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1. Provide daily time for writing

1 hour a day should be allotted for writing instruction and practice. To accommodate time constraints, writing can be incorporated across all subject matter.

2. Teach students to use the writing process for a variety of purposes

Students should be taught to write in multiple genres to master strategies for planning, drafting, evaluating, revising, and editing.

Extensive research supports the value of strategy instruction in writing, especially when combined with self-regulation strategies.

The Self-Regulated Strategy Development Model is a teaching framework that helps students learn academic strategies and self-regulation skills. The SRSD model has been studied extensively as a way to teach strategies for planning based on text structure and somewhat less often to teach strategies for revising. SRSD provides memorization routines, guided practice, and support for independent practice. This approach has been found to increase student writing quality, use of genre elements, writing length, and ability to self-regulate their performance.

SRSD provides memorization routines, guided practice, and support for independent practice

3. Teach students to become fluent with handwriting, spelling, sentence construction, typing, and word processing.

All of the things listed above are expected by an audience from a writer. As students develop writing skills, they should increase their abilities in all of these areas.

Instruction in each of these areas will contribute to overall increase in writing performance.

4. Create an engaged community of writers.

Collaboration can have positive effects on student writing and it can take place during all stages of writing.

The practice guide (Graham, Bollinger, et al., 2012) suggests that students should be given opportunities to collaborate throughout the writing process, including peer review.

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The CCSS (CCSSI, 2010) state that students should be able to write for three main text types and purposes; that they should engage in strategies for planning and revising; and that they should be able to write based on their reading.

The CCSS clearly state that students in grades 3–5 should be able to write for three broad purposes: to narrate, to persuade, and to inform. In addition, they should learn multiple subgenres within each overall purpose.

Teaching students to engage in the writing process is also central to both the Standards and the practice guide. The instructional chapters in the text provide explicit and systematic instruction in the process of planning, drafting, evaluating, revising, and editing.

CCSS state that students should be able to write about what they read. The text integrates both reading and writing by introducing genres and their elements through read-alouds of mentor texts and then providing writing instruction in each genre.

The recommendations in the writing practice guide indicate that students should be able to (1) engage in problem solving, (2) manage writing tasks, and (3) regulate their writing processes. The lesson in the text support self-regulation, progress monitoring, motivation, and reflection.

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The goal of the text is to help students learn the key elements and features of particular genres.

Another goal of the text is to help students learn how to use genre-specific knowledge to plan, draft, evaluate, and revise their own papers.

To achieve these goals, students will learn a specific set of strategies for approaching these tasks. The strategies can then be adapted to different genres. Self-regulation is thoroughly emphasizes throughout the text.

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Strategies are conscious processes for solving problems or performing complex tasks (MacArthur, 2011).

Strategy instruction is an evidence-based approach that draws on multiple theoretical sources and research evidence to address three instructional questions: (1) which writing strategies to teach, (2) how to help students use those strategies independently, and (3) what instructional methods to use in order to support student learning.

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An integrated set of strategies for planning, drafting, evaluating, revising, and editing is presented as a Writing Strategy Ladder.

Each step on the ladder signifies tasks related to each part of the writing process.

The writing strategy ladder supports students in a variety of ways:

(1) It visually highlights that good writing requires the application of a process or series of steps.

(2)The ladder is a realization to students that writing is a process that requires hard work and effort, but it can be done in a systematic way that makes it easier.

(3) It serves as a visual reference for students as they go through the writing process.

(4) The ladder repeats across different genres and therefore becomes familiar to students.

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The writing strategy ladder consists of 5 steps: Plan, Draft, Evaluate to revise, Edit, and Publish.

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Planning is an important part of the writing process that helps writers stay focused and complete their work without getting lost. Planning involves the generation and organization of ideas.

Planning acts as a roadmap for writers by guiding them through from point A to point B. A plan helps writers stay focused on their topic in a meaningful way without distraction.

FTAP is a planning tool that can help writers think about the task at hand and consider the time and effort they need to devote to completing it. F stands for form, T stands for topic, A stands for audience, and P stands for purpose.

FTAP can help writers decide the length of their writing, who they are writing for, the genre of writing, and the purpose.

Generating ideas is another task that goes into planning. This involves brainstorming, reading, and note taking.

Generating ideas is important because students can determine if they know enough about a topic to write about it. Generating ideas can also look different depending on the genre. For example, if students are going to write a persuasive writing piece, they must generate ideas in favor and against an opinion.

Graphic Organizer such as the one referred to go "GO" in the text can also be used in the planning stage. This is basically a beginning, middle and end chart. Each beginning, middle, and end may look different depending on the genre.

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Drafting is the second step on the writing process ladder. Students can use the "GO" Graphic organizer to assist in this process. Transition word charts can also be helpful for this process.

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Evaluation refers to the critical examination of written information with the purpose of identifying areas that need to be improved.

Improvements may include additional information, deletion of information or words, making changes to wording, or making changes to the organization of the writing.

Evaluation requires students to read critically and to diagnose problems in a written text.

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Although editing is similar to the evaluate and revise step, it's different in the fact that editing is done to fix spelling, Grammer, and word usage errors that make the text difficult to read and understand.

SCIPS can be used as a reference for editing. SCIPS stands for spelling, capital letters, indentation, punctuation, and spelling.

Students should receive practice on correcting these types of errors before they are expected to do so in their own writing.

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The final step on the writing process ladder is to publish. This is when students share and celebrate their writing.

Students can share their writing with classmates and other students in their grades. They could even publish their writing online to a wider audience. Teachers could create classroom blogs that students can publish writing to in order to motivate students.

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Self-talk is a self-regulation strategy that can be used in writing for students to support themselves through the process.

In lesson 3 from chapters 4-6, students are asked to think of things they could say to themselves to stay engaged, check their progress, and monitor their work. Teachers can ask students to record things they could say to themselves while working to help them complete the task instead of resorting to negative talk.

Students can use the self-talk recording sheet to aid in this process.

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The instructional sequence provides students and teachers consistency throughout learning about the different genres.

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Discuss the purpose: Teachers should briefly discuss the genre of the text and it's purpose.

Explain the Genre Elements: Display the elements of the genre and explain them to students. Discuss the importance of each and what comes at the beginning, middle, and end of the genre.

Apply the Genre Elements as you Read: Stop throughout the read aloud as you come across the elements of the genre. Discuss the elements with the students to help them understand the genre and how it's conveyed throughout the story. Discuss characters, settings, problems and ask questions.

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Ask students to respond to a genre-specific prompt after reviewing the elements of the genre through read aloud. This information can be used to group students into small groups for more individualized instruction and peer review. This information can also be used to select mini-lessons.

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Evaluation of Good and Weak Examples and Initial Self-Evaluation

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Evaluation of Good and Weak Examples and Initial Self-Evaluation

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Teacher Evaluation of a Good Example: Teacher should read a paper that represents a good example of the genre and evaluate the paper as they are reading. The paper should be compared to a rubric. Teacher should point out the genre elements as they come across them. Students can participate but teacher should lead the process.

Teacher Evaluation of a Weak Example: Again, teacher should read through the paper and score with rubric, pointing out the genre elements. Teacher should give impression of the paper and why they feel the way they do about the paper.

Collaborative Evaluation of a Weak Example: Collaboratively work with students to evaluate a weak example. Have students identify genre elements and record their evaluations and ideas for the paper. This can also be done on peer papers and their own papers for peer and self-evaluation.

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Practice Learning the Genre Elements and Strategies: Teacher will start providing students with opportunities to review the elements and the writing strategy verbally and in writing. Students must memorize the elements and strategies in order to use them independently.

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Teacher should model the complete process of writing a paper (planning-evaluating and revising). The plan for writing and the paper itself should be written on chart paper or the board where students can see. Provide a think-aloud throughout the process so students can understand what goes into planning and writing a paper.

Teacher should model self-regulation as a part of the process. Difficulties and overcoming them should be modeled as well. Using self-talk allows students to see how you set goals, monitor your progress, handle challenges, and congratulate themselves.

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Teacher should review statements made during modeling and discuss the meaning of self-talk. This is a good time to introduce self-regulation strategies such as the "Be Strategic Strategy". Each section of the strategy should be discussed and copies should be handed out to students.

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Give students opportunities to apply writing strategies together as a group. The teacher will act as the guide, but students should come up with all the ideas and propose sentences. Teacher will write everything down. Support students by asking them where to start and referring them to strategies and elements as needed.

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Students will apply the strategy to plan and draft their own work. Teacher will monitor students work and provide support as needed. This is also a great time for teachers to confer with students about their writing and progress to provide feedback.

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Preparation of Peer Review and Self-Evaluation

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Preparation of Peer Review and Self-Evaluation

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Teacher will discuss why they will be doing evaluations for revision and how it differs from editing. This is also a good time for teachers to evaluate weak examples and compare them to a rubric with students so they get ideas on how they can strengthen their work during their revision.

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Explain procedures of peer review and the importance of evaluation and revision. Students will meet with a partner or in small groups to review their papers. Students will then review their papers.

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Teacher will identify a small editing error in a simple paper to initiate a collaborative editing process with the students. Students will then begin editing their own papers using the SCIPS editing procedure.

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Students will complete revisions and publish their papers.

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Students should work on one or more new papers in the genre to practice applying the writing process. Teacher will provide more modeling and mini-lessons as needed.

Continuous Assessment is important to monitor and evaluate student progress as they write. Genre-specific rubrics can be used for this. This evaluation can guide future instruction.

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Throughout the sequence of lessons, the teacher will provide mini-lessons on writing features that are common to the specific genre being taught.

New writing expectations should be added to rubrics as mini-lessons are taught.

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During small groups, the teacher will meet and confer with individual or small groups of students to provide differentiated instruction.

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Post assessments should be given before moving on to the next genre to ensure students performed adequately with the current genre.

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The point of think-aloud modeling is to show students how you think as you come up with ideas, organize them, and draft sentences.

Modeling should be live so students can see the process as it happens.

Teachers should work at the level of their students.

Teachers should refer to each step of the strategy before doing it so students can see how you use the writing strategy ladder.

Teachers should include self-regulation statements in the modeling.

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The elements of each genre should always be introduced through read alouds and discussion several times prior to the writing lessons over that specific genre.

Read alouds support student learning of each genre's key elements.

Read alouds promote class discussion of the ways the author presents information in that specific genre.

The texts chosen for read alouds can serve as mentor texts for the mini lessons taught on that specific genre.

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During collaborative writing, the teacher guides the students to use the strategies but they are coming up with the ideas and language.

All student ideas may not get used and the teacher should help them select ideas for the graphic organizer.

Drafting during collaborative writing gives the teacher opportunity to model good sentence writing.

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Self regulation is important for students' success in academics and later in life. It should be modeled through think alouds.

The text suggestions that once students complete a paper, they should go through both peer and self evaluation to set goals for their next piece. This can help students see how they have accomplished goals over time in their writing.

Teachers can model self-regulation across all curriculum.

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Students need to see this modeled because this can be a difficult process for students. It's easy for students to want to assign themselves and their peers high scores.

Teacher encouragement, honesty, and leadership when you practice reviewing can help develop a community of learners who are willing to learn from one another.

There are even online applications that allow for anonymous reviews.

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Opportunities for practice on revision is needed because it can be a challenging task for students.

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During the editing stage, select a skill that your students need to develop, display papers with problems in that skill, model how to make corrections using a think-aloud, and collaboratively practice the process before students make corrections on their own papers.

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Read alouds work as mentor texts for writing. These books serve as a way to discuss purpose, elements of genre, and writer's craft.

Books can be used to introduce mini-lessons.

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Because the transition from guided writing to independent practice is based on mastery and not time, students should be asked to write more than one paper in each genre.

The text recommends to use a minimum standard in which all students can explain the main elements of the genre and the steps in the strategy and are able to create a plan and write a paper that includes all the critical genre elements. Due to the flexibility of strategy instruction, differentiation can be provided so that some students can work on developing techniques to improve their writing while others are still mastering the minimal standards.

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Differentiation of lessons is based on your evaluation of students’ progress

You can model parts of the writing strategy for groups that need more practice with the basic strategy and genre elements

You can provide additional mini-lessons for groups that are ready to expand their understanding of good writing in the genre.

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When creating writing prompts for assessment or instruction in any genre, think about the interests of your students. Relate your prompt to these interests to increase students' motivation to write.

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Throughout the writing process, students need to engage in reflection about their writing. This can be done in class discussions or through journaling.

Some questions you could ask students to reflect on throughout the writing process are:

What did you learn that will help you become a stronger writer today?

After reviewing your own writing, what did you learn about it?

What is a goal you have for yourself to grow as a writer?

What did you do in your writing today to help you reach the goal you set for yourself?

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Graphic organizers can be used by all students initially. Then once students are familiar with the elements in the genre they are writing in, they should be expected to write out those elements on their own without the graphic organizer. If there are students who still find it challenging to remember the specific elements needed in each genre, a graphic organizer could be a great way to scaffold the brainstorming step for them.

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Throughout the entire writing process, teachers should engage in writing conferences with students and informal assessment. Both the conferences and informal assessments should focus on strategy use and writing performance and include discussion about planning, student goals, revising, etc. Conferences and assessment should not only be concerned with the final product.

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"Stories are fundamental to how individuals, families, and cultures give meaning to their lives and learn about the world around them."

Stories can be representative of each person's identity.

Students enter school with a basic understanding of stories, but the depth of that understanding varies on their cultural background.

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There are many genres of fiction writing that students can engage in: realistic fiction, fairytales, fables, mysteries, historical fiction, personal narratives.

Most stories have the following common elements: characters, setting, goals & problems, sequence of actions to solve those problems, and resolution. Personal narratives may not include all of these elements.

These story elements should be introduced to students during read-alouds first before teaching about how to incorporate them in writing.

Research has shown that teaching strategies based on these elements can enhance reading comprehension and students' ability to write stories.

Stories should have a clear beginning, middle, and end.

The beginning of a story should clearly describe the characters, setting, and problem.

The middle of a story should include logical, clearly explained events and complications that lead to new events or problems.

The end of a story should provide a solution to the problem and convey a character's emotions about the experiences.

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Standards for Story Writing in Grades 3-5

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Standards for Story Writing in Grades 3-5

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Questions Assessed with Rubric for Story Writing in Grades 3-5

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Questions Assessed with Rubric for Story Writing in Grades 3-5

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Persuasive writing is all around us, so it is important for students to know what it is so they can recognize it and practice it.

Persuasive writing is also important to teach to students because it will help them develop critical thinking skills.

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There are several types of persuasive writing that students can engage in:

Argumentative: Writers take positions on an issue and offer reasons supported by evidence, examples, or explanations.

Critical evaluations: Writers offer an evaluation or their opinion and support it with reasons and evidence.

Responses to texts: Writers read a text and write their opinion about a text or a response to the author's message.

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Like story writing, persuasive writing pieces also have a beginning, middle, and end.

Beginning: Tells the reader information about the topic and gives the author's opinion of the topic.

Middle: Tells the reader the reasons for the writer's opinion and provides supporting evidence for these reasons.

End: Restates the author's opinion about the topic and presents a message to readers.

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There are challenges with persuasive writing to be aware of, so that you can help students overcome them in their writing.

Writers are required to consider the perspectives of others.

Writers must anticipate the reaction of their readers and create a plan to convince people who have different perspectives than them.

Writers are required to pay attention to both their audience and the topic.

Writers must consider opposing positions to provide a rebuttal or offer a compromise.

Student writers will have less experience reading this genre of writing than others, so they might have little understanding of how persuasive writing should be organized.

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Standards for Persuasive Writing in Grades 3-5

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Standards for Persuasive Writing in Grades 3-5

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Read Aloud Options/Mentor Texts for Persuasive Writing

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Read Aloud Options/Mentor Texts for Persuasive Writing

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Persuasive Writing Mentor Texts Screenshot

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There are several ways to extend students' learning about persuasive writing after you have taught them the basics through opinion essays. The following are extensions on opinion essays:

1. Book Reviews

2. Short argumentative responses to a text that students read

3. Using sources to write opinion essays instead of just their own knowledge

4. Adding explicit considerations of opposing positions into their essays

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Compare = looking for similarities

Contrast = looking for differences

This genre of writing can be very challenging for students because it incorporates some new skills like note-taking into the writing process.

It is important to teach students because it is a great way to learn information, especially in science and social studies.

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1. What is the topic and what is being compared to what?

2. What is the purpose of the comparison?

3. What are the similarities? How do you know?

4. What are the differences? How do you know?

*To answer "How do you know?" students will need to cite evidence.

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Differences between Compare/Contrast and Other Genres

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Differences between Compare/Contrast and Other Genres

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For compare/contrast writing, students are often asked to write using sources which integrates reading and writing.

To introduce compare and contrast writing through a read aloud book, you will most likely use a well written paper rather than a trade book.

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*It is important to model and teach this process to students and give them opportunities to practice before expecting them to independently take notes for their compare/contrast writing piece.

Steps in the Process:

1. Read information from a source.

2. Look away from the book and explain the information you learned in your own words.

3. Take notes based on your own explanation.

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This graphic organizer is a scaffold for students as they are learning the note taking and planning process for compare/contrast writing. Eventually, students should be taught how to create a similar template on their own.

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Students must gather information to include in their writing by reading and comprehending texts on the topic.

Students then have to take notes on what is most important in the texts, often integrating information from more than one text.

This genre also requires students to organize information by categories and by similarities and differences.

Finally, students are asked to write what they learned from the texts in their own words to avoid plagiarism.

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Due to the challenging nature of writing in this genre, the authors suggested breaking apart the two main tasks involved.

1. Teach students about the genre and how to write a compare/contrast piece without using sources.

2. Teach students how to take notes from a source and how to write a compare/contrast piece using their notes.

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A unique way to publish students' compare/contrast writing would be to create a Glogster that students can post their work on.

Extension Activities:

Have students complete an author study where they compare and contrast books written by the same author.

Have students respond to literature by comparing and contrasting characters in a book.

Have students write about the content they are currently learning in science or social studies.

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Process for Planning Your Own Genre-Based Strategy Instruction

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Process for Planning Your Own Genre-Based Strategy Instruction

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This text did not include every genre that students can write in, so the final chapter provides steps that teachers can follow to plan their own instruction for additional genres.

Steps to Follow When Planning a Genre-Based Writing Unit:

1. Select the genre in which you want students to write.

2. Decide on the key elements of that genre and create a chart with these that students can refer to throughout the writing process.

3. Develop a graphic organizer that will simply and clearly help students organize the information specific to the genre.

4. Create the rubric that will be used to evaluate the writing.

5. Before moving further in the planning process, try using your planning materials and writing a piece in this genre. This will show you what students will be experiencing. You can make revisions to your planning materials as needed.

6. Find good and weak examples of writing in the genre to share with students.

7. Determine the transition words that are essential to the genre and create a chart that students can refer to during the writing process.

8. Select the read aloud texts that you will use to model the genre.

9. Design the mini lessons that are relevant to the genre.

10. Use the sequence of genre-based writing instruction to design each lesson in the unit.

Each lesson should include clear learning objectives and what methods you will use to assess students throughout the unit.