Introduction to Living the Writer's Life: Grades 2–5 for Teachers

This unit on Living the Writer’s Life is designed to serve as a framework for grades 2–5 teachers to build on as you launch Writing Workshops (PDF or Word) at the beginning of the school year. The focus lessons are samples you can use to develop students’ understandings about writing, but adapt the unit to meet students’ needs. Feel free to include your own favorite touchstone texts, read alouds, and mini-lessons (PDF or Word). If you are working with English-language learners, think about sheltering instruction in your Writing Workshop (PDF or Word). This unit will evolve as we continually add new lessons and titles. Please come back often to visit and see changes.

The goals of the Living the Writer’s Life unit (PDF or Word) include the following:

Instill a sense of excitement, competence, and confidence in our students about writing and being part of a writing community;
Help students develop the ability to think like writers—collect ideas for writing from their own lives, notice the world in new ways, read like writers, and play with language;
Help students develop habits of good writers—write every day, write for authentic purposes and audiences, keep a notebook, use the writing process to move from an idea to a finished piece, use criteria to reflect on the quality of their writing.

As shown in the overview (PDF or Word), this unit has five sections:

Section 1: Launching the Writers Workshop and Oral Storytelling (PDF or Word)
Section 2: Launching Writer's Notebooks (PDF or Word)
Section 3: Writing in Notebooks and Learning Authors' Craft (PDF or Word)
Section 4: Developing a Seed Idea and Revising the Draft (PDF or Word)
Section 5: Polishing, Publishing, and Celebrating (PDF or Word)

Each section will take approximately 1–1½ weeks. It is important to remember that Living the Writer’s Life is just the introductory unit. Many writing process lessons and crafting techniques will be revisited in other writing genre studies during the year. This unit is meant to launch students as writers, not to teach them everything they need to know about writing. The first published work may not be of great quality, but if students have begun to meet the above-stated goals, then the unit has been successful.

Each section has:

Specific key understandings and outcomes for students;
Sample focus lessons to teach students the rituals and routines and key understandings for that section. These lessons are prototypes—you may use them as they are or adapt them to fit your students;
Many focus lessons also give the thinking behind the decisions the instructor made. These explanations will help you in your decision-making as you develop your own lessons;
Suggestions for other resources: children’s books, professional books, and Web sites; and
Student samples.

We welcome your feedback and contributions. If you are interested in submitting lessons or titles that have been successful with your students to add to the unit, please talk with your literacy coach or area literacy specialist about the process for submission. We wish you an exciting launch for your journey in writing this year!

If you have technical questions about this Web site, contact Joel' Bradley-Hess at
joel_bradley-hess@dpsk12.org or 720-423-3723.