Alyssa Hayes

A. Whitlock
EDR 344 Writing Plan
12/12/14
Classroom Instruction Plan for Writing
My Writing Philosophy
In my classroom, writing will be an activity that my students and
I do everyday. Students need to write everyday for varied purposes
and audiences to become fluent, competent writers (Routman, 2005,
p. 263). I believe that writing should be used in all subjects across the
curriculum, writing and reading go hand-in-hand, and writing should be
taught as its own subject.
To begin my philosophy of writing instruction, I plan to make my
classroom a comfortable and welcoming environment. My students will
be able to sit wherever they would like to, in our classroom, as long as
they are productive. I will make myself available for my students so
they can discuss their writing and any other concerns they have. This
will start by creating a writing community, the students and I
become a family in which everyone respects one another and
supports each others learning (Tompkins, 2012, p. 25). As a class, we
will create a chart describing what the students feel are important
elements to a writing community. Tompkins (2012) states that respect,
high expectations, collaboration, differentiation, choice, and
responsibility are identifiable characteristics of a successful writing

Alyssa Hayes
A. Whitlock
EDR 344 Writing Plan
12/12/14
community (p.25-6). With these ideas in place and the students ideas
posted, our classroom should become a writing oasis where my
students feel comfortable to share and to work collaboratively with
their peers, which includes differentiating my writing instruction for
struggling students.
Our writing time will focus on writing workshops and Six Traits.
Our writing lessons will mostly be held in a writing workshop setting,
starting with a minilesson where read-alouds are tied in, moving to
independent writing time, and finishing with share time (Tompkins,
2012, p. 17). Gradually, during our writing time, I will bring in the Six
Traits component into our workshop, which consists of ideas,
organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, conventions, and
presentation (Tompkins, 2012, p. 58). I will introduce these traits
individually during the minilesson when the traits need to be worked
on. I will use mentor texts during the minilesson to describe the trait at
hand.
I will write with my students and model quality writing during
minilessons. According to Tompkins (2012), This is the level of the
greatest support because teachers create the text themselves (p.50).
Tompkins (2012) also notes that when teachers think out loud, it

Alyssa Hayes
A. Whitlock
EDR 344 Writing Plan
12/12/14
models to students how to solve a writing problem, as well as
demonstrates a new strategy (p. 50). This technique will be used very
often during our writing instruction.
Writing conferences are important to my writing instruction. I will
do one-on-one conferencing bi-weekly, where I sit down and have a
talk with each of my students to assess their writing, to discuss with
them their goals, their strengths, and their weaknesses. During the
weeks that we are not one-on-one conferencing, I will be utilizing on
the run conferences (Whitlock, 2014, Slide 6). In one the run
conferences, I will move around the room and choose students to talk
to for two to three minutes about what they are working on, just to
assess where they are in their writing.
When I think of assessing my students writing, I plan to score
their writing by primary trait scoring (Tompkins, 2012, p. 94). I will
use a Six Trait rubric to do this scoring. The focus in primary trait
scoring is on whether students have incorporated specific traits in their
composition (Tompkins, 2012, p. 94). Since a lot of my focus in writing
will be on Six Traits, I will assess based on those traits. I feel that not all
writing should be assessed. Personal writing, such as free choice
narratives or journals should be looked over but not graded. Personal

Alyssa Hayes
A. Whitlock
EDR 344 Writing Plan
12/12/14
writing is a different type of writing, which I believe helps a struggling
writer become better. They can focus on the organization and
semantics of their writing, more than the topic.
In my opinion, technology in writing is crucial, especially in
todays media-driven society. There is technology available for all the
steps of the writing process. There are apps to help with coming up
with a topic when students are struggling. Students can edit and
publish on word processing programs that automatically correct
common spelling errors and capitalize words (Tompkins, 2012, p. 27).
There are also websites where students can turn their writing into
interactive projects, such as glogster.com. I also want my students to
keep an active blog. I will have my own that my students and their
guardians will have access to. My blog will contain information about
our class, homework, and any writing I do in class. The students will
use their blogs for personal writing, online homework, and reading
logs.
Lastly, it is my philosophy that I have a strong passion for writing
and my instruction for all subjects. I want all of my students to obtain a
passion for learning. I would love if all my students would write in their
free time and use their time to gain knowledge. I feel that if I came into

Alyssa Hayes
A. Whitlock
EDR 344 Writing Plan
12/12/14
school everyday with a strong passion and want to teach, my students
will gain that passion and want to learn.

Typical Writing Day

In my career as a teacher, I would love to teach fifth grade. The
Common Core Writing Standards focus a lot on the organization and
conventions of writing. Also in fifth grade, students focus their writing
towards opinion, explanatory, and narrative pieces (CCSS, 2014).
I have made a mock daily schedule to discuss the areas I would
infuse writing:
8:00am-8:25am: Arrival/Wake-Up Your Brain/Discuss Day
8:25am-9:30am: Math
9:30am 10:15am: Specials
10:15am 11:15am: Literacy Stations
11:15am-11:35am: Sustained Silent Reading (SSR)
11:35am-12:10pm: Lunch and Recess
12:10pm - 1:10pm: Writers Workshop
1:10pm 1:15pm: Break
1:15pm 2:00pm: Science
2:00pm 2:45pm: Social Studies

Alyssa Hayes
A. Whitlock
EDR 344 Writing Plan
12/12/14
2:45pm 3:00pm: Discuss Day/Pack-Up/Exit Ticket
Writing will be an active element of most of our day. When
students arrive in class, the wake up your brain activity will be posted
on the board. This activity will be either a challenging math problem or
a challenging quick write prompt which the students will have to work
on before class.
In math time, the students will not write too much besides
writing down the problems. We could get our brains moving by writing
our own story problems for our math discussions. Students can also
write thought journals to promote metacognition. The students write
about their thinking in math. They question the processes; they can set
goals, and monitor their progress in these journals (Tompkins, 2012,
p.44).
In my philosophy, I stated that writing and reading go hand-inhand, over time in this class and my literacy class, I have observed this
idea being utilized in both reading stations and writing workshop.
During literacy stations, the students will be placed into groups. The
students will move in these groups. One of these stations will be the
work on writing station. Depending on what we are working on, there
will be a task they are to complete. It may be a type of writing they

Alyssa Hayes
A. Whitlock
EDR 344 Writing Plan
12/12/14
must work on, such as a how-to, or they could be working on a certain
trait that we have introduced. Any task will be a guided free write.
Boushey and Moser (2012) state, As with reading, the best way to
become a better writer is to write each day, preferably about selfselected topics and genres the writer is interested in or passionate
about (p.173). I choose to give my students guided choice since
during this time I will be at the guided reading station, I will not be able
to keep a close eye on their activity, so when they turn in their writing,
I can assess if they stayed on task during this station.
During sustained silent reading (SSR), students will read a book
for the full time. I want my students to keep reading logs for their
books on their blogs. Reading logs help Students think more deeply
about books theyre reading and respond by writingentries
(Tompkins, 2012, p.108).
Writers Workshop will be the time when writing is most
prevalent. First, I would start with a 15 to 30 minute minilesson to
teach new strategies (Tompkins, 2012, p.17). I will use mentor texts to
integrate reading into our writing lessons. After the lesson, the
students will independently write. When the writing time is up, the
students can share their writing, either whole group, small group, or

Alyssa Hayes
A. Whitlock
EDR 344 Writing Plan
12/12/14
partner sharing (Tompkins, 2012, p. 17). When needed, I will switch
from workshop to stations, so students can work on certain aspects of
their paper with their small groups.
During social studies and science, the students can work on
explanatory writing pieces. These pieces are used to explain
something, provide instruction, or present information (Tompkins,
2012, p. 202). We can work on these pieces during writing workshop.
We could combine writing and social studies or science in order to
write an explanatory piece on what we are learning in these lessons.
At the end of the day, I want my students to fill out an exit ticket
by writing about something they learned in the day. It must be concise
and about their learning, which would help them think about their
writing.

A Typical Writing Lesson

First, I would gather my students together to our lesson area.
Most of the time, I will ask for them to bring nothing with them. I will
start our lesson by describing what we will be working on. Tompkins
(2012) states that the first step of a minilesson is for the teacher to
identify the topic for the minilesson, often writing it on chart paper or

Alyssa Hayes
A. Whitlock
EDR 344 Writing Plan
12/12/14
the chalkboard(Tompkins, 2012, p. 21). As an example, we would be
working on our narratives and today; I want my minilesson to be on
adding dialogue. I would write Adding Dialogue on the chart paper. I
would then introduce a mentor text, such as School of Fear by Gitty
Daneshvari, to introduce dialogue in a text. Mentor texts are used to
highlight an aspect of writing (Tompkins, 2012, p.19). Once I am
finished with the text, as a class, we will write on the chart what we
noticed about dialogue. When we write those down, we will post the
paper and I will wrap up the minilesson by modeling how I would add
dialogue to my narrative.
When we finish the minilesson, the students will go to their
writing spots and begin independently writing. During writing time, I
will write for the first few minutes to show how important it is
(Tompkins, 2012, p.19).
During independent writing time is when I will assess my
students writing. We will meet in bi-weekly conferences and I will do
on-the-run conferences in between. During this lesson, I would do
on-the-run conference to see if the students are staying on task and
to assist in dialogue construction, as well as assess if they understand.
When we conference, I will use trait specific rubrics to assess what we

Alyssa Hayes
A. Whitlock
EDR 344 Writing Plan
12/12/14
are working on at that time (Tompkins, 2012, p.94). I will use a holistic
approach when assessing my students writing after the publishing
process. I believe that is the best way because we work one-on-one
with the traits so their published piece should come together to have
all the traits (Tompkins, 2012, p.93).
After independent writing we will gather back to our lesson area
to share our pieces (Tompkins, 2012, p. 19). In this lesson, I would have
the students whole group share a snippet of dialogue they have added.
Since the share is short, I would have all the students share.
Eventually, the students would put their full pieces together by
using a word processor and as a class; we would share our complete
stories.
Overall, writing is an activity that my class will do everyday.
Writing is a cross-curricular activity that will be a skill my students will
use for their lifetime. With these aspects and my philosophy, I believe I
will have a strong writing curriculum that can be altered to my
students needs.

Alyssa Hayes
A. Whitlock
EDR 344 Writing Plan
12/12/14

Resources
Boushey, G., & Moser, J. (2012). Big Ideas Behind Daily 5 and CAFE. The Reading
Teacher, 66(3), 172-178.
Fifth Grade Writing Standards: Common Core Standards: Common Core Activities,
Worksheets, and Workbooks. (n.d.). Retrieved from
http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy/W/5/
Routman, R. (2005). Writing Essentials: Raising Expectations and Results While
Simplifying Teaching. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Tompkins, G.E. (2012). Teaching Writing: Balancing Process and Product. Boston, MA:
Pearson Education, Inc.
Whitlock, A. (2014). EDR 344: Conferencing [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from
https://bb.umflint.edu/webapps/blackboard/execute/content/file?
cmd=view&content_id=_5757357_1&course_id=_3367091_1&framesetWrapped
=true