Content-Area Writing Strategies - Secondary Multilingual Learners

Feeling overwhelmed with writing instruction? You’re not alone. Teachers often struggle with where to start and how to support diverse learners. While effective writing instruction should be explicit and systematic, it can also feel tedious. Here are some strategies to make writing instruction more engaging and to assess students’ progress.

Incorporating Content-Area Reading Excerpts

Writing starts with reading. Every subject area, from mathematics to art, contains text material. We can extract this text from textbooks that multilingual learners (MLs) are using in content-area classes, or from Vista’s ELD programs, such as Engage. By doing so, we foster student engagement in a print-rich or digital environment that explores age-appropriate and relatable texts. These content-driven lessons connect to students’ daily lives, making learning more meaningful.

Introducing the RACES Framework: A Step-by-Step Race to Writing Success

The RACES framework is a step-by-step writing strategy designed to be clear, explicit, and easily accessible. The acronym RACES stands for:

R = Restate the question or prompt as a sentence stem
A = Answer the question
C = Cite textual evidence
E = Explain and elaborate (the “so what”)
S = Sum up (conclude or segue into the next paragraph)

In the RACES framework, each component is a critical step towards the finish line of writing a coherent and comprehensive paragraph.

Implementing Strategies and Scaffolds for Success

The importance of scaffolds and strategies is crucial in understanding how to make the RACES framework more effective.

Begin with the prompt! For example, in Engage, every unit includes a strand called Engage with Science. If the reading is from an article about naturalists solving environmental problems, we derive our “R” from the heading of the article by transforming it into a question or sentence stem.

To support all students, scaffold instruction, particularly for lower-proficiency learners. Model effective RACES responses, lead choral reading, and demonstrate your thought process for each category. Here are some recommendations:

Master each RACES category before advancing.
Have students collaboratively formulate RACES categories (in pairs or groups).
Provide RACES category examples and non-examples.
Model citing text evidence (circling, underlining, highlighting).
Provide sentence stems/transitions for C, E, and S categories:
- According to the article/author…/The text states…
- This is important because…
- Therefore…/In conclusion…
Color-code RACES components for identification.
Group students by RACES component for collaboration.
Show a completed RACES model paragraph.

For more confident writers, amplify instruction with differentiated texts. You can find great options in Vista’s programs, including Bridges (for middle school) and Engage (for high school), and encourage additional textual evidence and collaborative discussion before writing.

Assessing RACES Effectively

To assess the final product, use a checklist a category for each RACES criteria. Assign a point value for each.

Did the student begin their answer by RESTATING (R) the sentence stem?
Did they ANSWER the question correctly?
Did they CITE evidence from the text?
Did they ELABORATE and EXPLAIN, relating evidence to the question?
Did they SUM UP their paragraph (or SEGUE into the next paragraph)?

Scaffold the assessment checklist by reducing the point value for lower-proficiency students. Amplify for higher-proficiency students by increasing the criteria (additional points).

To effectively teach RACES to multilingual learners and get them to the finish line, focus on specific writing goals. What do you want students to accomplish? Begin with one RACES element, and gradually build. Daily writing practice, even a single sentence, combined with instruction and feedback, will strengthen their content-area writing and provide numerous opportunities for success.

By Katalyn Vidal Loveless and Jody Nolf