Teaching Writing

Effective guidelines for teaching writing in grades K–12. Using classroom examples, the book identifies the components of a complete, high-quality writing program. Leading experts provide strategies for teaching narrative and argumentative writing; using digital tools; helping students improve specific skills, from handwriting and spelling to sentence construction; teaching evaluation and revision; connecting reading and writing instruction; teaching vulnerable populations; using assessment to inform instruction; and more.

Whether they have learning disabilities or just need extra help, struggling writers can improve their skills dramatically if they get the detailed, explicit instruction they need. This practical guidebook shows elementary school teachers how to make this systematic instruction part of their classroom. Educators will find a wide range of specific strategies that include activities for every phase of the writing process, from brainstorming and goal-setting to revising.

The Writing Revolution (TWR) provides a method of instruction that you can use across all subjects or grade levels. The model, also known as The Hochman Method focuses on specific techniques that match students’ needs and provide them with targeted feedback. There’s no separate writing block and no separate writing curriculum. Instead, teachers of all subjects adapt the TWR strategies and activities to their current curriculum and weave them into their content instruction.

This volume synthesizes current knowledge on writing development and instruction at all grade levels. Prominent scholars examine numerous facets of writing from sociocultural, cognitive, linguistic, neuroscience, and new literacy/technological perspectives. The volume reviews the evidence base for widely used instructional approaches. Issues in teaching specific populations — including students with disabilities and English learners —are addressed. Innovative research methods and analytic tools are explained, and key directions for future investigation identified.

Firmly grounded in the authors’ Self-Regulated Strategy Development approach, which has been proven effective by two decades of research, these brief, powerful lessons will help transform struggling students into confident, skilled, and motivated writers. Teachers will get concise lesson plans they can use to easily supplement their existing writing curriculum.

The 6+1 TRAIT model works by allowing teachers to pinpoint students’ strengths and weaknesses in ideas, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, conventions, and presentation, and focus instruction. Like the groundbreaking guide for grades 3 and up (opens in a new window), this new book contains scoring guides, sample papers, and focus lessons for each trait, but framed to address K–2 teachers’ needs.

A comprehensive source on young children’s development of writing that illustrates every concept with student examples. This book offers a detailed story of children’s development of writing, from scribbles to letters; from imaginative inventions to conventional spelling; and from enthusiastic utterances on paper to effectively structured compositions. Teachers will develop the skills needed to offer appropriate instruction and feedback for students at each point in the writing process.

This practical book provides explicit instructions for teaching sentence-level skills to students who have difficulties in this area. The author explains the key role of sentence combining in the writing process and presents effective techniques for instruction and assessment. Numerous sample lessons, practice activities, planning tips, and grammatical pointers make it easy for teachers to incorporate sentence combining and construction into the writing curriculum at all grade levels (2-12). 

Using sentences from more than one hundred popular stories and novels as models, this workbook offers extensive practice in four sentence-manipulating techniques: sentence unscrambling, sentence imitating, sentence combining, and sentence expanding. By playing with hundreds of sentences from selections like Charlotte’s Web and the Harry Potter series, children learn to write their own sentences in more effective and interesting ways. At the same time, they improve their reading skills by discovering the story in the sentence.

This teacher’s manual includes research-based lesson design, alignment with the Common Core, sequence of skills for instruction, techniques for one-to-one and classroom instruction, and model dialogues. Each unit Includes an overview of general information for the teacher, clarification of points teachers sometimes confuse, steps for initial instruction and subsequent lessons, and sample activities and assignments.

Learn about the five fundamentals of a comprehensive writing curriculum: critical thinking, syntax (sentences), text structure, writing craft, and transcription (spelling and handwriting). Teachers of Grades 4-8 will get crystal-clear guidelines that demystify the process of helping students learn to write and write to learn across academic content areas. And with dozens of included templates, handouts, and other resources — available for download online — teachers will have all the tools they need to design and deliver explicit, high-quality writing instruction.