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Write Habits

Introduction

Background and Philosophy

This guide explores how Write Habits provides comprehensive writing instruction for students in Grades K–6. It examines the research behind the program, the program philosophy, and the tools you will use to develop your students’ writing skills.

You can use Write Habits as a stand-alone program or as a compliment to Good Habits, Great Readers Shared Reading instruction, which aligns the program with the Common Core State Standards.

Write Habits provides research-based writing lessons designed to give your students the skills, strategies, and confidence they need to achieve success as writers.

The lessons in Write Habits follow a gradual release model and steadily move from explicit instruction to the independent application of skills.

Copyright © 2013 Pearson, Inc. or its affiliates. All rights reserved.2

Planning and Implementation Guide

Write Habits gives you the flexibility to teach writing in the way that works best for your students. Within your Write Habits Teacher’s Guide, you will find resources to help you plan instruction, including alternate pacing plans and differentiated instruction strategies.

For more information about Write Habits’ design, look in the Good Habits, Great Readers Planning and Implementation Guide.

Here, you will find resources such as an overview of the writing program components, answers to questions about implementation, and tips for effective classroom management.

The Planning and Implementation Guide also provides information about the program’s coherence with the Common Core State Standards.

Most importantly, the Planning and Implementation Guide provides you with Daily Planners for each unit you will teach Write Habits. These planners also include an overview of each lesson that Good Habits, Great Readers teaches.

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Components

Process Writing Lessons

You can easily pair Write Habits with reading and integrate the lessons into your daily classroom routine. Your students will have the opportunity to analyze the writing of a Shared Reading piece as an example of authentic text. There are seven units in Write Habits. Each unit focuses on a specific category of writing.

Write Habits maps twenty research-based writing lessons to twenty-eight weeks of Good Habits, Great Readers Shared Reading instruction. The lessons give your students the skills and strategies they need to be successful writers and reinforce the connection between reading and writing. The lessons also follow a carefully planned structure that focuses on the six Traits of Good Writing. Next, look at the different types of lessons that you will find in each unit.

After you introduce the genre to your students and ask them to examine a model text, they will participate in a process writing lesson. This lesson will take your students through each step of the writing process as they develop a full-length composition.

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Writing for Tests

Conventions Mini-Lessons

Assessment

Writing for Tests lessons prepare your students for the type of on-demand writing that they will encounter on standardized tests. Your students will have an opportunity to respond to relevant prompts and experience taking sample writing tests.

The last page of instruction in each lesson focuses on writing conventions. Conventions mini-lessons follow a gradual release model, which includes teaching and modeling, guided practice, and independent practice.

The lessons include a reproducible for you to display and a reproducible for your students’ independent practice.

The Composition Construction component will help your students focus on complex texts and guide them to a deeper understanding of what they read.

You will find reproducibles for each lesson in your Write Habits Teacher’s Guide.

In addition to Write Habits components, assessment is an important part of the program’s instruction.

For a complete overview of how the program addresses assessment, refer to your Write Habits Teacher’s Guide.

Student writing conferences provide you with an opportunity to point out students’ strengths as well as assist them in improving their writing.

The Conference Card provides you with a choice of open-ended and reflection questions that you can use to guide your conversation. In the Responding to Student Writers section, you will find suggestions to assist you in scaffolding your students’ learning.

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Review

Scoring rubrics will help you and your students reflect on and evaluate their writing. You will find that the rubrics for each lesson cover the six Traits of Good Writing, and include conventions.

Your students will assess and correct their grammar, spelling, and usage during the Editing step of the writing process. They will learn to use revising and proofreading marks.

This guide explored how Write Habits provides comprehensive writing instruction for students in Grades K–6. It examined the research behind the program, the program philosophy, and the tools you will use to develop your students’ writing skills.