The Morehead Writing Project is continuing to share the work of the National Writing Project’s College, Career, and Community Writers Program (C3WP) through work in classrooms, professional development, and through a partnership with Fleming County High School.
MWP Teacher-Leader Lindsay Johnson began this work with the Kentucky Writing Project Network which made it possible for MWP to secure a $20,000 Scale-up the College-Ready Writers Program Grant by the National Writing Project. Johnson led that work with MWP Teacher-Leader Brandie Trent which trained middle and high school teachers from Bath, Fleming, Montgomery, and Rowan counties. In turn, that work led to another $20,000 grant from the National Writing Project in 2018 to focus on a high-need school. Trent is working with her peers at Fleming County High School to support argument writing across the curriculum.
In addition to working with teachers in these key districts, MWP has led argument writing professional development at regional and state professional development conferences including the Kentucky Writing Project State Conference and the Kentucky Council of Teachers of English. Also, as part of the Striving Readers Comprehensive Literacy Grant program, MWP teachers have worked with teachers in Clark, Fayette, Floyd, Garrard, and Wayne counties. C3WP work has also become a part of MWP’s foundational professional development currently offered through its Online Institute.
The central goal of C3WP is to help students become skilled at writing arguments from nonfiction sources. The program includes scaffolded teaching and formative assessment resources created by a national team of NWP teacher-leaders that support the development of students’ argument writing. C3WP’s teaching resources focus on reading and analyzing multiple perspectives on important issues, developing thoughtful and precise claims, and effectively using nonfiction texts as evidence. These resources are designed as models that teachers can adapt for and integrate into their curriculum. The program features systematic formative assessment to inform next steps in instruction, including the Using Sources Tool, which supports teachers in analyzing how students make and support claims using evidence from sources.
Last year, the National Writing Project released the results of a nationwide controlled study of C3WP which found that the program had a positive impact on both teachers’ instructional practice and student writing. The students of teachers who received C3WP training outperformed their control peers on their use of content, structure (or organization), and stance (or tone), in their argument writing. The effect size for content was especially large, at about 0.2 standard deviations. (Learn more)
If you are interested in bring this professional development to your school or district, contact MWP.