Writing Through The Year Unit

Writing Through The Year

I needed to explicitly layout how and when I was going to teach the various types of writing throughout the year, otherwise I would get to the end of the year and realize...I don't think I did a very good job teaching each type in depth. I hope the posters, modeling, guided instruction, and the monthly sets help your class!

What's Included:

- 37 week unit outline

- Attention grabber poster

- Topic of writing with ideas

- Power of the paragraph poster (TREE)

- How to introduce the TREE method

- How to set up your writing paper poster

- Types of writing poster with short meaning

- Problem-Solution Writing; sentence frames, teacher directed paragraph making

- Cause & Effect Writing; sentence frames, teacher directed paragraph making

- Compare- Contrast Writing; sentence frames, teacher directed paragraph making

- Detailed Writing; sentence frames, teacher directed paragraph making

- Persuasive Writing; sentence frames, teacher directed paragraph making

September- Narrative: What summer moment was memorable for you?

October- Persuasive: Do you think parents should be allowed to eat their kids' candy? Teacher example color coded

November- Informative: 15 Prompt ideas given

December- Narrative: What holiday tradition is memorable for you?

January- Persuasive: 20 Topic ideas for students to choose

February- Informative: 15 Prompt ideas given

March- Narrative: Write from the perspective of a character in a book you are reading.

April- Biography: Choose an individual, to research and give a report on who the person was.

May- Narrative: Choose one memorable moment you have from this year.

Persuasive: I should move to the next grade.

*Each monthly set will have a prompt page that explains the elements of the type of writing, a brainstorming section, a planning section for students to narrow down their thoughts, and 5 sections varied for the type of writing, edging students towards writing a 5 paragraph essay, and a final copy paper with a small doodle graphic.

Editable PowerPoint File:

The months are taken off of the title bar, it says "writing."

What's editable in this file? The prompt bar has a text box with the font I used in the rest of this unit.

4 Narrative Writing Sets

3 Persuasive Writing Sets

2 Informative Writing Sets

1 Biography Writing Set

How to use this:

At the first of the year I will introduce the TREE method to set up our writing structures.

I will teach through modeling various types of writing by having a guided lesson on writing, using the sentence frames and partner writing.

I print one month off at a time. I print each page front to back and stapled together into a packet for each student.

The file is a compressed file. Unzip the file and you will see a PDF file and an editable powerpoint.

Use the unit guide as a rough outline for your year. This guideline was designed for my school which runs August 20th – May 25th. I would recommend embedding the practice writing models when you see fit, they are not included in the structure of the writing unit.

There are a few months that give you broad ideas to assign students to a topic or to allow them to choose.

The idea for each month is the spiral the writing types each month (Narrative, Persuasive, and Informative). The other types of writing are there to introduce and review smaller forms of writing in order for students to be able to recognize them in reading and writing passages (detailed, cause/effect, problem/solution).

Thank you! Happy writing to you all!

-Lauren