Writing helps develop reading skills; and reading helps develop writing
skills. In fact, research shows that reading and writing develop hand in
hand. Reading A-Z offers specific activities for responses to
reading and poetry writing lessons to help students apply, synthesize,
and evaluate text and develop traits of good writing.
Numerous Learning A-Z products feature opportunities for writing. Here are a few examples.
Books
Extend the Lesson writing activities in most books' lesson plans offer practice writing in different genres.
Comprehension Quizzes for most books contain extended response questions, which require students to write responses to open-ended questions using sound reasoning. This allows educators to measure skills that are difficult to assess with multiple-choice.
Lesson Supplements, Close Reading Packs, and Paired Book Lessons require students to find evidence from multiple places within a text or from multiple texts to write an answer to a Key Question. The resource sets include graphic organizers as well.
Models of Good Writing
Learning A–Z books offer excellent models of how to put ideas together to explain or persuade with one’s writing. For example, the book To Drill or Not to Drill?
provides students a model for pro/con writing. This book gives readers information on both sides of a heated debate: whether or not to drill for oil in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). The book includes a history of American oil along with reasons to drill in ANWR,
reasons not to drill, and the science and law behind it all. Writing models exist for younger students as well. How to Make Ice Cream provides students with a model for a how-to book.
Students can also follow the list of ingredients and the five easy steps to make their own ice cream.
Wordless Books provide writing practice for even the youngest readers.
Publishing and Collaborating
Developing writers must learn to collaborate, share, and give and receive meaningful feedback. Learning A-Z offers tools that help students develop these valuable skills, producing solid results in a variety of delivery modes, from written and oral to multimodal. Using these tools, teachers can help students:
Present their writing to peers, on paper and digitally
Offer—and receive—peer feedback
Publish in a variety of ways:
Written (using pencil/paper, illustrations, posters, slideshows, and more)
Orally (using formal and informal language as appropriate)
Multimodally (combination of written and oral)
Visit Writing A-Z for more features and tips for improving students’ writing skills.
Looking for More Writing Resources?
Writing A-Z provides writing resources for grades K-5 that allow you to target specific writing skills.
Standards-based lessons and materials merge opinion, informative, and narrative writing instruction with process instruction.
Instructional videos and game-based practice in grammar skills support the application of English language conventions in writing.
