4 min read

We do it for phonics. Do we do it for writing?

Think about how carefully we teach a sound pattern.

We introduce it. We drill it in isolation, the pattern on its own, until it's automatic. We practice it in word lists. And a lot of us go further: we put it into connected text, into reading, into decodables built to make that exact pattern show up again and again on the page. Popular decodable programs are designed around this, targeting specific patterns so the student meets them in real reading, not just on a card.

The instinct to bring that phonics pattern both in isolation and in context is there, and it's a good one. We know a sound pattern isn't really learned until the student can handle it in isolation and spot it in the wild.

So here's the question we've been sitting with. We do all that for phonics. But do we do it when we teach a grammar concept or a writing skill?

When we teach nouns and verbs, or subject and predicate, how often does it get the full treatment? Or does it get taught, maybe drilled once, and then left there, in isolation, while we move on?

For a lot of us, and we include ourselves here, the writing side never gets the in-context half. We teach the concept. We don't thread it back into the reading and writing the student is already doing.

What the research actually says

There's a reason the in-context half matters so much.

When researchers look at why a learned skill fails to show up where it's needed, the same problem keeps surfacing. The knowledge stays tied to the context it was learned in. A skill practiced only in one format gets mentally welded to that format, and the student doesn't recognize it as the same skill somewhere else.

This is the difference between near and far transfer, and the honest finding is that the flexible, use-it-anywhere kind of transfer is hard and doesn't happen much on its own. (Barnett & Ceci, 2002) What helps is practicing the skill in varied contexts and pointing explicitly at where it applies. (Butler et al., 2017)

Which is exactly what the targeted decodable does for phonics. It takes the pattern out of isolation and drops it into real reading, over and over. The reason that works is the same reason a grammar concept taught once and left alone tends to evaporate. One got the in-context practice. The other didn't.

And there's a second piece worth knowing. When students use what they're learning inside their actual reading and writing, rather than practicing it off to the side, the skill and the writing reinforce each other. (Graham & Hebert, 2010) The context isn't a bonus round. It's part of how the thing gets learned.

So how do we actually bring this in?

We're still working this out ourselves, so these are moves we've tried and we're still experimenting. The idea is simple: give a grammar or writing concept the same in-context treatment a sound pattern already gets.

A few ways we've done that:

Find the concept in what's already in front of them. When a student is doing spelling or reading review, have them spot the nouns and the verbs in the words that are already there. Have them sort their spelling words into the parts of speech that you just taught them. The review is happening anyway. The grammar concept rides along inside it.

Put it into dictation. Dictation is already in a lot of our lessons. Use it to identify parts of speech, or to mark the subject and the predicate, so the concept gets applied to a real sentence the student just wrote, not a worksheet in isolation.

Point at it in their own writing. When the student writes, name the concept where it appears. "There's your subject. Where's the predicate?" The skill comes off the isolated slot and into the place it actually has to work.

Bring it back on purpose, in a new spot each time. Same as we'd revisit a sound pattern, revisit the grammar concept, but in a different sentence, a different passage, a different bit of writing, so it learns to show up in more than one place.

None of this is a new part of the lesson and most of these take mere minutes to implement. It's applying the phonics instinct we already trust to the writing side we usually leave in isolation.

The honest part

Here's the catch. Doing this for phonics is easy to sustain because the materials do a lot of the work. The decodable already targets the pattern. For grammar and writing, most of us don't have that scaffolding, so the in-context practice becomes one more thing to invent, lesson by lesson, and it's the first thing to go when the week gets tight.

That gap is a lot of why we built what we built: the writing side, sequenced and woven in, so the in-context half isn't left to improvisation. If that would help, we can show you what we use. But the point stands on its own, and it's worth more than any product. We already know how to teach a skill in isolation and in context. We do it every day for phonics. We think that the writing just deserves the same care.

Pick one grammar concept you've taught recently. This week, have the student find it in something they're already reading or writing. See if it sticks differently.