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Our Method

The 6 Principles of
The Hochman Method

The need for explicit writing instruction is critical.

According to the most recent tests in writing, only 27% of 8th and 12th graders in the United States perform at the proficient level or above.

The results are even more staggering for low-income students, students with disabilities, and English Language Learners, who often enter elementary school with fewer pre-literacy skills than their peers.

Most education policy experts are aware that the educational gaps in literacy that existed before the pandemic are widening. The COVID-19 pandemic-driven learning loss has affected virtually all students, and caused students of color and students from low-income families to fall even further behind.

Most teachers are often not prepared to teach writing. While educational standards set goals for students to write more in all subjects, they do not provide a map showing teachers how to reach those goals.

The Hochan Method is that map.

The Research

  • Explicitly teaching strategies for planning, revising and editing writing has had strong and consistent positive effects on writing skill across grade levels. (Graham et al., 2012; Graham & Perin, 2007)
  • The What Works Clearinghouse, part of the federal government’s Institute of Education Sciences, has recommended that students be taught to construct sentences, specifically mentioning sentence-combining and sentence expansion, another strategy used in TWR’s method. (IES Practice Guide, 2018) 
  • Teaching sentence-construction skills has improved reading fluency and comprehension. (Graham and Hebert, 2010) 
  • Cognitive science research that has not focused primarily on writing instruction also provides support for TWR’s approach. More generally, TWR’s approach is supported by well-established research on working memory.
  • Providing feedback on the effectiveness of students’ writing and monitoring students’ progress has improved students’ writing. (Graham et al., 2011) 
  • Embedding writing instruction in content and having students write about what they are learning in English language arts, social studies, science, and math has boosted reading comprehension and learning across grade levels. (Graham et al., 2020; Graham and Hebert, 2010) 
  • Summarization and sentence-combining, both TWR strategies, have had strong positive effects on learning and on writing skill. (Graham & Perin, 2007)