New Course for Upper School Writers

6th to 8th Grade Learning Specialist Max Costello is teaming up with 3rd to 5th Grade Learning Specialist Nicole Gordan to inaugurate a new, dedicated writing course for students in 5th and 6th Grades. The class aims to teach more explicit grammar, compositional mechanics, and structured writing in a dedicated setting that can complement the writing work these students will be doing in other disciplines.

“We wanted to provide the students with a stronger writing foundation in the Upper School and really dedicate time for them to learn to be better writers,” explained Ms. Gordan. “We have both been trained in The Hochman Method, which was sort of the inspiration for the class and holds students to more rigorous standards when it comes to writing,” added Ms. Costello. 

For 5th Grade, the new writing course began this year with a baseline writing assignment to provide Ms. Gordan with an understanding of each student’s current writing skills. The students will then go through the year learning strategies and tips to improve their writing. Students will be reassessed throughout the year to track their growth.

Ms. Gordan uses interactive tools such as Pear Deck to increase student engagement, allowing her to track student’s writing progress and provide feedback in real-time. This is helpful for differentiating and eliciting responses from students who are at varying skill levels.

The 6th Grade version of the class goes a step deeper. Ms. Costello uses curricular elements from the student’s other classes as the basis for what students are learning explicitly about writing in her class. “It’s double exposure,” she explained. “It gives students a greater understanding of what they are learning in other classes while at the same time bolstering their writing skills.”

In addition, in 6th Grade, Ms. Costello is adding a morphology component. In linguistics, morphology is the study of word forms. By alternating between writing skills and morphology, the 6th grade students are also supported in increasing their vocabulary and knowledge of word roots, which can also assist them in their study of Latin.

The overall goal for both grade levels is for the students to internalize The 

Hochman Method and then apply it in all of their classes. “Whether it’s in science, or English, or the humanities, they will be using the same procedure, and by the time they get to 7th Grade, they will be seasoned writers with a toolkit of strategies to improve their writing. They will know how to write, expand their sentences, and use transitions. All this gives students ownership over their writing and it makes writing more effortless,” explained Ms. Gordan.

“With some of the uncertainty in the world around us and not necessarily knowing what the year will look like, this course is especially timely because we will be giving students additional strategies to reduce the anxiety of writing and give them the skills necessary to be successful,” concluded Ms. Costello.