What About Writing Curriculum?

How to ensure writing instruction gets its due. Pro Tip: supplement.

We recently received a question from an elementary teacher in Ohio. She noticed that her state has an approved reading curriculum list, but no writing curriculum list:

“Our district admin are telling us that the curriculum we use for writing from TpT because it’s explicit, systematic, and provides a gradual release approach is not on the state list, and therefore we will not be able to use it starting next year. When I look up approved writing curriculums on the ODE website, I am finding nothing about an approved list for writing. It seems that only big box curriculums that have a writing component would be allowed, even though ours (HMH Into Reading) has a terrible writing program. Looking for information.”

This question has a lot of layers, and each layer deserves a conversation.

Yes, We Need to Teach Writing

We do, in fact, need to teach writing skills explicitly.

Some like to think that writing skills emerge naturally as reading skills develop, but studies show otherwise.

For example, a Norwegian study set out to test the hypothesis that “writing is caught,” and found (to their surprise) that simply increasing writing time in 1st & 2nd grades, without increasing writing instruction, did not result in improved writing quality, better handwriting fluency, or more positive attitudes toward writing. It turns out writing is indeed taught, not caught.

Other studies show that grammar lessons alone don’t cut it; teachers need targeted strategies for writing specifically.

The Value of Connecting Writing to Reading Instruction

Writing instruction should be connected to reading instruction, for a number of good reasons.

Writing is the hardest skill to learn, because a student needs to do so many things at once in order to write: hold content in working memory, form sentences about it, choose words to use, and spell those words, all in parallel. It’s a task with a very high cognitive load.

When students write on freshly-learned topics, the new learning is fresh in working memory, so they can focus on the craft of writing good sentences and paragraphs. Students can work from fresh notes or reference texts that are still on their desks (say, to look for vocabulary words or details).

Good curriculum design makes this an intentional sequence: the student reads a text, then he or she is prompted to take notes about details in the text (on a post-it, in a graphic organizer), while class discussion helps students deepen their understanding of what they read. Soon after, a writing task allows the student to work those notes (and fresh thinking) into longer-form writing.

By contrast, personal narratives and choice writing tasks come with their own demand on working memory, because there is thinking involved in conjuring up the content to write about. The student will spend some of his or her mental energy on brainstorming: “What is a story I could tell to match the writing prompt? What is something I like or know so well that I can write about it?” Once a student has thought of a topic, he may not know how to spell all the words he has in mind. There’s no text to reference, to give the student vocabulary ideas. The teacher doesn’t know the story in the student’s mind, so it’s harder for the teacher to offer assistance. It simply puts a lot more cognitive burden on the student.

For these reason, these types of writing are best introduced after students already have a writing foundation.

Studies back the value of connecting reading and writing. A 2011 metaanalysis showed that “writing about material read improves students’ comprehension of it; that teaching students how to write improves their reading comprehension, reading fluency, and word reading; and that increasing how much students write enhances their reading comprehension.”

As an added bonus, writing about the topic of study also helps students cement the learning from the lesson.

The value of this pairing has been beautifully captured in the following pieces, all of which are recommended reading:

• Education Week wrote a great primer on the subject, How Does Writing Fit into the ‘Science of Reading’?

• Judy Hochman and Natalie Wexler go deeper in The Connections Between Writing, Knowledge Acquisition, and Reading Comprehension

• The webinar on ‘Writing, an Unsung Hero in Reading Comprehension’ is worth a watch.

What does this mean for curriculum selection?

Because this pairing is so essential, literacy experts recommend that schools select an ELA curriculum in which writing instruction is connected to the texts and topics in the reading lessons. (In fact, the thinking goes further… good ELA curriculum should be comprehensive, and incorporate all of the reading AND writing essentials.)

Of course, as followers of the Curriculum Insight Project will know, curricula with “all-green” ratings from EdReports are not created equal—and so it is with writing.

The basal programs from major publishers generally fail to connect writing tasks to reading content on a consistent basis. Into Reading, for example, has separate content in its writing lessons and its reading component.

Knowledge-building programs are much stronger on this reading-writing pairing, and it’s one of their greatest virtues. Across those programs, writing tasks consistently connect to the content students are reading and learning.

Here’s an example from EL Education. First graders are prompted to capture details from a book that they have just read in ELA in Part III. In part IV, they move to writing full sentences. Classroom discussion about the reading helps students formulate their thinking before they are asked to capture it in writing.

These types of writing tasks start in kindergarten¹.

In the knowledge-building ELA programs, students do some form of writing in every lesson. Sometimes the writing is bite-sized, like note taking, and sometimes it’s a more formal writing task.

More Explicit Instruction Is Needed

Still, writing is a challenging skill to learn, and to teach. Most students need explicit writing instruction that starts at the most basic levels (ex. what is a sentence vs a fragment? What are components of a good sentence?), giving students a structured introduction to writing.

Honestly, ELA curriculum tends to fall short on this front. Even the knowledge-building programs are light on scaffolded and beginner-level writing instruction. As one of our primary teachers put it, “There is almost no gradual release between clozed sentence writing and then suddenly asking students to produce a final piece independently. Programs need to have a very well defined hierarchy and explanation for how we teach grapheme to word to sentence to paragraph.”

So, most teachers supplement. Fortunately, there are multiple options.

In Praise of Structured Writing Supplements

Here are the most popular writing supplement options in our circles.

They have a lot in common. Each is meant to be layered on top of a rich core curriculum (so students have meaty fodder to write about), everything is highly systematic, with lots of explicit instruction, and the resources can be used in conjunction with each other— they are not mutually exclusive.

The Writing Revolution introduces writing via bite-size activities that slowly progress to independent writing. It starts with sentence-level activities, helping students learn how language works, before asking them to do their own writing. Instruction moves from sentences to paragraphs to multi-paragraph compositions. The writing tasks can work well in any subject, so any teacher can use writing to help students demonstrate their understanding of content and also to think more deeply about topics. Through frequent, low-stakes practice, students build academic language, knowledge, and clarity of thought. Overall, the Writing Revolution helps students use explicit writing instruction to strengthen student reasoning, reading comprehension, and content learning.

Many teachers work from The Writing Revolution book, which is inexpensive (currently $31 on Amazon). The Writing Revolution offers some free paired resources (templates, exemplars), in addition to professional development packages and paid upgrades like an AI activity generator.

SRSD is a research-based instructional framework for teaching writing that helps students plan, organize, write, and revise effectively, while developing independence and motivation. SRSD explicitly teaches writing strategies (such as planning, drafting, and revising) alongside self-regulation skills like goal-setting, self-monitoring, and self-talk, all of which can be applied across writing genres. Instruction follows a structured sequence in which teachers model strategies, practice them with students, and gradually release responsibility.

The SRSD framework has been translated into a few different programs (ThinkSRSD, SRSD Online). You can read or hear more about these approaches here, here, or here. And the ThinkSRSD Facebook group is a wonderful place to learn more.

Each of the SRSD variants offers some free resources, in addition to PD offerings. A number of books offer introductions to the approach, including books by researcher Karen Harris, its originator.

The Syntax Project is a free collection of grammar and syntax lessons (PK-5/6th grade) created by a group of Australian teachers. Lessons can be edited to integrate whatever content is being taught at the time of use, and they are explicit, systematic, and direct. Many of the lessons intentionally reinforce practices introduced by The Writing Revolution.

Sentence Composing is a method developed by Don Killgallon which is popular with teachers in upper elementary and middle/high schools. Its core focus is to get students to write sentences like professionals through imitation and repeated practice. Sentence imitation is a core technique, along with sentence chunking, expanding, combining, and unscrambling. It offers a systematic way to teach varied syntax by focusing on the core part of a sentence, while also teaching students how to add phrases (appositive, preposition, participial, and absolute) and clauses (adjective and adverb). Don and Jenny Killgallon offer a book to introduce the method, multiple student worktexts for students beginning in 4th grade and extending through high school, plus some free resources on their website.

This list isn’t meant to be exhaustive or exclusive, but these are the methods that come up most often.

“Writing is thinking on paper,” as the saying goes, and teachers using these methods notice that students’ spoken language improves, too, because their thinking becomes more clear. Huzzah!

These supplements introduce practices that are useful in all content areas. So, while we would like to see ELA curriculum developers better integrate these types of approaches, we can applaud the ways that these supplements make the strategies portable.

Back to those state lists

To answer our reader…

Ohio is right to have one list for ELA curricula, with the implicit expectation that programs should cover reading and writing in a connected fashion. That said, states don’t tend to get into these weeds. Neither do curriculum reviewers.

In today’s Science of Reading and Science of Learning conversations, details about these supplements have generally spread through word of mouth. So friends, pass it on to the teachers in your state. They’ll thank you.

1. Here is a glimpse of some Kindergarten examples from EL Education.

In Module 2, students read Come On, Rain! by Karen Hesse. After discussing the book, students complete a “Before and After the Rain” activity, capturing how the characters and environment changed (from hot/dry to cool/rainy).

Later in this module, Kindergarteners are given a structured opportunity to write their own weather stories, working within a template that offers both scaffolded sentences and free response opportunity:

Because these lessons follow the study of weather, via weather-related texts and class discussions, all of the kindergarteners will have a working knowledge of weather, and access to weather vocabulary. The teacher can coach the student on using recently-studied vocabulary.