Adrea Truckenmiller, associate professor in MSU’s College of Education, has been researching written communication in elementary school settings for more than a decade. Her focus has been on identifying the most teachable components of reading and writing achievement, creating assessments to better understand student strengths and weaknesses, and observing elementary schools’ processes for implementing evidence-based instruction in classrooms.

Through her research, she found that most curricula don’t include impactful writing instructional strategies. Instead, writing has been viewed as an “add-on” layered on top of other subjects.

“One aspect that contributes to this wide range of writing development amongst students is that most curricula don’t [include] good writing instructional strategies and teachers aren’t trained in pre-service training programs,” Truckenmiller said. “They get some training but not enough to make them feel confident in their effectiveness to teach writing. Teachers were vulnerable with us about not knowing what to do or where to start.”