Writing Lessons – Academic Program: Supplemental ELA Writing Materials
The lessons below will help your student strengthen their writing skills, which are critical as they move through late elementary and middle school.
Tools can help you enrich these materials!
First: Encourage your student to use the included graphic organizer to organize their thoughts!
Second: You and your student can use the “Shared Notes” feature in Big Blue Button, or use a shared Google Document to draft their responses. We made a template you are welcome to use! If you think you need a refresher on using Google Docs, visit Google Documents help.
Last: When sharing your student’s work on the School on Wheels Writing Padlet, make sure the Google Document is publicly visible.
Using the lessons:
- Select one of the three lessons (opinion, informative, or narrative) and have your student choose a prompt to respond to.
- Your student doesn’t have to follow any prompt exactly as it’s written—they are welcome to adapt prompts or even invent their own!
- Once your student completes the first draft of their response, review it together using the “what to look for” checklist included in each lesson.
- Help your student revise and edit their response using the checklist.
- When you’re done, help your student post their work on our School on Wheels Writing Padlet so other students can be inspired!
Giving Feedback
As you are using the checklist to review your student’s response, focus on providing positive feedback about what your student did well. Discuss with your student some specific and constructive ways they could improve their writing. It’s very important to focus on the strengths of your students’ writing and have a collaborative discussion with them about areas for improvement. Let them know that they do not have to accept your suggestions, and the revisions they make are totally up to them.