The Units of Study in Writing series is designed to help students to become strategic, metacognitive writers. Within and across grades, the units fit tongue-and-groove alongside each other. Together, they help students consolidate and use what they have learned to meet world-class standards for each grade level.
Units of Study
Each grade has four units, providing a cross-grade sequence in Informational, Opinion, and Narrative Writing. Each unit is organized into two or three “bends.” Typically, the first bend introduces skills and concepts, the second bend goes deeper, and the third bend offers new ways to apply the learning. Skills and concepts introduced in one unit are revisited and strengthened, both within and across grade levels.
A Guide to the Writing Workshop
An overview of the essential routines of a writing workshop that describes the writing development of the four core genres. This resource also guides teachers in establishing a classroom environment that cultivates engaged and independent writers.
Writing Pathways
Contains the assessment system for the K–2 Units of Study in Writing. This resource also includes on-demand prompts, rubrics, checklists progressions, exemplar texts, and annotated benchmark pieces of writing, at each level for all four genres.
Supporting All Writers: High-Leverage Small Groups and Conferences
Ready-to-teach small groups and conferences focused on major writing goals, organized into skill progressions that range from more supportive to more advanced, so that teachers can ensure that all writers progress along a trajectory of development.
Ensuring Access for All Writers
You will see Ensuring Access sections at the start of each session that give specific tool and strategy ideas to teach a wide range of learners. Writing, because of its visible nature, can bring to light learning needs that might not be easily seen in other forums. Whether or not students have identified learning needs, however, these sections can be extremely helpful for students.
See Supporting All Writers: High-Leverage Small Groups and Conferences for additional work times to meet the needs of your full range of writers.
Supporting Multilingual Learners
Each session provides supports to ensure that all Spanish-speaking students have access to the essential aspects of the curriculum. There are video previews of each minilesson in Spanish These orient children to the upcoming minilessons, teach key vocabulary words, and illustrate the work they’ll be doing. All anchor charts and teaching points are also now available in Spanish, and mentor texts in Spanish are recommended as well.
Trade Book Pack
Each Trade Book Pack includes grade-level appropriate books that teachers use as mentor texts to model the skills and strategies they want students to try. See the full list of Trade Books.
Online Resources
Online Resources provide digital access to all the printed books in the core Units of Study set (Units, Guide, etc.), along with a rich array of resources to support each unit. These resources include downloadable versions of charts, handouts, book lists, exemplar texts, supports for Spanish-speaking students, and more, all arranged session-by-session to streamline each day’s preparation.
Premium Digital Content—Annual Subscriptions
The minilesson videos in the Premium Digital Subscriptions for grades K–2 are designed to
serve as valuable exemplars for effective, concise, and engaging minilessons – exemplars that
can help teachers lift the level of their teaching. Each minilesson is modeled by a Reading & Writing Project Staff Developer and serves as a powerful professional learning opportunity for individual teachers and for teams as they plan instruction.
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