The Writing Intervention Toolkit: Grow Your Writers with 72 Lessons!
Writing is probably the hardest thing to teach. *science teachers everywhere are rolling their eyes*
But it’s true. Every writer is different and they all need special instruction to grow their writing authentically.
You feel overwhelmed trying to meet everybody’s needs while still managing the class and moving kids forward.
You have to assess writing, figure out strengths and weaknesses, identify the best way to address them – whole group or small group, find the strategy that will be most effective, deliver the lessons, provide the feedback, monitor students’ progress, assess more writing, and do it all again.
It’s a lot! And it’s only one small part of your job, especially if you teach all content areas like I did.
Who has time to do all of that from scratch? It’s exhausting.
So I created something based on my years of working with students in writing that is especially made for 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade teachers who are helping their students grow their narrative writing skills.
The Narrative Writing Intervention Toolkit is for…
- the teacher who realizes that the whole group lessons are working for many kids, but not for all of them.
- the teacher or specialist who is planning tutoring or Saturday School
- the teacher or specialist who is preparing students for a state test in narrative writing
- the teacher who spends hours looking at student writing without a plan of what to do next.
- The teacher who is told to “differentiate” and provide “small group instruction” but isn’t given the support to get started.
- the teacher who has so many kids that they’re overwhelmed when they have to figure out who needs what.
- the instructional coach or literacy coach who is supporting teachers who are stuck when it comes to teaching writing
In this writing intervention resource, I share the tools you need to pinpoint what students need to grow as writers and to give targeted lessons that actually get their brains and pencils moving…instead of staring at a blank page.
As an elementary school teacher, I worked with a lot of students who didn’t like to write, and a lot of students who enjoyed writing, but who needed specific teaching to help their writing improve. My colleagues used to ask, “What are you doing?” because my kids became proficient, joyful writers. Well, this is what I was doing!
Later, when I became an instructional coach, I realized exactly how challenging it is for teachers to communicate with students about their writing, and find lessons that actually make a difference in the students’ writing.
By using Writer’s Workshop practices, the writing process, and building targeted intervention lessons, I’ve put together one resources that will meet so many needs in your classroom!
72 intervention lessons that cover each step in the writing process!
- 12 prewriting lessons
- 3 planning lessons
- 12 drafting lessons
- 26 revising lessons for focus, coherence, adding development, and organization
- 20 editing for capitalization, punctuation, spelling, and grammar.
You can check out a sample of those lessons here and watch a video of the lesson in action!
- Prewriting: Mapping a Special Place
- Planning: Sticky Note Sequencing
- Drafting: Visualizing with a Quick Sketch
- Revising: Find a Place
- Editing: Personal Editing Checklists
Each lesson includes…
- a “when to use it” statement, so you’ll know exactly when to pull out this lesson and what students it will work for
- the materials you’ll need (usually paper, pencils, and sticky notes)
- simple step-by-step directions on how to deliver the lesson to students
The Guide to the Intervention Strategy Ring
For each lesson, there’s a sample that shows you what the lesson can look like in action!
The lessons are concise and easy to follow. They include student-friendly language and they’ll make lesson planning a breeze.
The Guide to Writing Intervention takes you through the process of evaluating student writing with a rubric (included), collecting data and observations on student writing with recording sheets (included), and analyzing those observations to group students for writing intervention using grouping mats (included).
- how to teach writing using the writing process
- how to conduct a writing conference and things you can say to students about their writing
- how to grow students’ writing independence with the gradual release model in writing
- the difference between intervention, guided writing, and a writing conference
- tips for using the writing strategy ring
- 12 tips for making the most of writing lessons so you do less intervention!
It’s time to stop feeling overwhelmed and have some direction when you plan for writing. With this bank of lessons and student tools, you won’t have to plan from scratch any more!
Whether you already have a writing curriculum or not, if you’re searching for writing lessons to meet your students’ needs online, it’s obviously not meeting your needs as a teacher! This resource will. As a teacher myself, I would’ve used it every single day. How do I know? Because these are the lessons I taught every single day that grew my students’ writing!
In this free download, you’ll get…
- The Framework of Writer’s Workshop
- Components of Writer’s Workshop
- Minilesson Planner
- Steps in the Writing Process
- Guide: Guiding Students Through the Writing Process
- Think Aloud Sentence Starters
- Writing Process Folders: directions & printables
- Conference Log
- Personal Editing Checklist
- Revision Strategy Card: Find a Place
