In writing, we will use TCRWP’s Units of Study. Students will write daily, and I will meet with small groups and individuals to help all students grow as writers. Our planned units of study will be: 



In Narrative Craft, students will be crafting a personal narrative, paying special attention to elaboration through detail and description, traveling slowly over the ideas of their topic, grounding the writing in a wealth of specificity and returning to important sections to tell them in a bit-by-bit way. In order to do this well, students will be expected to bring their interpretation skills to their own emerging drafts to ensure they are highlighting the central ideas that they want readers to draw from their text and become decision makers. By knowing this they will be able to make intentional craft decisions with author’s purpose in mind.

In our Journalism unit, students will learn to write information texts quickly, to revise purposefully and swiftly, and to write from positions of thoughtful observations of a variety of text, as they relate to the world around them. First we will learn to write quick news reports that are concise, focused reports that tell the who, what, where, and when with a sense of drama. Then we will research and write Feature Articles, short stories that provides additional perspectives to the hard news story. 

In our Literary Essay unit, we will begin by writing an essay about a shared story—a poignant video clip that we watch and discuss together. With that shared work as a foundation, we then learn to design, write, and revise interpretive essays about short stories. Students will learn to: read interpretively, reread closely and carefully to identify evidence that best supports a claim, support a thesis with a variety of evidence and draft and revise thesis statements that capture the themes of a story.

In the Research Based Argument Essay unit students will learn to structure their writing so that it includes claims that are supported by reasons that are backed by evidence. They’ll to learn withhold judgment, read critically, note-take, build an argument, and revise, rethink, rebuild that argument all over. We will practice arguing logically through a text, weighing the evidence, and considering the logical reasoning that can be concluded. We will also consider two other important points--audience appeal and counterargument. 

And finally, in the Research Reports unit, students will be crafting informational texts within a content area study related to the United States. To glean relevant information, students will need to delve deeply into informational texts, discerning significant ideas and supporting information, and synthesizing and comparing across texts.


I will supplement our writing curriculum with grammar instruction. We will also work on cursive writing and learning Greek and Latin roots, stems and prefixes.  Students will improve their typing ability this year, with the goal of reaching 35-38 words per minute.