3 grade-specific units of study

• Are organized around the three types of writing mandated by the Common Core—argument, information, and narrative writing
• Lay out six weeks of instruction (16–18 sessions) in each unit
• Include all of the teaching points, minilessons, conferences, and small-group work needed to teach a comprehensive workshop curriculum
• Model Lucy and her colleagues’ carefully crafted teaching moves and language

If... Then... Curriculum: Assessment-Based Instruction, Grades 6–8

• Offers nine alternate units of study
• Presents if/then conferring scenarios that support targeted instruction and differentiation

Writing Pathways: Performance Assessments and Learning Progressions, 6–8

• Is organized around a 6–8 learning progression across argument, information, and narrative writing
• Includes performance assessments, student checklists, rubrics, and leveled writing exemplars

A Guide to the Common Core Writing Workshop, Grades 6–8 crystallizes the essential principles, methods, and structures of effective writing workshop instruction.

The Resources for Teaching Writing CD-ROM provides unit-specific print resources to support your teaching throughout the year.

The Teachers College Reading and Writing Project and Heinemann are proud to announce the release of two additional book-length units of study, each addressing an especially key topic from the Units of Study If...Then... books.

These new book-length units have been written to fit tongue and groove into the original Units of Study, yet each can also work as a self-contained stand-alone unit, offering you a chance to try on the experience of teaching with the Units before moving to the complete series.

The Up the Ladder books are designed for children in grades 3–6 who may not yet have had many opportunities to practice writing narrative, information, and opinion pieces, or might not have had those experiences in workshop-style classrooms. The units give these children opportunities to engage in repeated successful practice and to move rapidly along a gradually increasing progression of challenges.

The Up the Ladder Units:

• give novice writers intense writing practice within a short timeframe
• teach foundational primary-grade strategies through content, topics, and mentor texts that are appropriate for grades 3–6
• include concise, accessible student checklists and guidelines for daily assessment
• support teachers with an introduction to the workshop framework and writing process, tips and strategies for classroom management, and video demonstrations of the minilessons
• engage young people in work that is demanding yet attainable
• ensure that students make rapid and dramatic progress toward grade-level writing work.

While the Up the Ladder units are designed to be precursors to the grade-level Units of Study in Opinion, Information, and Narrative Writing, 3­­–6, they can be helpful in a variety of instructional settings.

Series Components

Three Up the Ladder Units (19-22 sessions in each)

• Narrative
• Information
• Opinion

A Guide to the Up the Ladder Units orients you to the Up the Ladder books, providing guidance on the essential principles, methods, and structures of effective writing workshop instruction.

Online Resources

• Downloadable charts, paper-choice templates, samples of student work, student checklists
• Links to digital texts
• QR code links at point-of-use within each minilesson with demonstration videos featuring TCRWP Staff Developers

Large-format preprinted Anchor-Chart Sticky Notes with illustrated teaching points help teachers create and evolve anchor charts across each unit.

Show and Tell Writing: From Labels to Pattern Books, Grade K

This engaging new book-length unit will transform your kindergartners into inventive spellers, giving them the tools and strategies they need to approximate the words that are most meaningful for them in their own writing. The unit celebrates invented spellings as kids develop foundational skills, knowing that your front-and-center goal will be to persuade your kids that they can write, that they too can be members of the literacy club.

Show and Tell fits tongue and groove into the original Units of Study in Opinion Information, and Narrative Writing series as well as the new Units of Study in Phonics, although it can also be taught as a self-contained stand-alone unit.Throughout the unit, focused minilessons, independent writing time, and interactive writing sessions help students learn how to:

• engage in the inventive spelling process: drawing, then labeling part by part, and revising to add more and more labels
• write the most salient sounds in words and then “stretch out” these sounds into full words
• string together words learned through inventive spelling into full sentences
• create their own books, dividing their subject into chunks that can be captured across the pages of a book
• make decisions about page layouts by studying mentor texts
• talk about their writing with excitement and ease
• write lots of sentences across pages in a pattern, using high-frequency words as well as words learned through inventive spelling
• select some of their books to make “bookstore ready” and publish them

This unit is designed to be taught after Unit 1 of the Kindergarten Writing Units of Study and in conjunction with Unit 2 of the Kindergarten Phonics Units of Study. Bend 1 of Show and Tell and Bend 1 of Word Scientists, the second kindergarten unit in the new Units of Study in Phonics, were written to align perfectly with each other.