Procedural Writing

The work of Katie Wood Ray is helping me “unearth” some of the complexities surrounding writing; she is especially good about recognizing how authors use structure to construct meaning.  During a recent science teacher observation, I became more aware of how teaching students the structure of procedural writing in writing up a science experiment is more than learning the data from the science experiment – it is also a  student learning how to write up an experiment following procedural writing guidelines. 

What is procedural writing?  A procedural text instructs the reader on how to complete a specific task.  So many of us already do this type of information writing with our students.  However, an important realization is the focus on teaching students that procedural writing is a structure many authors use to present information – and certain information lends itself to using procedural writing.  

Wood Ray would tell us to “harp” on this exact angle – texts are structured in different ways. “As children learn that texts are structured in different ways, then they will learn to try out different ways to structure their own texts.” 

So create the “cutsie” graphic organizers that help them develop their ideas, but realize that often these graphics aren’t very helpful for students to learn the deeper understanding of structure.  Probably far too often we pat ourselves on the back for the optics, and we get great graphics back, but we may be oversimplifying the writing task.  Eventually we want our students to reach for a structure on their own – if they can internalize the concept of structure then they can decide that a given structure will be helpful for constructing a required written response. 

Check out this great website on mentor texts that use the structure of procedural writing.  So many of these texts are entertaining and engaging, and, because they are just that – we might learn more easily why the author used procedural writing as the book’s underlying structure.