Are you looking to provide specific feedback to your students in order to improve their writing? These samples are annotated for the specific skills students applied effectively in their writing …

Are you looking to provide specific feedback to your students in order to improve their writing? These samples are annotated for the specific skills students applied effectively in their writing …

Are you looking to provide specific feedback to your students in order to improve their writing? These samples are annotated for the specific skills students applied effectively in their writing …

These released item samples from the https://www.doe.mass.edu/ are analyzed for specific skills taught using the Empowering Writers approach. Each sample features the skills that the students successfully applied and suggestions …

Given the demands of 21st century standards, teachers of writing will need to be much more skills-centered in their instruction. However, the word “skills”, when used in relation to writing, sometimes …

“Why do we have to learn this?” What teacher hasn’t heard that dreaded question wailed at top volume by a bored student? While you have to admire their effort to find …

What is your favorite season and why? Write a piece describing and explaining your favorite season. This was a prompt that until recently I would have used for my students …

PROMPT: If you got to pick any pet in the pet store what would you pick and why. Explain your reasons. Use this student sample to discover how the lack …

Narrative: The Giant Reading the book, The BFG by Roald Dahl, is one of my all – time favorite read alouds in class. The engaging story and sense of anticipation …

One Day at the Beach The prompt: “The waves crashed against the sand. I plopped my pack down and spread out my towel. It was going to be a wonderful …

We’ve all had them. You know, the student that comes to you will a lot of writing talent? The author below is a prime example. But there is a misconception …

This child was taught the Empowering Writers skills but has not used them all. Is this normal? Absolutely! It is very possible that your students will forget to apply all …

Halting the action is a great strategy to get kids to add elaborative detail to their writing. This activity highlights how to do so. Notice how this student answered the …

What’s the best way to get students to not only identify parts of speech, but to have them recognize why it’s important? How vivid verbs can create action and a …

Punctuation is a lot more than rules for writing. Punctuation and capitalization help the reader understand what the writer intended. Read the following unpunctuated sentence: katherine went to the beach …

One lament we hear from teachers is this: how in the world do we teach sentence structure? Kids learn through modeling, of course, but often that’s not enough. They need …

You’ve spent weeks and months teaching expository writing – so many key skills to remember and apply! And sometimes after just a long weekend students come back and seem to …

My second grade class became obsessed with similes after reading Roald Dahl’s “The BFG”. He described one terrifying giant as having a nose “as sharp as a knife.” When my …

Ask a group of fourth graders to “take notes” and you’re likely to get one of two responses – blank looks or anxious glances from kids trying to copy down …

In this age of texts, tweets, and email, it might seem like letter writing is a dying art! However, there are times when Grandma deserves a thank you note, a …

Have you ever had a student begin a story in third person point of view (about a character they name, let’s say Jenny) and several sentences in revert to first …

It would be great if there was a sexier name for annotation and analysis. The term conjures up images of students slumped at their desks, the teacher pressing them to …

Quick. What’s wrong with the paragraph below: It was nearly midnight. He was lying on his stomach in bed. The blankets were drawn right over his head like a tent. He …

You would think that someone who struggled to learn how to read, would struggle even more to learn how to write, right? But, as a person with dyslexia, I have …

One way that I found to ease the tremendous stress of a research project was to break it into manageable chunks for my students. Upon introducing the topic or subject of writing …

The Value of Teaching the Organization of each Genre of Writing Whenever I’m presenting an EW workshop, I always sense that during the first hour participants are getting just a …

Here is a student sample that shows evidence of the ways students benefit from the use of graphic organizers (Narrative Writing Diamond), teacher modeling, guided practice, and the use of …

WOOF! WOOF! Warren, a third grade student, loved to act like a dog. He’d get down on all fours and sniff around the room, bark on command, and even sit …

PROMPT: If you got to pick any pet in the pet store what would you pick and why. Explain your reasons. Use this sample to identify the lack of broad …

We’ve all heard teachers talk about “voice” – how a piece of writing somehow has it or doesn’t. It is a frequently misunderstood concept, an illusive quality that often seems …