Does ones environment at birth dictate their future?

Emmanuel decided that he would argue yes, ones environment at birth could dictate their

future, using Cholly Breedlove as his focus. I asked first, What are some things you

know about this character? List them, even if you dont know how it will apply to your

thesis yet. He listed two major aspects he knew to be true about Cholly: Chollys father

had left him when he was young and Cholly sexually assaulted his daughter in the novel.

Emmanuels classmates immediately jumped in, telling him to include events on his list

like: Chollys experience with being assaulted by white men, Chollys rejection by

Samson Fuller, Chollys treatment of Darlene (after being caught by white men), and

more. One of the students even found an exact quote that encompasses one of the pivotal

scenes of Cholly for Emmanuel to include to his list. We continued this group

brainstorming list process for the rest of the group, and by the end of the lesson, all six

students had a substantial amount of information written down about their character.

Although there was no cohesive flow to the information yet, and some were unsure what

pieces of information would be helpful or not to their argument, each student was able to

find material for their essay that they could later connect to the larger themes of the

paper, which we would be working on in the next lesson.

In the next group lesson, I introduced the clustering technique, first explaining

what this technique was, then explaining that we will be connecting their clusters to their

papers using the clusters to guide their body paragraphs. I asked them to pull out their
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brainstorming lists from the previous lesson, and explained that the point of this cluster

technique is to show the relationships of details, quotes, and events to the main themes of

their essays. In other words, each cluster nucleus would be the equivalent to a paragraphs

topic sentence. To use Emmanuels topic as an example, Emmanuel decided to argue that

Chollys environment at birth greatly affected Cholly as a father, exploring how his past

lends insight to one of the major questions of The Bluest Eye: Why does Cholly sexually

assault his daughter? From the brainstorming list from the previous lesson, the group

decided there are three major events that had happened in the novel that lead to this

violent act: being abandoned by his parents, being physically attacked by a group of

white men, and his discovery of freedom. I explained that each of these topics could

serve as a body paragraph in his essay and break down each topic using the clusters. With

each topic, the group was able to pair some of the listings from the brainstorm to its

overall themes. For example, the topic of abandoned parents was used as the nucleus,

while details, interpretations, quotes, and predictions were drawn beside it to show the

relationship of the to the overall topic.

While this lesson engaged the students and allowed them to formulate their topics

into coherent themes, we could not get through every single student because the process

was so time-consuming. In my original devised plan, I had allowed one day to work with

students to make their clusters, unaware of how demanding the process of the clusters

would be. I decided to dedicate one more day to finish this process, being that we were

not able to get to everyone in the previous lesson.

By the fourth lesson, I introduced the outline template. I brought in a template that

I found online, and although many students have used this template before, they
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explained to me they had not done this process of brainstorming and clustering prior if

they were doing any form of pre-writing strategies, they would begin with the outline

only. This seemed to be the quickest and most efficient lesson out of all our group

sessions because they simply took the clusters that we had made in the previous lessons

and inserted them into the template. The only aspect of this process that took time was

that the students had to decide which topics go first, second, and third in their essays to

determine which order created the most cohesive flow to their essay. To use Emmanuel as

an example again, he used abandoned parents as his supporting topic for the first

paragraph, physically attacked by white men, as the second paragraph, and Chollys

discovery of negative freedom for the third paragraph, all to support his thesis that

Chollys environment as a child greatly affected his future and the way in which he treats

Pecola, his daughter. Being that we worked on a cluster for each of these topics,

Emmanuel was able to plug in the information, interpretations, analyses, quotes, and

predictions right into his outline template allowing him a format to begin writing his

paper.

Limitations

Although I believe this study overall achieved the problem I wanted to target:

teaching students how to write an articulate essay using pre-writing strategies, there were

some limitations to my action research. Unfortunately, because all the students had

different topics with varying theses, it was very time-consuming to have a large group to

work with. While the group discussions were helpful, I found when it came to the lessons

focusing on the clustering technique, it took very long because every student had at least

three clusters to make and there were six students, and some took longer than others
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students. In this case, it would have been helpful to be able to assign homework so that

they could finish at least two clusters by themselves, but I realized that if I expected the

students to do it at home they would most likely become confused or not be prepared for

the next lesson.

In addition, one of the major limitations I found to my study was the specific

assignment we were working with. Not only had I not read the novel in full, but the

assignment itself asked students to write an argumentative essay. My strategies, although

helpful, are not necessarily specific to an argumentative style of writing; rather, my study

is geared toward giving the students the tools to use pre-writing strategies for all their

essays. While I wanted to focus on the structure of the argumentative essay, I found that

my limited time with the students did not allow us to address a key component of the

argumentative writing process: the counter-claim.

Next Steps

As I had previously mentioned, I would have liked to work with students focusing

on how to outline the counter-claim. If I were to continue working with these students, I

would address this in the next lesson and continue the cluster process. Although the

students seemed to have understood the process of the clustering technique while I

worked with them, I would have asked students to try to complete their clusters by

themselves. While the group process was helpful, my main goal was to give students the

tools, using pre-writing strategies, to individually write their future essays. While they

had demonstrated that they understood and found the value in implementing a pre-writing

strategy to their essay process, I still would have liked to see students complete these

strategies on their own.

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Summary

Overall, I believe that the methods I introduced for their pre-writing strategies

were a success. In comparison to their previous papers submitted earlier in the year, Ms.

Edward was impressed with the extent to which the students displayed an in-depth

analysis to support their thesis, as well as the flow of their essays. When I asked the

students if they would consider doing this whole pre-writing process for their future

papers, five out of the six said that they would, while the one stated that they would keep

the brainstorming and outline template, but the clusters took too much time. While my

study had a few limitations to it, I am very pleased with the outcome of my plan and

although the extent to which we used pre-writing strategies might have been excessive to

some, I believe that any one of the techniques I implemented brainstorming, clustering,

and outlining can be of help to any struggling student writer.

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References

Graham, S., & Perin, D. (2007). Writing next: Effective Strategies to Improve Writing of
Adolescents in Middle and High Schools. A report to Carnegie Corporation of
New York. Washington, DC: Alliance for Excellent Education.

Stallard, C. (1974). An Analysis of the Writing Behavior of Good Student Writers.

Research in the Teaching of English, 8(2), 206-218. Retrieved from
http://www.jstor.org/stable/40170525

Steele, J. L., & Steele, P. (1991). The thinking-writing connection: Using clustering to
help students write persuasively. Reading Horizons, 32(1), 5.