The value of models to support students' voice in middle school social studies argument writing

Abstract

Teachers are often advised to use model texts, sentence starters, and paragraph frames to support student writers, but little empirical research reports on how K-12 students take up language from such models. We use a systemic functional linguistics fine-grained approach to analyze 19 middle school students’ writing in social studies as they engaged in inquiry with sources across two years, reporting on how they drew on models to write arguments with evidence from sources. Students represent different reading levels and seventeen speak languages other than English. We report that students drew on the models but added ideational, interpersonal, and textual meanings of their own. We then analyze the interpersonal meanings that project students’ own voices, characterizing these voices as expansive or contractive and relating them to the argument tasks. We also discuss language choices that realize less formal registers. The study contributes to debates about models by demonstrating how the constraints and choices presented enabled students to meet disciplinary demands while bringing their own voices to their writing. We discuss implications for the use of models and for how students’ voices are valued and highlight methodological contributions to the analysis of voice.