common core reading & writing workshop

A CURRICULAR PLAN FOR

The Writing Workshop 2
GRADE

LUCY CALKINS AND COLLEAGUES FROM

THE READING AND WRITING PROJECT
 A CURRICULAR PLAN FOR

The Writing Workshop

Grade 2

Common Core Reading and Writing Workshop

Lucy Calkins
and Colleagues from
The Reading and Writing Workshop

HEINEMANN • PORTSMOUTH, NH
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© 2011 by Lucy Calkins

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 Contents

Overview of the Year for Second-Grade Writers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Unit 1: Launching with Nonf iction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Unit 2: Authors as Mentors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

Unit 3: Writing and Revising Realistic F iction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

Unit 4: Expert Projects: Informational Writing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

Unit 5: Opinion Writing: Persuasive Reviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

Unit 6: Write Gripping Stories with Meaning and Signif icance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70

Unit 7: Using Nonf iction Texts as Mentors to Support Nonf iction Writing. . . . . . 82

Unit 8: Writing Adaptations of Familiar Fairy Tales and Folk Tales, and Perhaps
Writing Original Fantasy Stories as Well. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

Unit 9: Informational Writing about Science. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

Unit 10: Poetry: Powerful Thoughts in Tiny Packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118

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© 2011 by Lucy Calkins. Heinemann: Portsmouth, NH.
 Overview of the Year for
Second-Grade Writers

September UNIT ONE: Launching with Nonf iction

October UNIT TWO: Authors as Mentors

November UNIT THREE: Writing and Revising Realistic F iction

December UNIT FOUR: Expert Projects: Informational Writing

January UNIT F IVE: Opinion Writing: Persuasive Reviews

February UNIT SIX: Writing Gripping Stories with Meaning and Signif icance

March UNIT SEVEN: Using Nonf iction Texts as Mentors to Support Nonf iction

Writing

April UNIT EIGHT: Writing Adaptations of Familiar Fairy Tales and Folk Tales,
and Perhaps Writing Original Fantasy Stories as Well

May UNIT NINE: Informational Writing about Science

June UNIT TEN: Poetry: Powerful Thoughts in Tiny Packages

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S
econd-grade teachers have some special challenges in the teaching of writing.
Howard Gardner describes second grade as youngsters entering into “the age
of competence,” suggesting that during the next three years, children need to
develop the competence and the conf idence to weather the self-critical, self-conscious-
ness of the upcoming years. Of course, in many school systems, standardized tests rain
down on children even when they are in third grade—so second grade is often the
last reprieve for kids. It’s a window of time in which children can grow in leaps and
bounds—if only those of us around them are willing to urge them on!
This means, of course, that as teachers of second graders, you need to be sure your
teaching does not repeat but instead stands on the shoulders of the previous year, and
that it takes children as far as they can go. And they can go far—especially for second
graders who have been in writing workshops before this year, and are ready to draw
on all they learned in order to work with increasing ambitiousness and independence.
You will see that this year’s curricular calendar assumes that many of your children
enter second grade with lots of experience to draw from, and that consequently, from
the very start, minilessons invite children to draw on a repertoire of strategies that
they’ve learned in past years. You will also notice that this year’s curricular calendar
for second grade assumes that by the second half of the year, second graders are able
to do vastly more than they could do at the start of the school year. Second graders
come in like f irst graders and leave like upperclassmen!
Expect that if your students have been in writing workshops during f irst grade, most
of them will begin second grade able to actually write—pen going down the page—for
forty minutes a day, and most will work across f ive-page booklets, writing something
like f ive to seven sentences on each page, completing several of these booklets each
week, unless they are engaged in comparable amounts of revision. Remember that
early next year, when your children enter third grade they will generally be expected
to write about one notebook page of writing during one day’s writing workshop, and
another full page of writing at home each night. Of course, your children will differ,
and just as they will be reading books that differ in complexity level, so, too, the paper
on which they write will differ. You’ll want to remember that the paper choices (like
the book levels) need to change as the year unfolds. Be prepared to move children
toward more challenging paper choices as soon as they are ready, giving them more
lines on a page, smaller spaces between lines, and only small boxes for quick sketches.
You will want to be sure that the number of sentences your students write grows
steadily and dramatically—which means that during the writing workshop, children
need to spend the lion’s share of time actually writing!
Any second grader who was in a writing workshop during the previous year,
however, will already have experience choosing topics, getting started writing, and
revising. This means that even at the very start of second grade, you can expect that
your students will be able to draw on revision skills they learned during f irst grade, so
from the start, they might use paper in a variety of ways to create different chapters
and use f laps of paper to try a second way to start or end a piece or to write the most
important part of the story, and they’ll be accustomed to using carets (if not page-

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extensions) to insert missing information. This sort of revision should come effortlessly
to your students—it will take a bit of your support to nudge students to go a step
farther and write whole new chapters, and many of your conferences can support that
kind of substantial revision.
Because children will enter second grade with a lot of knowledge about how to
carry on as writers, it is important that they work with enormous independence and
initiative. At the end of every day’s minilesson, when you send them off to work on
their writing, you will want to remind them of the full array of lessons they have been
learning, of work they could be doing right away that day. The minilesson will have
added one new strategy. Send the children off to draw from that full repertoire.
Notice how the minilessons following Unit One issue a wide-open invitation for
youngsters to make decisions about the work they’ll be doing on any given day—four
kids might be starting a new piece of writing, another half-dozen might be using all
the revision strategies they’ve been taught during previous years (or during a quick
minilesson reminding them of those options) to revise up a storm. Try to maintain this
spirit as the year unfolds.
As part of this, you’ll want to be sure that your conferring is responsive to your
students’ different needs, which means that most of your conferring will not match the
day’s minilesson but will instead help writers self-assess, generate purposes, draw on
strategies they think might work, and work with ambitiousness and resourcefulness.
When you allow your children to take ownership of the choices they make as they write,
you are following the essential principles and beliefs that inform writing workshops. 
This curricular calendar, as all of our curricular calendars, has been adjusted to be
in sync with the Common Core State Standards. A discussion of the Common Core
State Standards that are addressed within a unit has been woven into the description
of each unit and we have a document available that details the alignment.
This curriculum calendar also relies upon the Units of Study for Primary Writing
series, published by Heinemann, and on A Quick Guide to Teaching Second-Grade
Writers with Units of Study, a little book that is part of Heinemann’s Workshop Help
Desk series. These will help you make the adaptations necessary to Units of Study
for Primary Writers so that those units are more applicable to second graders. You’ll
also want to secure Sarah Picard Taylor’s book, A Quick Guide to Teaching Persuasive
Writing, K–2 (Heinemann, 2008). These books are all available through www.unitsof-
study.com.
Those of you who worked with the TCRWP’s curricular calendar for 2010–2011
will see that we have made some important changes, but that we have kept a lot from
last year. We have added an extra unit on informational writing. You will see that
this year we are recommending that you begin the year with informational writing,
reminding students all they know from kindergarten and f irst grade. We continue to
recommend that you teach two units on personal narrative writing, with the f irst to
come early in the year and the second, to come later in the year, aimed toward lifting
the level of writing. The f irst unit on personal narrative writing is followed by a unit
on f iction writing. We hope that before the winter holiday you have time for a second

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unit on nonf iction informational writing, aligned to a unit on nonf iction reading. This
was added in recognition of the Common Core State Standards’ increasing emphasis
on informational writing and academic literacy. You will see that the writing curricular
calendar sometimes matches the reading curricular calendar—for example, we imagine
that students are reading fairy tales and folk tales as they also write them. 
In January, we recommend that you give children support in opinion writing—writ-
ing persuasively (a perfect ramp-up to the essays they’ll write in third grade) through
a unit on persuasive reviews. We learned from trial and error that it is important to
return to narrative writing in February, and we will return to narrative writing in the
spring. The nonf iction unit that follows Gripping Stories in March highlights reading
and writing connections. We continue to support writing in the content area in May.
We also decided to keep our Poetry unit in June. In many states, including New York
State, poetry is part of the third-grade high-stakes tests, so we wanted the unit to be
one that your students take with them to third grade. We also felt it would revive June
and send children off to the summer with extra energy.
Before releasing any suggested curriculum for second graders, it is important to
recognize that second graders are an especially diverse group—there will be some who
are still f ledgling writers, and others who are ready for anything you put before them.
Your teaching will need to be assessment-based and designed to support the diverse
range of writers in your care. We encourage you to skim the documents written for f irst
and third graders because those will help you understand ways you can support both
your struggling and your strongest writers. And of course, remember that these units
are provided as suggestions for you and your colleagues. We would never imagine that
any of you would use these or any other resources blindly. Add to this, subtract from
it, as you construct teaching that is aligned with your local and state standards, that
responds to your students, and that captures your imagination, represents your values,
and helps you bring your best ideas about education to your students.

Assessing Writers at the Start of the Year

In your eagerness to get started, don’t bypass the opportunity to collect baseline data.
Before you rev kids up, before you remind them of all they know about informational
writing, devote one day’s writing workshop to some assessment. We recommend that
you simply say, “What do you know a lot about? You can make a book that teaches
others a lot about that.” Your second graders will then have f ifty to sixty minutes to
do the best informational writing they can do. This performance assessment will allow
you to plan your next teaching moves accordingly, and you will also have a baseline
against which to compare the work students are able to do in informational writing
across the year.
You’ll not only use these pieces to inform your teaching plans but you might also
eventually use them to allow both your students and their parents to ref lect on growth
over the year, so propping them up now will serve a dual purpose. You also want to see
how children do with independence. Be sure they have booklets that contain plenty of

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pages (at least f ive) and plenty of lines on each page (perhaps eight). Be sure children
also know they can add more pages if they need additional space.
Once writing time is over collect the pieces, making sure that each piece contains
the child’s name and the date. Study their work alongside the RWP Information Writing
Continuum that can be found on our website at www.readingandwritingproject.com.
You needn’t match every single trait—just look between the piece and the touchstone
texts at each level and do your best to locate the child’s on-demand writing within
the range of sample pieces. Then look ahead on the continuum to see the work you’ll
teach writers over the next few months, and note specif ic techniques that your writers
are probably already doing that you can complement (and teach). The Common Core
State Standards suggest that by the end of second grade your children should be doing
the work that is represented by Level 5 on the RWP Informational Writing Continuum,
so you will want to keep this in mind as you plan for your teaching across the year.
You will want to make sure that you do the same kind of assessment to see what your
students need in narrative writing before you begin the units focused on narrative.
Then after two months of work in narrative writing you’ll redo this assessment, saying
exactly the same things and providing the same conditions, and then you’ll watch
to see how much your children have grown in that time using the RWP Narrative
Writing Continuum. This too has been aligned to the Common Core State Standards,
and you will expect your second-grade writers to write pieces that are in line with a
Level 5 on our continuum. You’ll bring the October and the November pieces to your
parent-teacher conferences and use them to discuss children’s growth. Noting each
child’s growth, comparing what he or she can do on the run and without assistance
both now and after a bit of time, will help remind you that your teaching always
looks toward tomorrow and toward independence. You will also want to notice your
children’s knowledge about conventions. You will not want to lure kids to revise a
piece of writing so completely and so extensively that you end up scaffolding children
to do work that is far beyond what they will be able to soon do on their own. You’d
want to exercise caution, however, while assessing any developmental continuum.
If you bypass listening and responding to a writer, using a continuum rather than
the writer’s intentions as the sole source of your instruction, then the tool will have
made your teaching worse, not better. You will also see your children’s knowledge
about conventions grow in leaps and bounds this year. Children benef it most from
instruction when it helps them become more powerful as they work on projects they
care about, rather than studying mechanics in isolation.

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 unit one

Launching with Nonf iction

SEPTEMBER

Overview

The Pulitzer Prize–winning writer Donald M. Murray is credited with developing the
writing process approach to writing. Murray taught college and graduate students to
write, and taught journalists at places like The Boston Globe, The Miami Herald, and the
famous Poynter Institute. He did not teach f ive-, six-, and seven-year-olds to write. The
discovery that young children could do the work that professional writers were doing
was left to others. But it was Murray who turned the f ield of writing around, challenging
the old norms of instruction and calling for a new emphasis on teaching the process of
writing. Murray’s work always began with him telling students that they needed to live
the wide-awake life of writers, experiencing their lives and then capturing those experi-
ences on the page. 
In order to get second graders to truly live wide awake as writers, we have decided
to focus this unit on informational writing, drawing not only on what they know as
writers, but also on what they know about the world. In this information age there is a
greater demand for informational writing, and the Common Core State Standards call
for second graders to write “organized informative/explanatory texts focused around
one particular topic.” The Standards state that second-grade writers should be able to
“recall information from experiences and other sources in order to answer a particular
question through their writing.” By launching kids into this genre you can start by
building on what your students already know about informational writing, while at
the same time getting them to realize what they might do to lift their writing within
this genre.

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 Teachers, before you launch this unit (like any unit), you’ll want to think about your
goals and to plan the general trajectory of the unit. You’ll probably begin with a week
in which you launch your writing workshop, rallying youngsters to engage in the work
that they know how to do of choosing topics and writing booklets. During this f irst
week, your instruction will probably remind youngsters of all that they already know
how to do, and help them draw on that repertoire as they do that work. That is, they’ll
need to think, “What do I want to write about?” and to choose the paper on which
they’ll write, and then they’ll need to write, write, write, writing fast and furiously.
When they’re done writing, they’ll need to reread their writing, decide if it is done or
if they have more work to do on it, and if they are done, to get started on another piece
of writing. For the f irst few days of the unit you will want to allow your kids to write
any kind of piece so long as they are writing! It’s not until the second part of the unit
that you will get all of your kids writing informational pieces.
There are a few things that are especially essential for this year and one of these is
stamina. One secret to stamina lies in the paper that you give to your children. You
will almost certainly want to start the year by providing kids with booklets, not single
pages. Those booklets can each contain f ive or six pages, and for most of your children,
each page can contain just a small box for the picture and plenty of lines—perhaps
eight—for the writing. Remember, they have been writing in booklets since kinder-
garten, so they will expect this! It is impossible to overemphasize the power that the
paper, itself, has for conveying expectations. Therefore you will also want to have var-
ied paper choices to match the different text features that they might want to include in
their informational books. Within this one unit, you should expect that second graders
will write approximately eight f ive-page books. Those are very rough estimates and
certainly many children can do a great deal more than this, of course, but don’t expect
that second graders will write only a page a day, or a book a month! 
Of course, this writing process—choose a topic, get started, write fast, reread and
maybe improve the writing, get started on another piece of writing—is hardly the
perfect writing process, but it is a start. During the second part of this unit, we suggest
you rally your students to work in more grown-up ways with their writing partners—
and those more grown-up ways of working with partners will also be more grown-up
ways of engaging in the writing process. By helping students use partners to help them
write really, really well, you can teach kids to engage in more extensive planning for
writing, thinking about alternate ways to make the text the best that it can be, and you
can teach young students to engage in more extensive revision work.
Still, even if you provide youngsters with partners and use partners to support a
more ambitious writing process, this is just the very start of the year, so students will
gesture toward more extensive rehearsal and revision, while for many children, their
work will probably still cycle fairly quickly between rehearsal, drafting, revision, and
editing. That is okay. One of your biggest goals is to launch all your writers in such
a way that they can work with a lot of independence and zeal. Imagine that young
writers are a bit like a group of kids who have gathered to play basketball. You are the
coach. The kids are all standing around, looking at you. If you want to lift the level of
kids’ skills at playing basketball, you probably will not start by teaching just one small

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group of kids a particularly tricky jump shot, or even teaching the whole group that
jump shot. Instead, you’ll f irst get all the kids playing the game, running up and down
the court, making shots, and only after they are all playing the game with indepen-
dence and conf idence will you be in a position to lift the level of what they are doing.
Similarly, at the start of the year, you’ll probably want to f irst get all your youngsters
cycling through whatever version of the writing process comes easily to them. 
F inally, during the last part of this unit, you will return to the topic of revision, this
time focusing on teaching writers to be resourceful and ambitious revisers of their
writing. Of course, this time, they’ll be revising toward the goal of publication as your
unit reaches a culmination. 
The minilessons that follow this write-up are “repertoire minilessons” that chan-
nel second graders to draw from their full repertoire of skills. These minilessons and
this write-up combined will, we hope, help you encourage writers to draw on the full
array of things they already know how to do. As part of this, writers will be channeled
to write f ive-page booklets from Day One, to revise from the start of the year on, and
to solve their own problems as they write.

Writers Draw on What We Already Know to Write Up a Storm, Then We

F ind Ways to Make Our Pieces Even Better! 

From the moment your young writers enter your room, you will want them to draw
on all they know as writers. This f irst part then, is a place to empower your students to
get started independently, bringing all they have learned from kindergarten and f irst
grade to their second-grade writing workshop. You will want to build on the fact that
your writers will feel more grown-up as second graders, while still using this f irst week
of school as a time to initiate the structures and routines that underlie any effective
workshop. Some teachers have found it works to start your f irst minilesson by saying
something like this to your writers: “You writers must be feeling very grown-up this year.
Do you remember the f irst time you ever came to this school and you weren’t sure where
to go, or what to do? You were probably standing there, thinking, ‘Where do I go? What
do I do?’ But I bet that this year when you came to school, you knew what to do! Well
right now we are starting our writing workshop, and I have huge news to tell you. This is
it: You already know what to do. And you don’t have to sit there and ask, ‘What do I do?’
You can get started on writing, just like you can f igure out how to get off the bus, go to
the playground, line up, come into our room . . .”
If you were to start your year with a teaching point such as that one, you’d of course
want, in the body of that minilesson, to tuck in comments such as, “You already know
how to convene in the meeting area,” and then you’d quickly summarize some of the
things you assume children already know (but may have forgotten). You could also
suggest children already know how to disperse from their meeting area to their work
spaces (and again, this could allow you to review your expectations, perhaps acting out
the transition from the meeting area to work spaces). If you do act this out, you will

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probably want to physically show kids how to push in your chair, come swiftly to the
meeting area, sit cross-legged on top of your writing folder in the assigned rug spot,
and reread the charts that hang near the meeting area. The point is that you can say to
youngsters, “You already know how to . . .” and then you can proceed to review what
you are assuming children already know.
Teachers, you may worry about an opening minilesson that is so presumptuous.
You may be thinking, “What if some of them don’t know what to do?” You may be
thinking, “Yes, but this year I want them to do all those rituals in a better way than
they did them before. Shouldn’t I clarify all the expectations right from the start?” If
you start on Day One by teaching one strategy for generating topics for informational
books, and if on Day Two, you teach a second strategy, you’ll never really know what
your kids would have done, could have done, had you started the year by giving them
an open invitation to go at it.
Over subsequent workshops, you will remind students not only of the routines they
know, but also of the different purposes for writing and the qualities of strong writ-
ing they already know. In kindergarten and f irst grade your students learned to write
for many different reasons. You might say, “I know that you are pros at writing Small
Moment stories from your own lives, and I also know that you have written books to
teach others about topics that you know a lot about. You have even written opinion
pieces to persuade others to see your point of view! Wow! Not only do you know how
to write for so many different reasons, but you also know how writers write in certain
ways, depending on what they are trying to do in their writing. As experienced writers,
you should have no trouble coming up with different topics or ideas that you might
want to write about. And once you come up with your ideas you’ll be able to grab the
booklet you need to get started right away.” While you will want to talk this up to your
writers so that they feel empowered to do the work you’re asking them to do, you will
also want to be aware of what you will need to remind them as they begin to stretch
their ideas across pages.
Within your f irst few minilessons, you will want to teach at least one minilesson
that communicates to youngsters that they should expect to make stories and books
that are more grown-up! You might say to your writers, “You got started in your
booklets in really grown-up ways. You know how to choose the right paper, to f ind
your own topics, you even know how to start your books like grown-up writers do
. . . but as I looked at your writing, sometimes the actual pieces didn’t look all that
grown-up. I think you are ready to write more and to make your writing go from good
to great!” Then you will need to teach them some new strategies to elaborate so that
their books are a lot longer than they were during the preceding year. At this point in
the unit, it is more important for students to be drawing on all that they know across
all genres of writing, so that they are writing with great zeal and ambition, rather than
to focus them to write only informational books right from the get-go. Some students
may choose to write about small moments in their lives at this point while others will
begin to write informational books about topics they want to teach others. The impor-
tant thing is for you, as the teacher, to realize that the bulk of this unit is focused on
informational writing so that you can be sure to demonstrate in your own writing the

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choices you make in deciding what type of book to write. You may want to focus some
of your lessons around the consideration of audience, and thinking about why a writer
chooses to write a narrative or informational piece, allowing the writers in the room
to make these decisions on their own. Be sure that you have different paper choices
that align with the genre
You will want to revisit the stages of the writing process too, reminding students
of all that they already know about each of those stages. For example, writers will
come to you having already learned to plan their stories and books by telling or
sketching them across pages, so you could say, “I’m sure you all remember how you
tell your story or information across your f ingers. And I see that many of you also
draw pictures on each page to help you plan and remember what you want to write.
Today I want to teach you that after you’ve rehearsed your piece, after you know
what you’ll say, then your sketches on each page can be really quick—just enough to
help you remember what you want to say so that you can get started on your writing
right away!” This way, you remind the students of the strategies they already know
for planning, while focusing on an important way to lift the level of second-grade
writing, which is to devote less time to drawing and more time to writing. In gen-
eral, you are going to want to be sure that your students devote f ive minutes or so
to rehearsing for writing, not a full day! 
Throughout this part, you also want to encourage your students to take owner-
ship of their own writing, making decisions as they write to take their pieces from
good to great. Your writers need to learn that they are the “bosses” of their writing.
You may say to your writers, “I want to teach you that every day, you are in charge of
your writing. Like a puppy, your pieces will beg for the things they need. Can you hear
the barking? Everybody stop. Listen. Listen. What are your stories begging for? What
information do you need to add to books? What do you need to pay attention to?”
The point in this part is that one way or another, you need to be sure that you
rally kids to not only recall all that they have learned and to get started doing that
work again, but also to work with zeal toward new and ambitious goals. It will also
be important to notice where in the process students tend to get stuck—and to teach
them how to get past that impasse. Children need to know how to come up with story
ideas or topics to write about, to get started, write, f inish, reread, revise, and get started
on another piece, all without needing teacher involvement. They need to be problem
solvers in their own writing. You might say, “When writers are stuck and don’t know
what to do next, we think over our list of all the stuff we know how to do, and we solve
our own problems!” That is, children need to be able to cycle through the writing pro-
cess with independence, leaving you free enough to teach. If children are asking “Can
I be done with this book and start another?” or “Can I get another sheet of paper?”
refrain from answering these questions and instead coach writers to generate their
own logical answers. Or at least say, “Of course. You do not need to ask me. You are
the writer! You are the boss!”

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Second-Grade Writers Work with Partners in Grown-Up Ways, Helping
Each Other to Share Information Effectively

You will have begun the year teaching kids that they can draw on all they already know
to write as well as possible, and inviting them to get going on their writing. After a week
or so of such work, children will be ready for the unit of study to take on a new emphasis.
There is no one way the unit could unfold—no set-in-stone progression to the unit—
but our thinking is that if this year is going to maximize your students’ potential, you
will want to rally them to work in increasingly powerful ways with each other. One of
Murray’s key articles is titled “The Other Self,” and it suggests that when novice writers
regularly read each other’s writing, thinking about ways that another person’s writing
could be made even stronger, then writers learn to eventually become readers of their
own writing, rereading their emerging draft, asking, “What’s working that I could build
upon?” and “What’s not working that I could repair?” We suggest, then, that this second
part of this unit might rally students to invest in partnership work to an extent deeper
than they’ve experienced before. While supporting those partnerships, you can help
students use partners to scaffold their engagement in the writing process. That is, while
ostensibly supporting writing partners, you can actually support students’ engagement
in the process of writing. “Partners help each other plan writing,” you can say. “Partners
also help each other revise writing.”
After drumming up independence and conf idence in the f irst week of second grade,
allowing your students to write across genres of their choice, you will then want to
shift the focus of this unit to informational writing. Therefore, while you tap into the
repertoire of strategies that the students in your classroom already know, you will want
to do so in ways that lift the level of informational writing in the room. You might start
this part by validating the various genres that the students chose to write in during
the initial part, and then you might say, “Now that you are second-grade writers, you
not only know so many things about writing and what it takes to be a strong writer,
but you also know so much about the world around you. You have learned so much
in kindergarten and f irst grade, and so I thought it would be fun to spend the next
couple of weeks writing informational books to teach others all that you now know.”
As we mentioned earlier, the Common Core State Standards call for a strong
emphasis on informational writing, so we think it’s a good idea to get your students
writing nonf iction texts right off the bat. The challenge when teaching this unit is to
make sure that you are not simply giving students another month to write informa-
tional books, but that you are also ramping up the level of their informational writing.
You will want to be sure that students enter this school year realizing that the expecta-
tion is not just that they dutifully f ill up the pages of their booklets with facts that they
know, but that instead, the expectation is that they actively, purposefully, work toward
making their writing better and better. You will want to acknowledge the all-about
and expert books that your students wrote in kindergarten and f irst grade, while at the
same time letting them know that as second-grade writers they will be learning how
to make these books even stronger. The writing that students were able to do at the

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start of the school year—say, in their f irst on-demand informational assessment—is
the starting line, and each week, each month, there should be visible evidence that
each student’s writing has improved. It is especially important that now, at the very
start of the year, each child sees his or her writing getting better, day by day, week by
week, because if students start the year seeing themselves outgrowing their old selves
in ways that are visible, then they’ll develop expectations for that growth curve being
the status quo for second grade.
You might, for example, begin this portion of the unit by telling your students that
you know they are accustomed to working with writing partners, but that you wanted
to teach them that grown-up writers actually use partners in a really special way, and
you thought maybe, just maybe, there would be a few second graders who might be
ready to use partners like the professional writers do. Of course, your entire class will
be on their knees, insisting they’re game for this, and with that drumroll you could
point out the truth, which is that grown-up writers look hard to f ind writing partners
who help us become better as writers. We know that a writing partner who isn’t just
a “pat on the head, ‘Good Girl’” partner, but who says, “You can do even more than
this!” and helps us to do that, is worth a million.
It is important to recognize why writing partnerships are important, and you will
want your second-grade writers to get this sense too. Partners can make pieces of
writing—and writers—better. To make sure this happens, you will want to give your
students strategies that allow their work in partnerships to pay off. You can teach
students to take the responsibility of listening to each other’s work (and their own
work) really seriously. Perhaps in partnership meetings, the writer will read aloud his
or her writing, while the partner carefully listens and looks on with the reader, offering
suggestions to improve readability. You might, for instance, illustrate what you don’t
expect partners to do by showing what a disinterested partner might look like (lean-
ing back in his or her chair, eyes scanning the room, yawning) and contrast that with
a pantomime of an interested partner.
In this part, you will not only teach behaviors that allow for effective partnerships,
but you will also want to teach strategies to help your writers lift the informational
books they are writing. You will want to recognize what your children have already
learned while writing all-about books in kindergarten and f irst grade, so that you
are acknowledging how you expect so much more now that they are second grad-
ers. Instead of teaching one way that partners can help one another to elaborate on a
topic, you will want to teach your writers to ask questions to one another in order to
prompt places where more elaboration is needed. This is a good time to teach second
graders, that not only is it important to add more to their books, but as sophisticated,
grown-up writers, it is even more important to be deliberate in choosing the places to
elaborate. You might say, “Today I want to teach you how you don’t just need to add
more to each section of your book just to say you did, but instead you can use your
writing partner to help you f ind the parts in your book where you need to add more.”

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Writers Revise

Now that kids have been immersed in writing for a few weeks, you will want to remind
them of all they know about revision. They may have entered second grade thinking
of revision as a postscript to writing. If so, you’ll want to teach them that writers shift
often between drafting and revising, and you’ll want to nudge students to draw on their
repertoire of revision strategies without waiting to be prompted by a teacher. You won’t
need to teach each revision strategy in a self-contained minilesson, but instead you
might introduce this part by saying, “Writers are like cooks. A cook doesn’t just pour
in some ingredients and then Presto! the soup is done. No way! Instead, the cook adds
things, takes things away, and changes things until the writing (like the cooking) is the
very best it can be.” 
Of course, once a text has been added to, tweaked, ref ined, it still requires exten-
sive revision. You’ll need to decide whether some of your writers might be game for
attempting a second draft—most will probably use carets or revision strips to insert
missing information. If your children have already been immersed in the workshop
model, there is no reason to go back to introduce all of these forms of revision in
separate minilessons.
Within this unit, you can teach your students that now that they are in second
grade, and writing like second graders, they might be game to make their books like
real books they might f ind on the shelves of the library. You might ask your writers to
reread their own text as if it was a book they had checked out to learn new informa-
tion about a topic. To talk up the value of learning from mentor texts you might say to
your students, “If we want to write books that others will want to learn from, we can
remember that other writers have already done writing that is like the work we are
doing, and we can use their writing to make our writing better.” Then again remind
students what they likely learned in kindergarten and f irst grade about using authors
as mentors when we write. You might take an author like Gail Gibbons, for instance,
and encourage your students to notice the craft moves and elaboration techniques she
uses to teach information in her books. They should already be familiar with using
authors as mentors, and so you might even bring in charts from f irst grade when
they looked at nonf iction texts as mentors to revisit how this might inform their own
informational writing. In this third part, you really want to convey that as writers you
expect your kids to be writing and revising all the time as they continue to learn new
strategies to make their writing even better throughout the year. You want to get the
students doing this as part of their everyday process, and not seeing revision as an
end-of-the-unit means to publishing, but as a recursive process that allows them to
consistently improve the pieces they are working on across any given unit. In this f irst
unit you will want to clearly set the tone for ongoing revision. Therefore your students
should be turning to mentors, charts, and partners throughout the entire unit to con-
tinue to make their books the best they can be as they progress through the unit.

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Preparing for Publication

While focusing on content and trying above all to be sure your children are writing up
a storm, you’ll want to notice your children’s spelling development, their command of
the conventions of written language, and their stance toward writing conventionally. For
now, you will see that some children write without a lot of concern for spelling, even the
words they almost know correctly. Others obsess about spelling every word correctly,
wanting your seal of approval for every decision. You need to be sure that you differenti-
ate your instruction, helping those less concerned with spelling to take that extra second
to remember to write correctly in upper or lowercase, pausing to spell word wall words
correctly, and inserting end punctuation as they write. Alternatively, you’ll want to help
the children who see writing as little more than an exercise in spelling and penmanship
to focus much more on writing quickly, f luently, with more focus on content. For all
children, remember that rough-draft writing is not supposed to be perfect, and that as
children grow older and more experienced as writers, more and more writing skills will
become automatic and effortless for them.
At the end of the unit, children will choose their best work and they will revise more
deeply and extensively, with help from you. One of the best ways for your writers to do
this f inal revision work is to act as though they are teaching someone all about their
topic. You might teach students to act as teachers when they get together with their
partners to share the information in their books. In this role of “teacher” the writer
will need to be prepared to respond to questions that his or her partner might have
around the topic being taught. This will allow the writer to notice whether or not the
information he or she has includes the most important things that someone might
want to know about their topic. You will want to prompt the partners to stop the
teachers to say, “But I don’t understand. I don’t know anything about soccer, and you
mention that you need shoes to play, but will any old shoes work? What kind of shoes
do soccer players wear? What makes shoes special and important to the sport?” This
work aligns nicely with the Common Core State Standards for second grade where
students are expected to ask for clarif ication and further explanation as needed about
the topics under discussion, and they are also required to ask and answer questions
about what a speaker says to clarify comprehension, gather additional information,
or deepen understanding of a topic. This revision process can last for a few days, and
it could, if you’d like, involve taping f laps of paper onto the bottom or the sides of a
draft, using staple removers to open books up so that one page can be removed and a
new one substituted, and so forth. Children will appreciate revision more if you make
this as hands-on as possible. The Craft of Revision book from Units of Study for Primary
Writing can give you additional ideas for minilessons during this portion of your unit.
After children revise their selected work, they will need to edit it. You will presum-
ably already have a word wall featuring a dozen high-frequency words, and if you
haven’t done so already, teach your children that writers reread, checking to be sure
they use word wall words correctly. Having taught this, from now on throughout the
whole year you will want to remind children that they know how to do this and they

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© 2011 by Lucy Calkins. Heinemann: Portsmouth, NH.
can do it without explicit instructions from you. Hereafter, after a child writes a draft
of any story (even if the writer is not on the verge of publishing it) the writer needs to
reread the text, checking that he or she spelled the word wall words correctly.
You will presumably also want to remind children to write with periods and capi-
tals that signal the endings and beginnings of sentences. This concept is not simple,
and although the Common Core State Standards expect that your students will have
already gained command over such conventions in f irst grade, you will want to revisit
this concept, particularly if you notice that students are not regularly attending to such
things in their writing. If needed you will want to remind your writers to think of a
sentence as a thought, then to write that thought down in a rush, then add the period.
Moving to the next thought, you will want to begin to write it using a capital letter. The
Common Core State Standards also expect that your writers will come to you already
using commas to separate single words in a series, so again you might need to revisit
this convention with those writers who have not yet grasped this concept, perhaps
through small-group instruction. Either way you address such conventions, be sure
that students understand that these are not just things to check while editing as they
get ready to publish, but are important aspects of writing, and so from now on, they
should do this always when they write.
Be sure you don’t get overly invested in making September’s published pieces per-
fect. Don’t feel that the pieces themselves need to be more focused, more detailed,
and more compelling than they are. These are little kids at the start of the year and
their work will not be perfect. If you prop the work up so that it matches your high
standards, then the work will not represent what your children can do, and later you
and others will not be able to look at the progression of published pieces to see ways
in which children are growing. This is September, and much of this unit has been
consumed with empowering your kids to remember all that they come to second
grade knowing how to do, so relax. You may choose to have your own private author
celebration, and then hang the f inished work within the safe conf ines of your own
classroom if you need to do so in order to let the children’s own work stand.
We recommend the simplest possible publishing party so that you get on to the
next unit by the start of your second month of school. Perhaps just put writers into
small circles where each one has a turn to read aloud, with the listeners chiming in
after each author reads. Then gather the kids alongside the bulletin board where each
writer leaves his or her work in the appropriate square, perhaps saying, as he or she
does, “I’m proud of the way I . . .” Or, you could be the one to say what it is that you
want to celebrate in each author’s piece.

Additional Resources

As you approach this unit it will be important for you to read the entire write-up, not
just the teaching points and sample minilessons below, because, in the end, kids learn
through the work they do, and the write-up is jam-packed with ideas, activities, and
teaching to help you organize and create opportunities for children to engage in work

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that matters. The unit write-up can help you issue the broad invitation that rallies kids
not only to work with heart and soul, but also to engage in deliberate practice, trying to
get better at specif ic skills that the unit aims to highlight.
In the end, a good portion of your teaching will revolve around the responsive
instruction you provide as you move kids along trajectories of skill development. This
part of our teaching relies on you assessing your students often—not in big fancy ways,
but by watching the work they do—and on you seeing their work as feedback on your
teaching. If you have taught something and only a handful of kids are able to sustain
that work to good effect, then you’ll want to decide whether that skill was essential,
whether you want to reteach it in a new way, or whether you want to detour around it.
You’ll want to become accustomed to f ine-tuning your teaching through an attentive-
ness to student work, because your students’ work not only shows you what they can
or can’t do, it also shows you what teaching moves you can do next.
The minilessons that follow the teaching points are meant to help you ref lect
on this f irst unit of study and are by no means an all-inclusive account of the unit.
These lessons are aimed mainly to get your kids thinking about all that they already
know as writers. Of course, you will need to see what your students know as you
assess the writing they do on Day One and throughout this unit to build upon their
repertoire. You will obviously need to add many lessons (using the possible teaching
points below, alongside the work that your students are producing), especially since
a major aim of this unit is to ramp-up the informational writing that your students
are working on.

One Possible Sequence of Teaching Points

Part One: Writers Draw on What We Already Know to Write Up a

Storm, Then We F ind Ways to Make Our Pieces Even Better!

n “Today I want to teach you that as second-grade writers you already know what
to do during workshop. You can remember back to f irst grade and kindergarten
and use all you know to come up with ideas for pieces of writing you want to
make, to f igure out what to do if you get stuck on a hard part or word, and how
to revise your work when you are done. You don’t have to wait for a teacher to
tell you what to do—you can use all that you know.” (Sample Minilesson A)

n “Today I want to teach you that when writers are trying to write long and strong
we keep our mind thinking and our pen writing.”

n “Today I want to teach you that writers think about what we want to say, who
we want to say it to, and what kind of piece we want to make. We think about
our choices and decide, ‘Is this best to tell as a story or an informational book?
Or should I write someone a letter about this?’ Then we gather up the paper we
need and begin to write.”

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 n “Today I want to teach you that when writers are stuck and don’t know what to
do next, we think over our list of all the stuff we know how to do, and we solve
our own problems!” (Sample Minilesson B)

n “Today I want to teach you that writers plan. We either sketch, tell, or even jot
a couple of notes about what we will write. This helps us to get our ideas and
words organized and clear before we start writing or revising.”

Part Two: Second-Grade Writers Work with Partners in Grown-Up

Ways, Helping Each Other Share Information Effectively

n “Today I want to teach you that as you write your informational books you can
still use all that you have learned in f irst grade and even kindergarten. You will
want to think about what you are an expert in and also who might want to learn
about your topic. Really think about your audience and what it is that you want
to teach them. As you write your book, keep your audience in mind, so that you
are writing directly to the reader.”

n “Today I want to teach you that you don’t just f ill up your booklets. You think,
‘What is the information I am trying to teach and why is this important?’ That
helps your reader know why she should care about your topic.”

n “Today I want to teach you that grown-up writers actually use other writers in a
really special way, and I thought maybe that some of you second graders might
be ready to use your writing partners like professional writers do. We know that
a writing partner who isn’t just a ‘pat on the head, “Good Girl” partner,’ but
someone who says, ‘You can do even more than this!’ and helps us to do that,
is worth a million.”
x Tip: “You don’t add more to each section of your book just to say you did.
Instead, you can use your writing partner to help you f ind the parts in your
book where you need to add more.”

n “Today I want to teach you that writers need partners to listen as we read, plan,
and think about our writing. As we start second grade, it’s important to remem-
ber that writing friends really listen. Listeners look for things that we like in each
other’s writing and also ask questions. This helps you not only give your partner
compliments but also f ind tips that can help your writing get even better.”

n “Today I want to teach you that partners help each other become stronger
writers. We help each other not just by noticing how much our partner has
become a stronger writer but what kinds of goals we can set together.”

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 Part Three: Writers Revise

n “Today, I am going to teach you that writers are like cooks. Whenever good
cooks think they’re done, they taste their food. Writers, we do the same thing!
We don’t say, ‘We’re done!’ We read our writing to decide what we can do to
make it better. We add things, we take things away, and we change things until
our writing piece (like our cooking) is the very best it can be.”

n “Today, writers, I want to teach you that not only can you revise using strips
and f laps to add into your booklets, but also by trying a second draft! You might
rewrite your entire book or chapter inside your book. You could start from
scratch, maybe with a new title or idea, and rewrite your book or chapter, put-
ting more power behind your words.”

n “Today I want to teach you that when we are trying to write books we want oth-
ers to learn from, we can turn to books that we have learned from to notice what
those writers did, and we can use their writing to make our writing better.”

Part Four: Preparing for Publication

n “Today I want to teach you that as you revise your best book you have to really
think, ‘What else do I need to include in my book to help teach others and to
show that I really care about my topic?’ One thing you can do is meet with your
writing partner to actually teach the information. Then you will see how your
partner responds. We need to be prepared to respond to questions that our
partners might have around our topic.”
x Tip: “Your partner will be listening and asking questions like ‘But I don’t
understand. What do you mean?’ or ‘Why is this important?’ This will help
you notice what other information to include!”

n “Today I want to teach you that writers reread our writing like detectives. We
search for words that need to be f ixed up and spelled better. As second grad-
ers, you already know of many tools to help you to do this. You can use the
word wall, charts in the room, what you already know about vowel patterns
and chunks, or you might even turn to books about your topic to help you spell
words the best you can.”

n “Writers use punctuation as we write to give directions to our readers when our
thought or action ends and when a new one begins. When we edit our writing
we will want to look at how we used punctuation to make sure that our thoughts
and ideas are clear to the reader. Today I want to teach you to read your work
carefully—like a detective—thinking about what changes you need to make.”

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 x Tip: “Remember that a sentence is a thought. At the end of that thought is a
period. The next thought begins with a capital letter. As we reread our work
we read on the hunt for parts that we want to edit—and we use punctuation
in a better and clearer way.”

Sample Minilesson A
By Lucy Calkins

Connection
“Writers, you must be feeling so grown-up. Do any of you remember the f irst time you
ever came to school and you weren’t sure where to go, or what to do? You were probably
standing there, thinking, ‘Where do I go?’ ‘What do I do?’ It must feel so different this
year, right? How many of you, when you got off the bus, had to just stand there and ask,
‘What do I do?’ ‘Where do I go?’ Well, right now we are starting our writing workshop
and I have huge news to tell you. This is it. You already know what to do. And you don’t
have to sit there and ask, ‘What do I do?’ You can get started on writing, just like you can
f igure out how to get off the bus, go to the playground, line up, come into our rooms.”

Teaching Point
“As second-grade writers you already know what to do during workshop. You can
remember back to f irst grade and kindergarten and use all that you know to help you
come up with ideas for pieces of writing you want to make, to f igure out what to do if you
get stuck on a hard part or word, and how to revise your work when you are done. You
don’t have to wait for a teacher to tell you what to do—you can use all that you know.”

Teaching
“Let me remind you of something you already know. After our minilesson it will be time
for you to write, and I’ll say, ‘So Table one, you can get started. Table two, you can get
started.’ If I had said that to you when you were a kindergarten student, what would you
have done? Right now, pretend it’s three years ago and you are f ive, and it is the start
of writing workshop, and I’ve said, ‘You can get started on your work.’ What would you
have done? Thought?” (I act out a f ive-year-old, startled, paralyzed, and invite the kids
to join me.)
“But you aren’t in kindergarten, are you? You are in second grade. So when I tell you,
‘You can get started on your writing,’ picture what you’ll do. . . . Make a movie in your
mind of yourself doing that.”
“I wonder if some of you are picturing that you’ll look for the kind of paper you
want to write on. I bet some of you are deciding on booklets with three pages, some
on booklets with f ive pages. Are any of you picturing that you’ll choose your paper?

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Are you? You aren’t just sitting there frozen going, ‘Huh?’ You are getting yourself
started? Great.”
“And are any of you picturing yourself thinking, ‘Hmmm, what will I write about?’
and deciding you’ll remember true stuff you’ve done? Are you? Are ideas already
coming to your mind, without a teacher telling you what ideas to have? You can think
about stuff you are dying to tell people, right? And you can think about times you’ve
had strong feelings.
“And . . . I know this is a long shot . . . but are any of you remembering that if you
have a watermelon idea, like ‘the day at the beach,’ you can think about a small seed
idea . . . like ‘when a seagull ate half my hot dog.’”
“So writers, do you see that just like you already know how to get off the bus and
make your way to the playground and to the classroom . . . you also already know how
to write? And that means that from this day on, all this year long, you can get going
on your writing, showing all that you know how to do.”

Active Involvement
“So right now, will you picture what is going to happen when I say, ‘Table one, will you
get started on your writing?’ Picture what kind of paper you are going to take from the
pile . . . picture yourself thinking about a story you are going to write. . . . Remember
back to f irst grade to help you out. What are all the things that you are going to do in
workshop today? Turn and tell your partner.”
Have your kids turn and talk. Listen for all the things that they remembered from
f irst grade about workshop and writing. Let them talk for a minute or so and bring
them back to the whole group.
“Second-grade writers, I listened to you talk and share with your writing friends
about what you learned last year in f irst grade. Wow! I heard you say lots of things!
You must have really been paying attention because I was amazed at all you have
learned. I could go on and on and on about it. One important thing I heard was that
you learned how to pick what to write about. I heard you say you learned that you can
write about things from your own life, your own experiences. Turn right now to a writ-
ing friend and talk about some of the things in your own life you could write about.”  
Have your kids turn and talk once more brief ly. This will help them generate ideas
and get a strong start when they go back their writing spots. Listen for a few examples
that you could share with the rest of the class.

Link
“Writers, let me stop you. I heard some of you say that today you want to write
about the special people in your lives, like your family and friends. Some of you are
going to write about your pets, a play date, and swimming at the pool. I even heard
someone say, ‘I’m going to write all about my karate class’! Yikes! you all have a lot
of books to write.”

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 “You have years of experiences swirling around in your seven- and eight-year-old
minds just waiting to be written about. I know that you don’t need anyone to tell you
what to write about. I know you won’t need to ask anyone what to write about because
each of you is the one who knows these things. You were there. You are the one who
saw stuff happen. You are the one who felt the feelings when those things were hap-
pening. You may have heard sounds and you may have even smelled smells—you are
the one who was there. Even if someone in this room was also there, you had your
own experience!”  
“So guess what writers?! You are the boss of your own writing! Today is the f irst
day of workshop and you have lots of ideas of books that you want to write. You
learned so much last year that you are now experienced writers who know what you
can write about. Don’t forget those things! Use all that you know to help you as a
writer. You have the ability to replay what happened like a movie in your mind. So
writers, get going!”

Sample Minilesson B
By Lucy Calkins

Connection
“Writers, do you realize we have only been in school for a few days? I think that if we
made a list of all the stuff you do as writers, it would be taller than most of you!”
You might select a student to dramatize just how long this list will be. “Turn that
way, Marco, we’ll make our list alongside your back. Let’s see, hmmm . . .” (I reach
down to the back of Marco’s shoes and start making my hands crawl up his backside,
as if we were singing the itsy-bitsy spider song and the spider was climbing up the
water spout. I make a large hand-size step up for each new item as my goal is to reach
his head.) “We learned that . . .

n “writers can think, ‘What are the cool things I’ve done that I’m dying to tell
people about?’ and we can write about that.”

n “writers can think, ‘What are some times when I had huge feelings—like I was
really sad, or really scared . . .’ because those times make for stories that make
kids feel the same stuff I was feeling.”

n “when writers f inish a story, we don’t just sit there . . . ho hum. Instead we . . . ?
(The kids chime in—‘Start a new one.’)”

n “writers can write a paragraph on a page, not just one sentence.”

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 n “it helps to write not big watermelon stories, but little tiny seed stories . . . and
that if we have a big watermelon story like ‘I had fun at camp’ then we can think
about the little seed stories inside that.”

n “And we learned that if we get stuck on a word—we can do the best we can,
right? We can stretch it out and listen to the sounds, and think, ‘How do I write
that part?’ and ‘Have I seen other words that have that part in them?’”

n “And we learned that we can read over our stories and f ind the most important
page, and we can say, ‘This needs to be my best,’ and tear that page right out
and write it again.”

(By this time, I’m up to Marco’s head.) “Our list of what we have learned is as tall as
Marco! Pretty soon, one of you will need to stand on Marco’s shoulders and our list will
be as tall as two of you!”
“Right now, will you and your partner list some of the things you have learned in
writing workshop so far this year, and see how tall your list is? Partner Two, stand up
to be the measuring stick and help Partner One think of things to add to your list! See
how tall it gets.”
(Stopping them midway.) “I need to stop you guys but holy moly, you guys know
a lot.” (I speak over the hubbub.) “I’m going to add one more thing to your list, so I
need you to sit and I need all eyes up here. This is a really, really important thing, so
I need total attention.”

Teaching Point
“Here it is. Today I want to teach you that when writers are stuck and don’t know what
to do next, we think over our list of all the stuff we know how to do, and we solve our
own problems! Sometimes, you get stuck and instead of saying, ‘I can solve my own
problems’” (I make my arm into a muscle and speak in a commanding voice), “you say”
(now I speak in a tiny squeaky voice and throw up my arms helplessly), “‘Help me, help
me, I don’t know what to do. Help me, help me.’” (I borrow the voice of the little rab-
bit from the song, “In a cabin in the woods, a little old man by the window stood, saw
a rabbit hopping by, knocking at his door—‘Help me, Help me’ the rabbit said, before
those hunters shoot me dead.’”)
“But after today, you don’t need to say, ‘Help me, help me.’ Instead you can say, ‘I
can solve this myself.’ And you can pull out your list of all that you know how to do.”
(I whip the list out of my pocket with triumph and hold it up, as tall as Marco.)

Teaching
“So writers, I’ve  been writing a story about how I went to the zoo and saw a boa con-
strictor . . . pretend I got to that word—boa constrictor—and I start to think . . .” (I take on
the needy voice and hand gesture), “‘Help me, help me, I don’t know what to do.’ You

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© 2011 by Lucy Calkins. Heinemann: Portsmouth, NH.
know what I’m going to say to myself?” (I look around to see if the kids are gesturing to
show they have their list, or calling it out.) “You are right! I’m going to say, ‘Lucy, you
don’t need to say, “Help me, help me,” you can say, “I’m going to solve this myself.”’ (I
draw my imaginary list out of my pocket, holding it as high as Marco’s head.) “Then I
will think about all the stuff I know how to do . . . and pretty soon I’ll remember, ‘Wait,
when you come to a word you don’t know, you can write it as best you can,’ and I’ll start
stretching out boa constrictor to hear the parts of those words, right?”
“So you see, writers, you don’t have to say, ‘Help me! Help me! I don’t know know
what to do!’ You can take out the list of things that you know! You can use our charts
in the room to help you when you get stuck in your writing.”

Active Involvement
“But, oh my goodness, what if I f inished writing my story about that trip to the zoo?
What if I was done? And what if I knew I could start a new story but I wanted instead to
revise my story? And what if I didn’t know what I should do to revise, and I started to
go to the teacher and . . .” (I’m just about to reenact the “Help me” pose but cut myself
short to instead pass the baton to the children.)
“Let’s pretend. Partner One, you are going to ‘act stuck,’ like you don’t know what
to do to revise your story. You are so so needy, and you just want someone to tell you
what to do. Will you ask Partner Two for help in your most whiney squeaky little
weak-kneed voice? Partner Two, your job is to remind Partner One what she or he
can do. How can your partner use his or her own list of things that can help, as well
as the lists in our classroom?
“Partner One, remember, you just f inished your story about the trip to the zoo, and
you are really stuck and needy—pretend—Go!”
Over the hubbub, I called, “Partner Two, help Partner One. Don’t tell Partner One
how to revise! Remind her what she can use to help get herself ‘unstuck’!”

Link
“So writers, you now have one more thing to add to your list of what you know how to
do. You know how to solve your own problems! (And I pull out an imaginary list.) If any
of you want a tiny version of our list of things you have already learned to do, I have put
some of those lists on the middle of each table.”
“Think about the work you are going to do today. How many of you are adding on
to your story, letter, or all-about book? How many are doing what real authors do and
revising? Will some of you be starting another story or letter? Okay—those of you who
are starting a new story, letter, or informational book, will you get started? Will those
of you who are going to be revising your books and letters you just f inished, or even
books that you wrote earlier this week, get started? Let’s the rest of us watch to see if
these writers start by rereading and thinking to themselves about their ideas for what
they could do. They might even put Post-its on each page to tell themselves their ideas
for making that page better. The rest of you can get started.”

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© 2011 by Lucy Calkins. Heinemann: Portsmouth, NH.
Mid-Workshop Teaching Point
“Writers, can I have your eyes up here? I loved watching you solve your own problems
today! How many of you have been acting like weak and needy ‘Help me, help me’ writ-
ers today? None of you?! That’s what I thought! And we still have twenty more minutes
of writing time. How many of you think you will be able to keep yourself busy doing cool
stuff for that whole time? Thumbs up if you think you’ll be able to give yourself work
to do, and you won’t need to get into that ‘Help me, help me’ stuff. Right now, will you
each tell your partner some of the stuff you are hoping to have time to do during the rest
of today’s writing workshop, and see if you all can not only give yourself ideas for what
to do but can even give each other ideas?”
“Writers, can I stop you? I know you haven’t each had time to talk yet, but I am
pretty sure you can talk this out to yourself, so will you f inish whatever you are saying
and get started doing all this important work. And if you didn’t have a chance to tell
your partner what you plan to do, tell yourself your plans before you get started doing
them. Then you can get back to work.”

Teaching Share
“Writers, it is really helpful to talk over the work that you do. Right now, let’s talk over
the work that Jeremy did as a writer today, and think with him about the work he could
do next. Then we’ll do the same talking-over with our partners. This is Jeremy’s writing.
(I project an enlarged version of it, and read it aloud in a way that does not cast judg-
ment on it, but doesn’t make it sound absolutely perfect and done either.) Jeremy, can
you point out some of the things you were trying to do to make this a great story, and
show us where you did them?”
Jeremy talks about how he added details and I pull from him why he was adding
those details, and where he added them, and how he went about coming up with
details. Then I ask, “What else were you trying to do?” and when he runs low on
intentions, I quiz more specif ically, “What were you trying to do at the start of your
story?” Then I ask the other children to talk to Jeremy about what they noticed, and
other ideas they had for what he might possibly try. When children are too command-
ing about what he has to do, I caution them that Jeremy would need, in the end, to
decide for himself. Then I channel all children to work in a similar way to think about
Partner One’s writing, starting with Partner One talking about what he or she wanted
to do, how he or she tried to do that, making sure the writer talked about more than
one intention.

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© 2011 by Lucy Calkins. Heinemann: Portsmouth, NH.
 unit two

Authors as Mentors

OCTOBER

W
  hile the TCRWP has lots of reasons for emphasizing personal narrative writ-
ing, the good news is that this decision is f irmly rooted in the Common Core
State Standards, now adopted by forty-three states. The Standards require
that students develop some prof iciency at writing three kinds of texts: opinion writing,
informational writing, and narrative texts. An examination of the student work included
in the Appendix of the Common Core State Standards shows that the level of prof iciency
required for narrative writing is especially high. Although the standards say that second
graders should recount a well-elaborated event, including details, thoughts, actions,
feelings, and providing a sense of closure, this little list of expectations doesn’t come
close to conveying what the pieces of writing in the Appendix to the Standards convey.
The message is clear: Youngsters need to develop high-level skills in narrative writing.
Therefore, in this unit children will write narratives, selecting small moments from
their lives and then writing those across the pages of booklets. Since the writers in your
rooms have already experienced this type of writing in past years, you will want to con-
tinue to emphasize the repertoire of work that you began in September. Children come
to second grade with a backpack of tools for writing narrative, and Small Moments in
particular, and this is their time to carry these tools forward, using them to craft stories
that readers are eager to read. The second-grade work is to challenge writers to create
the types of narratives that the Common Core State Standards require. That is, your
writers will embark on a unit of study in which they will write narratives that read like
real literature, stories that published authors themselves would craft. To do this work,
children will study the craft of an author and incorporate these craft moves into their
own writing.

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© 2011 by Lucy Calkins. Heinemann: Portsmouth, NH.
 One of the most important messages we give to children during a writing workshop
is this: “You are writers, like writers the world over.” It makes sense, then, that we
invite children to look closely at the work of one published writer and learn to let that
writer function as a mentor. Once children have looked closely at a text, or at several
texts, written by one author, noticing the author’s craftsmanship, they can turn toward
their own writing, ref lecting on their own craftsmanship, thinking, “Perhaps I could
try this in my piece.” So, one goal for this unit will be for children to embark on a life
of noticing craftsmanship and then applying that craft to their own work, lifting the
quality of their writing by doing so. Imagine that your children will be writing half a
dozen booklets, each with f ive pages and approximately one paragraph per page, dur-
ing this unit. From the start they will write Small Moments under the inf luence of their
author of study and then, as the unit progresses, they will revise pieces, as authors do,
using all the craft moves they have learned from start to f inish.
A word of caution: This unit is, at its core, about strengthening narrative craft. It is
not a unit for writers to craft adaptations of an author’s book. If you are studying Kevin
Henkes as a mentor author, your writers will not walk away with eight to ten versions
of “Malik Worried” stories where they themselves worry and worry themselves into
a tither, only to f ind a best friend with similar issues and f ind a place in the world.
Your writers will walk away from the unit with the ability to write dialogue and small
actions that reveal a character’s inner beauty by carefully choosing and crafting words
and phrases that belong to that character. So, as your writers dive into the rich work
of Small Moment writing, you will want to be sure to rally them around studying how
each of the mentor pieces was written. This work will be especially critical at the start
as children generate story ideas and begin writing their booklets. The unit draws upon
Authors as Mentors from Units of Study for Primary Writing (Heinemann 2003), which
will be a helpful resource for you as you teach this unit.
Before you can decide upon the mentor author your class will study, you need to
mull over the kind of texts you imagine your children writing during this unit. Because
this unit comes early in the year and sets the stage for the upcoming unit on f iction,
we strongly suggest you choose a mentor author who can help children with the craft
of writing effective, focused narratives.
Three of our favorite authors for this are Donald Crews, Angela Johnson, and Ezra
Jack Keats. Chances are good that your children studied these authors during previous
years, but if not, you may want to select one of them. Specif ically, The Leaving Morning
and A Sweet Smell of Roses (Angela Johnson), The Snowy Day and Pet Show! (Ezra Jack
Keats), and Short Cut (Donald Crews) are all splendid touchstone texts for this unit.
However, you probably will not want to select a text and an author that children
studied in earlier years. Other options include Owl Moon (Jane Yolen), My Father’s
Hands (Joanne Ryder), I Love My Hair and Bippity Bop Barbershop (Natasha Anastasia
Tarpley), and many of Kevin Henkes’ books (including, for example, Sheila Rae, the
Brave, Wemberly Worried, and Sheila Rae’s Peppermint Stick). 
Once you have selected a mentor author and a mentor text or two, don’t announce
this to the children yet. F irst, read the book aloud doing everything you can to make
the read-aloud magical. If your children are as taken by the book as you are, they may

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feel as if they are part of the process of deciding to take on a special relationship with
this author, this text.
As you study this mentor author, you might focus on how the author writes for
the reader. This work can be geared in ways that could challenge any writer or it can
be angled to rally children to invest more energy in the basic conventions that second
graders are expected to control. If you decide to gear this in ways that are especially
challenging, you will probably want to emphasize all the ways that writers write for the
ear. Teach children that writers can use punctuation (and the complex sentence struc-
tures that generally accompany varied punctuation) to convey meaning by guiding
readers to vary their intonation, reading some passages as if they are secret tips tucked
into the main message and reading others as if they were confrontational challenges.
For example, show students that authors use ellipses to create suspense, or to let their
readers know that something big is about the happen. Writers can also use temporal
phrases for transitions such as: After that, Early one morning, and Suddenly.
While we imagine that most second graders have been in writing workshop since
kindergarten and are therefore well versed in narrative and prepared for this work,
some of you may f ind that your children are more novice narrative writers. If that’s
the case, you might want to refer to the f irst-grade curricular calendar, studying the
unit on Small Moment writing. You may also want to refer to Launching the Writing
Workshop from Units of Study for Primary Writing (Heinemann, 2003). You will likely
want to begin this unit with an on-demand writing assessment, asking children to
write a focused narrative to show what they know about writing, and then use the
RWP’s Narrative Writing Continuum to assess their work and determine which trajec-
tory best suits this year’s class.

Rehearsing and Drafting Lots of Stories under the Inf luence of

an Author

You will want to begin this unit by inviting children to live like the writer they adopt as a
mentor, while maintaining and building on the volume and stamina you established in
September. Even if you do not know much about the life of the particular mentor author
you have chosen, you can convey to children that this author almost certainly lived dif-
ferently because he or she was a writer. This person probably paid close attention to the
details of life, recognizing those details as potential grist for the writing mill! In order to
tell children about the attentive, wide-awake life of a writer, draw on words any writer
has written to describe that writerly life. For example, you could read aloud a page or
two from I’m in Charge of Celebrations by Byrd Baylor, using that excerpt to show that
writers (including the mentor author you have decided to study) don’t just walk past all
the details of our lives. When a writer drives along a road, the writer is apt to glance up at
the beautiful clouds, and to see that one is shaped like a parrot. Others might just drive
on, but writers say, “My gosh! Look at that!” and pull over. Pretty soon more cars stop
and there is a whole tribe of parrot cloud worshippers looking up at that cloud. Baylor’s

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The Other Way to Listen, Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, and many of Georgia Heard’s books
can also help you bring children into the writerly life. 
In Authors as Mentors, we suggest that in order to live writerly lives, youngsters carry
tiny notepads with them, jotting or sketching the little things that happen. Children
have loved this concrete tool that can help them assume the role of writer, recording
details of their lives. If you decide to encourage writers to keep Small Moment writ-
ing pads, we recommend you purchase the smallest notebooks you can f ind and then
scissor them into thirds so that these notepads are truly tiny. Otherwise, children
start writing their whole stories into these, and of course those stories end up hor-
ribly underdeveloped. You might say to your children, “I bet Kevin Henkes got the
idea for his story, Sheila Rae, the Brave, from one day when he got lost. He must have
thought to himself, ‘I need to remember this moment,’ and then jotted or sketched it
in a notepad.”
You will want to carry your own Tiny Topics notepad, and make a rather public
show of how you take it out to record the small moments that happened to you. “Oh
my goodness!” you might say, “I slipped on the ice and Audra kept me from falling.
Soon Audra and I were skating on that ice! That would make a great story! Let me
jot just the words ‘slipping on ice—Audra helped’ in my Tiny Topics notepad to hold
onto that idea.”
Of course, collecting ideas in a notepad will happen mostly outside of school,
although writers could also take f ive minutes of the writing workshop to collect ideas
for stories. But within ten minutes of the writing workshop’s start, you’ll probably
need to lead a mid-workshop teaching point to remind writers that once writers have
collected a few story ideas, writers read our notes in order to select small stories that
we think would make others laugh, or wince, or catch their breath, or lean in close to
hear more. Then, we take this story idea and plan the story. This, of course, takes just
another f ive minutes or so—don’t imagine children spending a whole day planning a
story! Remind children of the planning strategies they already know. Some writers will
choose to stretch their small story out over f ive f ingers, retelling the story in a f inger-
by-f inger fashion, touching each f inger and telling that increment of the story. Other
writers will do similar storytelling work, touching the pages of a booklet instead of
their f ingers. You might say, “Writers, as you well know, writers don’t just dive right
into writing. We take a minute to plan how our story will go. You already know lots of
ways to plan. You know you can sketch across the pages of your booklets, stretch the
moment out over f ive f ingers, and practice storytelling as you touch the pages and tell
the story. The important work is for us to use what we already know. Writers think,
‘Which strategy will I use today?’ Then we quickly begin to rehearse our piece.” After
planning, children will write the story in full: “I was walking to the park in my new
brown boots, when all of a sudden I slipped on a patch of ice. My feet did a little dance
as I tried to steady myself. Just as I was about to topple over, I felt a hand on my arm. It
was Audra to the rescue! We laughed and linked arms. Then something happened. My
feet started sliding again and so did Audra’s and before we knew it, we were skating
on that patch of ice. It was fun!” All of this will happen within the f irst day of the unit,
keeping the pace of starting, and sometimes f inishing stories, in one or two days. Just

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as in September, writers will be revising on the go, so when we f inish one book, we
pause to reread and think carefully, “Is this how I want this part to go?” or “Hmmm,
could I add something more here?”
In this f irst part, in addition to thinking about where authors get ideas, you might
notice with your writers how your mentor author structures his or her writing, perhaps
noticing in Sheila Rae, the Brave, that Kevin Henkes really spends a lot of time on the
part when Sheila Rae is lost because that is the most important part of the story. You
might also notice how the bulk of the story is about one time, and one big thing that
happened, and that the author doesn’t just rush right through it, but tells what hap-
pened bit by bit. Kevin Henkes doesn’t just say, “Sheila Rae got lost, but then her sister
found her.” He takes his time to really make a movie for the reader. It’s not one page,
problem, next page, solution, but many pages on each. This can also be a way to talk
about building volume. “Kevin Henkes doesn’t stop at f ive pages, so why should we?”
You might also point out in this f irst part, all the things the author did that we already
know how to do, helping writers maintain their repertoire of skills. In this f irst week,
you will probably expect writers to write two or three books, each one a little stronger
than the one before.
Then too, right from the start, you will want to encourage writers to use all that
they learned in prior years to develop the characters in their stories. You might say,
“Writers, when you were young, you all drew stick f igures in your sketches. And, all
of them looked alike. But then, as you grew older, you added more details and began
to sketch characters that were distinct, they didn’t look alike and they each had their
own def ining characteristics. Well, as writers grow older and stronger, the characters
in our stories go from being stick f igures to f leshed-out people. We add details that
describe how each character looks so that our reader can see each one clearly in her
mind.” Or, you might teach your writers that to create robust characters they write
not only what that character does, but also how the character does those things. And,
you will want to emphasize that writers not only do this rich character development
for the main character, or ourselves, but for all the characters in our story. Of course,
as you teach each of these lessons, refer back to the mentor author, showing the chil-
dren how each of these comes to life across the pages of the books they are studying.
This will remind your writers that with making reading-writing connections, we don’t
choose similar topics as the mentor author—but we do use similar techniques.
When you are helping children study and incorporate what authors have done into
their own writing, you will probably want to go back to the RWP Narrative Writing
Continuum and think again about where your children are in the process. For example,
if many of them are at Level 3, writing brief chronicles about how they (or a character)
progressed through a sequence of events, then you may want to point out what the
mentor author has done by f inding instances of that author doing some of the work
that is especially important in Level 4 narratives. After all, those are just beyond what
the children are doing now. For example, the Continuum states that a writer of a Level
4 narrative “may begin to demonstrate some sense that a narrative account requires
an ending. The ending may involve an emotional response.” Ryder ends My Father’s
Hands with an emotional response: “No one will ever bring me better treasures than

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© 2011 by Lucy Calkins. Heinemann: Portsmouth, NH.
the ones cupped in my father’s hands.” It is helpful to realize that most qualities of
good writing can be thought of as trajectories, as lines of development, along which a
writer can develop.

Writing Stronger and Longer Drafts under the Inf luence of an

Author: Writers Study Authors We Admire and Try Their Craft in Our
Own Writing

After children have written a few stories in their f ive-page booklets, you will want to
remind them that writers are often inf luenced by craft. That is, we turn to a mentor
author, studying her work to see how the author makes her story as strong as possible
and letting the author inf luence our own work. What others have done gives us ideas
for ways we can make our stories even better as we write.
When teaching children to make reading-writing connections, it is important that
they have already read and appreciated the text under study. After reading a text sim-
ply to appreciate it, readers can reread that text, looking for places in it that “got to
us.” Portions of a story that make a reader say, “Ugghhh,” or “Ahh” are portions
that we want to study, asking “What did the writer do to get this response?” Show
children that after you’ve appreciated a text, you return to it, thinking especially about
the places that made you feel something intense, the places that made you gasp, the
places in the text that you want to savor much like you would savor an ice cream cone
on a warm day. You might say, “Writers, when we read beautiful, tasty stories by other
authors, we sometimes need to remind ourselves to slow our reading down and really
notice the beauty of the literature. We need to savor the parts of the story that most
speak to us, our favorite parts.”
If your mentor text is Sheila Rae, the Brave, for example, you can share how you felt
humbled and awed by the author’s precise word choice: “The sounds became more
frightening. The thoughts became more horrible. Sheila Rae sat down on a rock and
cried. ‘Help,’ she sniffed.” You might say, “Listen and envision this moment. Can’t you
just see Sheila Rae on the rock, and hear her voice as she sniffs ‘Help’ in a tiny voice?
Can’t you just feel how frightened she is? Kevin Henkes didn’t just write, ‘She was
scared. She said, “Help.”’ No, he imagined it and tried to choose words that showed
exactly what Sheila Rae did and said so we could feel what she felt.”
You will want children not only to notice these poignant moments in text, but
also take the craft moves they are seeing and try them in their own writing. You want
children to say, “That was so delicious! I’m so inspired! I want to write just like that!”
and then race back to their pieces and write feverishly. To do this, you will want to
teach children that writers analyze the text. You might ask students, “What, exactly,
did Kevin Henkes do that worked so well? What did he do to make this part stand
out?” In the example we just saw, Kevin Henkes chose a dialogue tag, “sniffed,” that
captured a feeling; students too could try dialogue tags that communicate a feeling.
And you could ask children, “What did this author do to make me feel so sad? What
did this author do to make me laugh?” and so on. 

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 While studying an author’s text, you and your children might also notice, for
instance, that your mentor author uses punctuation to grow suspense (ellipses, dash
marks, or commas), making the sentences sound more and more exciting, or for
emphasis, as Molly Bang does in When Sophie Gets Angry—Really, Really, Really Angry.
. . . Point out to kids that even the title includes a dash and ellipses. Or they use short
sentences, as Kevin Henkes does in Sheila Rae, the Brave to convey fast actions. He
writes, “Sheila Rae walked and walked. She turned corners. She crossed streets. It
suddenly occurred to Sheila Rae that nothing looked familiar.”
Second graders often write sentences that have many “and then . . . and then . . .
and then . . .” sentences that go on endlessly. In their eagerness to get lots of informa-
tion onto the page, they miss the chance to write varied sentences. Help them f ind new
ways of elaborating by examining ways in which mentor authors elaborate without
resorting to “and then” over and over. If your mentor author is Molly Bang, you could
point out that in When Sophie Gets Angry—Really, Really Angry . . . Molly could have
written, “She kicks and then she screams and then she wants to smash the world to
smithereens and then she roars a red, red roar and then Sophie is a volcano, ready to
explode.” Instead, Molly draws out the action, showing us how Sophie’s anger builds
and builds by separating these actions into short, fast bits: “She kicks. She screams.
She wants to smash the world to smithereens. She roars a red, red roar. Sophie is a
volcano, ready to explode.” And then, Sophie takes action: she runs! “She runs and
runs and runs until she can’t run anymore.”
You can teach your children that writers write with readers in mind, making sure
their texts include things like end punctuation. When you teach this, remind writ-
ers that usually a person thinks of a whole sentence, a whole thought, and then we
write without stopping until we get to the end of that thought and put a period down.
Then we have another whole thought, and starting with a capital letter we write and
write until that thought is down, again without stopping, and we put a period there.
The kids won’t do this perfectly and that is okay. Your goal, though, is for kids to begin
to write in sentences of thought, punctuating on the run. Punctuation should not be
an afterthought that writers insert once a text is completed, although of course once
a text is completed writers can reread, using punctuation as road signs, f inding places
where the punctuation may need to be altered.
As children work on writing with voice and using punctuation and sentence struc-
ture to bring out their stories, you can suggest they look at mentor texts again, noting
the sparkling and unusual words mentor authors use, the ways they use short sen-
tences, and even sentence fragments, to increase the pace and excitement. Or how
they alternate long and short sentences, or have repeated sequences of long or short.
You might teach children to look at how the punctuation affects the tone, and the
unusual punctuation, such as ellipses and dashes. Then, too, you might teach your
children that they can look at how the mentor opens up his subjects—the things he
chooses to illuminate in his stories.
Remember, as children move through this part, they should be attempting each of
these things as they compose as well as when they practice ongoing revision. As you
move through these next few weeks, you will want to ensure that children are writing

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stories that incorporate all you have taught as they write, not just as an afterthought
when they are done.
Once children have noticed that an author uses a technique (such as weaving nar-
rative with rich, precise language to bring something to life), you will probably want
to return to a text that you worked on publicly earlier in the year—your own story or
a whole-class story—and invite children to think about places where you could have
used this technique for good purpose. Then you and the class might rewrite those
sections to incorporate that technique. You might invite children to reread their own
writing in a similar way, and, more importantly, to think of another technique the
mentor author used; then they can search for places where they could use that same
technique to good effect in their writing.
Craft techniques will be collected onto a chart that the students can use to remind
them of all you have taught. These could include the techniques just mentioned—
building suspension, using sensory images, using comparisons—as well as others,
such as using repetition, sound words, and small actions to slow down the story. The
chart might contain an example or two of a “craft move,” then the name that the class
has given to that craft move, followed by an effort to talk about the effect this device
has had on the children as readers. For example, the chart might contain a couple of
Henkes’ precise dialogue tags, then it might name what Henkes has done, saying,
“Uses exact action words instead of ‘said.’” F inally the chart might say, “Helps the
reader picture exactly how the character talked.” At f irst, children will summarize a
craft move with just a word or a phrase: “He wrote his feelings.” You will want to help
children talk with much more specif icity about what, exactly, made this particular
technique so effective. You might point out the decisions the author made, the path
he could have—but didn’t—take. “He could have just said, ‘I felt sad,’ but he didn’t.
Instead he wrote . . . What, exactly, do you think he did here that makes this part con-
vey feelings in such a powerful way?” And then discuss what makes this particular
detail, description, or bit of dialogue so effective.

Deeper, More Powerful and Thoughtful Revision

After children have spent several weeks composing new pieces, each one getting a little
stronger than the one before, quickly revising each on the run, you might choose to stop
writing new pieces and take a week to linger over all the powerful revision writers can
do. You might spend this week having children take out all the pieces they have written
so far and “have a go” at the deeper work of revision. Taking time to focus on revision
will help it to become an effortless part of writing for these kids, and not just what a
writer does in preparation for publication. During this unit, writers can never get enough
of their revising pens, strips and swatches of paper, scissors and tape, and staplers and
staple removers for adding several pages to their booklets. These tools should remain
in your writing center from the previous unit of study, so be sure to replenish your sup-
plies. Create a drumroll around this with your writers: “Writers, I am ref illing our writing

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center with lots and lots of revision tools because I know you will be revising so much as
you learn how to write from other writing teachers!”
As children try out one and then another technique, be sure to nudge them to be
independent. That is, don’t set up an atmosphere in which all children try out the same
technique at one time; the idea is not for children to be working in sync. Rather, you’ll
want kids to generate their own ideas and to use those ideas in their own writing. The
goal is for children to try techniques that resonate for them—ones they admire—and
for them to use the inf luence of an author mentor’s craft moves to inf luence their own
craft moves. What works for one child’s writing won’t necessarily work for another’s.
You will want to support them with this work, teaching them how to examine their
pieces and their mentor’s pieces and think, “What is it I really want to do to make mine
stronger?” Then, encourage them to race to the writing center and grab the tools to
carry out this plan.
Earlier we described craft charts that the class might keep during this unit (and
beyond it). The goal of independence should be ingrained enough that you think, “I
bet I should nudge each child—or at least those who seem ready for this—to keep
his or her own craft chart as he or she reads during independent reading so the child
records what he or she notices authors doing.” In any case, all children need to draw
on all the craft techniques they have noticed as they write and rewrite stories. The
message, then, is “Go to it!” resulting in a f lurry of “I notice . . .” and “I’m going to
try . . .” based on the students’ observations of the writing of the mentor author—and
eventually of any author.
Partners will also be an important part of fostering independence and large-scale
revision. When two partners come together to talk about their writing, rather than the
partnership conference starting with one writer simply reading aloud his or her draft,
there needs to f irst be discussion so the listening partner has some sense of what he
or she is listening for. Partners, then, might begin a conference by asking (as teach-
ers, too, are apt to ask), “What are you working on today as a writer? How’s it going?
How else could you have written that? What are you planning to do next?” Once the
listening partner has an idea of what the reading partner is working on, the reading
partner can read aloud her draft—or a section of her draft—and as she does so, she can
put Post-its on the parts that affect the listening partner (pages that make that person
laugh or say, “Oh my goodness,” or lean in close, and so on).

Wrapping Up the Unit

As the month draws to a close, you will again ask children to select a narrative they
especially like to further revise and to publish. You may want to celebrate your students’
growth as writers by having them publish their books as picture books, just like their
mentor authors. They can study how these authors create titles for their books, who
they write dedications to, and what information they choose to include in the “About
the Author” section. Authors also have publication parties where they share snippets of

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their books with an audience. These books can be placed in your classroom library or on
a special shelf in your library, and be available for independent reading.
Another enjoyable and meaningful way to celebrate students’ growth in this unit is
by putting on a Readers’ Theater in which kids perform the parts of a script out loud.
You can draw on one of your mentor texts to create a script either on your own or
as a class. If your mentor author is Kevin Henkes, students could put on the play of
Sheila Rae, the Brave, with half the class taking the part of Sheila Rae and the other half
Louise. Perhaps you or a student would be the narrator. Explain to kids that Readers’
Theater is different from a regular play in that the performers don’t wear costumes
or move around a lot. There’s also no scenery or props. Instead, performers use their
voices, facial expressions, and slight gestures as they read their parts. This is the perfect
opportunity for kids to draw on their knowledge about how good literature appeals to
the reader’s ear to bring familiar texts to life “on stage.”

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 unit three

Writing and Revising

Realistic F iction

NOVEMBER

Y
 our second graders will be dying to write f iction, and this is a perfect time to
introduce this unit because the most important message you’ll want to convey
is this: Use everything you learned during the previous unit of study in order to
write f iction. That is, you will want to make it clear to your children that while they are
embarking on a new unit, this unit is another narrative unit. Therefore, they will want to
draw on all the craft moves they learned from Authors as Mentors and all the strategies
they have in their repertoire from writing Small Moments. The goal for this unit will
be to write well-elaborated short stories. The Common Core State Standards call for
second graders to write sequenced narratives, while providing a sense of closure, so you
will want to help your writers think about the arc and language of their stories, about
the passage of time, and about the need for a conclusion that brings the story together.
As you head into the unit, be clear that children will write lots of stories during
this month, and they will progress through those stories, working at their own unique
paces. Your launching day will make all the difference in the world. On this day, you
will want to demonstrate that writers select a planning strategy from a repertoire of
possible ways to plan. Then plan by thinking of a character who has a problem and an
eventual solution, and after thinking of such a story idea, writers write the start of a
story on paper and then think of another possible story and write the start of that story
as well. If you teach students to plan out and start several stories, right on Day One of
the unit, it will be far more likely that as the unit unfolds, writers who complete a story
quickly will have others in-waiting and will be able to shift to write those other stories,
not waiting until the whole class progresses in sync from one story to the next. This
will allow the f iction writing workshop to feel like a workshop, with writers working
zealously on their pieces, with some starting a new story on any given day while others

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continue working on a story. The unit ends with an invitation for writers to look back
on all the work they have generated—which for some students will be an armload of
stories—selecting one or two of those stories to revise deeply and extensively.
In addition to emphasizing repertoire and independence, you will also want to
use this unit as an occasion for building volume. You can support children to write
longer stories in part by shrinking the size of the planning-pictures children make, or
by encouraging some children to jot a quick phrase in each of those planning boxes
rather than relying on drawing, which is a more time-consuming vehicle for plan-
ning. Then too, think about the paper choice that children will have during this unit.
If children have tended to write in f ive-page booklets with f ive or six lines on a page,
some of their pages will now contain more lines. Of course, every table needs extra
pages so that students can expand their booklets, and also every table requires f laps
and tape so that writers are encouraged to revise without waiting for encouragement
to do so. Don’t underestimate the expectations that can be conveyed just through
your materials!

Writers Draw on Everything They Know to Write F iction Stories

Early in the unit, you might ask children to recall what they already know about writing
f iction stories. Most of your youngsters will have written f iction stories last year, and the
experience will probably have been memorable. You could even ask children to bring
in stories they wrote last year, or at the very least, they could tell partners about those
stories. By starting the unit with this invitation for students to recall previous experiences
writing f iction, you are making sure that you do not act as if this will be the very f irst
time your children have ever written f iction. You may even go so far as to start the unit
by asking students to write an on-demand realistic f iction story. That way, you will be
able to assess what students remembered from realistic f iction writing in f irst grade and
adapt your unit plans accordingly.
Before you ask, “What did you learn last year?” you will need to predict what
you’ll hear and decide whether your message will be “This year, let’s do the same,” or
whether your message will be “This year, because you are older now, let’s now try . . .”
For example, you may hear that last year, children were channeled to write stories
about a child who was their age. They may have learned that authors often base their
stories on themselves or on people they know. The TCRWP staff tends to suggest
you continue to channel kids to write about characters who are roughly their age,
so that youngsters have a wealth of experiences and emotions they can channel into
that character. Children may report that in previous years, they often spent a day
or two coming up with ideas for their character, drawing the character and writ-
ing notes about the character. It is true that this is one way to get started on f iction
stories—and some writers may continue to use that as their starting strategy. But in
general, we have found that it works best for writers to f irst come up with a general
storyline and only then develop a character or two within that story. So we’re recom-

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mending that a child might f irst decide, for example, to write about a character who
is new to the school and has no friends, and then afterwards f lesh out the character,
deciding if this youngster is a girl or a boy, giving the character a name, and so on.
You might suggest writers begin by collecting story ideas in their Tiny Topic note-
pads, before getting started on their booklets. The child might write, for example, “a
kid moves and has no friends and then gets a friend somehow,” or “a kid wants to
make a goal in soccer, and then does.” You should suggest that children carry their
Tiny Topic notepads home with them, as they did in the previous unit, thinking of
and jotting down story ideas while they are away from the writing workshop. As a
child waits for the school bus, he might jot down, “misses bus and walks to school.”
As the child heads off to art class, he might write, “boy makes great painting in art
and wins prize.”
After a day of generating ideas for stories, your children will have plenty of pos-
sibilities for a story. They will choose one of those and perhaps spend a few minutes
f leshing out the character in that story. Alternately, the writer can begin to write the
story, just to see how the story might work, trying her hand at starting a f irst page.
It may be that a writer generates f ive or six story ideas, selects three as good pos-
sibilities, and then writes a couple of different f irst pages to each of these stories.
So, encourage writers to dive in, using several story ideas. If you can help writers
to generate a bunch of different possibilities, you help them realize that writing is
a process of trying something out, then reviewing it critically and thinking, “Wait, I
have a better idea!”
Once a writer has chosen one of these story ideas, he will want to spend a bit of
time—f ive minutes, perhaps—rehearsing for that story. It helps for the writer to tell
the story she might write across her f ingers or to say the story aloud as she turns the
pages of a blank booklet. By telling a story multiple times and in multiple ways before
writing, the writer makes it likely that the f irst draft will be much more effective.
Writers can do this storytelling by touching the pages of a blank booklet on which
they will soon write their story, or they can use a strategy that older students use,
which is to fold a sheet of notebook paper into quadrants to make a mini-booklet,
quickly sketching four panels to capture what happens f irst, next, next, and last.
Using the four “pages,” you can suggest that each child quickly sketch how his or
her story might go. The story about the boy winning a soccer goal, for instance, could
start: page one, a stick-f igure boy kicking the ball into the goal—no words are neces-
sary. The writer would then need to f igure out what occupies the next pages. Is the
boy treated like a hero by his teammates—and if so, how exactly? Then, what hap-
pens on page three? Does he teach a little kid how to play soccer and watch while
that kid makes a goal? The point of this mini-booklet is to take all of three minutes to
sketch a story from start to f inish, so a child can sketch a couple of versions for how
the story might go, storytelling each (touching the page and saying aloud the exact
words the writer might write). We prefer these mini-booklets to storyboards, but the
two are really versions of each other and you can use either scaffold, or neither. The
important thing is that in any case, you will not want to give writers ditto sheets on

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which to plan their writing. These should be informal—not photocopied! It is also
important for writers to be encouraged to try their stories one way and then another
way, deciding how they should go. In essence, they are revising before they are even
writing a single word. Once the writer has a plan for the story, he or she can shift to
sketching pictures across the pages of a full-sized booklet, or, if writers want to do so,
into immediately writing his or her story. 
Remember to encourage revision from the start of the unit as aligned with the
Common Core State Standards. Writing is a powerful tool for thinking precisely,
because when we write, we can take f leeting and intangible memories, insights, and
images and make them concrete. When we talk, our thoughts f loat away. When we
write, we put our thoughts onto paper. We can stick them in our pocket. We can come
back to them later. We can reread our f irst thoughts and see gaps in them. We can look
again and see connections between two different sets of ideas. Through rereading and
revision, writing becomes a tool for thinking. A commitment to revision is part and
parcel of a commitment to teach writing as a process.
You can encourage revision by revisiting all that the students have learned about
narrative writing. You may want to pull out the chart from the previous unit where you
noted craft moves from mentor authors to remind the students of all you have taught.
Put this chart front and center, since many of the moves you noted will be just as use-
ful for realistic f iction stories as for personal narratives. You will also want to revisit
the power of partnerships in ongoing revision. Reminding your writers how since Unit
One they have been reading their pieces to their partners, acting out what’s happening
and asking one another questions to make their pieces go from good to great. You will
want your students to be able to both give and take feedback from peers in order to
strengthen their writing in alignment with the revision work named in the Common
Core State Standards.
Of course, once students have written a story they’ll proceed to write another—not
waiting for you to march them along to this in sync! As children cycle through the
process, writing more and more stories, you can continue to teach in ways that lift the
level of stories that have yet to be written, and in ways that prompt writers to reread
and reconsider stories they once thought were done. It could be, for example, that your
children write their f irst stories without you having had much of a chance yet to teach
them that once a writer has a story line, it helps to take some time to develop the main
character. That’s okay. You could teach this to children when most of them are in the
midst of their second story. But at some point, you will want to let children know that
writers often take time to f lesh out characters before writing the actual story. Please
try to steer clear of channeling students to work within ditto sheet graphic organizers
with spaces for listing a character’s internal and external characteristics—that work
has not panned out for K–2 writers—it is best saved for upper elementary grades. We
do, however, believe a writer can think and talk about what the character is like and
act out that character showing how she goes about doing things. Is she shy? Timid?
Frantic? Once a child has a character well in mind, the child’s writing can be much
more colorful.

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Lifting the Quality of Effective F iction Writing

By the time many of your children are working on their third and fourth stories (likely
somewhere in week two), you will probably want to teach writers ways to dramatically
improve their writing. To get children to tell, not summarize, their story, the writer will
decide, “This is a story about a girl who wants a dog because all her friends have them.
At f irst her parents say, ‘No,’ and then she gets it.” Once the writer comes up with the
story, he or she begins writing: “Emily wanted a dog. ‘Can I have one?’ she asked. Her
mother said, ‘No,’ because they didn’t have the money. Then one day she was walking
to school and she saw something and it was a dog.” End of story. It is crucial to teach
children that they need to think, “What, exactly, will be happening at the start of my
story? If the girl wants a dog, what exactly is she doing to show this? If this were a play,
what would she be doing on stage?” Perhaps the child decides that the main character
is going to talk to her mother about getting a dog. The child might write, “Emily walked
into the kitchen. Her mom was making dinner. ‘Mom! Mom! Can I have a dog? Annie
has one and it’s really cute,’ Emily whined.” As she storytells, you’ll teach her to make a
movie in her mind of the exact story, and begin reimagining it, reliving it.
All the advice you might give children to include characters’ feelings or to make
characters talk is almost inconsequential compared to the absolutely crucial impor-
tance of teaching kids to relive the story as they write, imagining the story unfold bit by
bit. One of the best ways to help children imagine a story, by making a mental movie,
is to encourage the writer to act out the story, then record what he or she does. You
may, then, want to move partnership time to the start of the writing workshop and to
suggest children act out the small moment that makes up their f iction stories before
giving words to those actions and that dialogue.
You might also get your writers to think about the stories they are reading and how
other authors bring characters to life. Remind them that not only do writers look to
other authors to learn how to become better writers, but they also look to their favorite
books and the characters in them to see how good writers don’t just say, “The boy felt
sad.” Instead they f lesh out their characters in ways that make the characters come
to life. In order to talk up the value of learning from mentor texts, you might say to
your students, “If we want to write stories that will draw people in and make people
want to read them, we can remember that other writers have already done writing
that is like the work we are doing, and we can use their writing to make our writing
better.” You might highlight how an author like Mo Willems f leshes out his characters
in some of your read-alouds in order to teach them how they can do the same thing,
and then share a second-grade example. “I’m telling you this because today I want to
teach you a secret that writers use when we want to f lesh out the people in our stories.
Just like Mo Willems did, we add details that show how the characters do things, and
that let readers get to know what those characters are like. And we show not only the
main person but also the other characters.” You get them thinking about how good
authors write in ways that allow the reader to step into the character’s shoes, and that
as second-grade writers they can do the same thing.

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 You can also show them how to elaborate the inside story as well as the outside
story, and this may be the most valuable writing skill they’ll develop—it’s one that
makes for beautiful writing. So, for instance, you might show Emily’s actions and feel-
ings: “Emily walked into the kitchen where her mother stood cooking dinner. ‘Mom,
I really want that dog. I’m the only one at school without one!’ Emily felt hopeful.
She stood there, eyes wide, f ingers crossed, holding her breath.” Writers use dialogue
to move the story as well as to stretch out a meaningful scene. So, you will want to
encourage your writers to put in what the characters in each scene say in addition to
putting in actions and feelings. It is by using a combination of these things that the
characters are able to pop off the page, not just a feeling here or some dialogue there. 
Remind children always to draw on all they know about narrative writing in order
to write their stories as well as possible. For example, if during the Small Moments unit
of study, you taught children that narrative writers sometimes begin a story by convey-
ing the weather, or by showing the main character doing or saying something very
specif ic, then during this unit of study, you’ll remind children of what they learned
about ways to begin a story. The only difference is that instead of saying, “I took off
my sneakers and ran barefoot across the beach to the edge of the water,” they will
now write, “Waldo took off his sneakers and ran barefoot to the edge of the water.”
Likewise, you’ll remind children that when they revise f iction, they can draw on the
exact same techniques they used for revision of personal narratives. Keep your charts
that support elaboration and revision from previous units front and center. Keep in
mind, also, the results of your narrative assessment. What do your children seem able
to do on their own? What can they almost but not quite do? If you know what is just
beyond their reach, then you have a good sense of what you will want to teach toward.
As children do this work, you can do just a little bit to help them create a shapely
story. That is, if the story is about a girl who in the end visits her grandmother in South
America, you will need to teach children that typically something happens to make
this goal hard to achieve. Generally, the character wants something and then meets
trouble along the way to achieve the goal. The girl wants to visit her grandmother in
South America, but what? Does the girl’s father not want her to go? Is the girl afraid
of f lying? Is the plane ticket too expensive?

Choosing Our Best Work to Revise and Publish

Just as in the Authors as Mentors unit, you will want to spend the last week of the
unit emphasizing revision. In the last unit, you spent time teaching children how to set
plans for their work and then use a range of tools to carry those plans forward, lifting
the quality of their work. You will not want to let this go, but instead pull those tools
back out, emphasizing to your class that the tools you used in the last unit are helpful
tools for all writing. That is, you want children to understand that because revision is
a part of the writing process it will be revisited over and over again across the year.
Again, they will choose their very, very best and make it better. Revision is a comple-
ment to good writing.

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 You will want to take this time to pull out the charts from this and prior units,
posting them around the room for children to reference. Your writers can study the
charts, and think, “What will I work on today? How will I make my piece the very,
very best it can be?” Then, with their plan in mind, they can go to the writing center in
the room and gather the necessary materials before diving into their work. Of course,
to facilitate this work, you will need to ensure that children have access to the neces-
sary materials. You will likely want to provide them with a revision folder and a color
pen, swatches of paper on which they can add paragraphs to their drafts, and f laps of
paper that can be taped over parts of the story they decide to revise. Teach them to
use staple removers, if they don’t already use these regularly, so they can make their
books longer or shorter.
At this point, your writers will be familiar with many purposes of revision and they
will be quite adept at setting goals for their own revision using the charts. It is also
likely that many children are summarizing during this time, so that you might want to
highlight that one of the most important reasons for second graders to revise is that
this allows them to elaborate. If a child wrote, “For Jorge’s birthday, he got a bike,”
teach this child that he or she can cross out that summary of the event and instead
storytell exactly what happened, step by step. Injunctions to “add more information”
or “add details” have too often led to pages that contain a lot of summary—pages like
this: “For Jorge’s birthday, he got a bike. It was red and has a basket. He liked it. He
was happy. It was a great, great bike.” Help children revise instead by storytelling; help
them create little scenes in their minds using dialogue and small actions to let the story
unfold on the page. “On Jorge’s birthday, Dad said, ‘Cover your eyes.’ Then he heard
him opening some doors, moving some things. ‘Open your eyes!’ Dad called. Jorge
opened them and saw his Dad wheeling a red bike into the room.”
In addition to revising for elaboration, writers also revise to draw forth the mean-
ing of the story, thinking about why this story matters and then writing it in a way
to highlight that meaning. So you might teach these writers to think, “Which page
is the most important? Where in my story does the main character have the big-
gest feelings?” Once the child has identif ied the most important or most emotionally
laden page of the story, help the child rewrite that page from top to bottom, this time
reliving the moment and depicting it with details. For example, a student rereading a
story he wrote about his character, Adam, cooking arroz con pollo with his grandma on
Saturday, might decide that the most important part was when Adam and his grand-
mother smelled something burning. He might cross out his f irst version of this page,
rewriting that page on two long pages that he inserts into the book. This new version
might include dialogue and small actions that show Adam’s feelings.
In addition to teaching children to revise the most important parts, you might also
want to teach students to create more literary beginnings or endings to their stories.
It is useful to show kids that they can try writing a few different versions of a lead or
an ending (or any part of their story) and then think about which version works best.
Children may want to study mentor texts the class has read, trying to name what the
writer did in his or her beginning or ending. 

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 Once your writers have polished up their writing, you will want to f ind a way to
celebrate their stories. You might set up a time to share with another class or older
buddies in another grade, or you might just have them form small groups to share
among themselves. You could even add their stories to your classroom library to
be shared over time. Whatever you choose, you will want to celebrate all they have
learned in this unit.

Additional Resources

Your writers have probably experienced a unit in realistic f iction in f irst grade and already
know many things about writing these kinds of stories. They certainly are not new to
narrative writing and can draw from all they have previously learned to now write f iction.
For additional information, you can refer to A Quick Guide to Teaching Second-Grade
Writers with Units of Study by Lucy Calkins. For more support materials visit the Project
website at www.readingandwritingproject.com and www.unitsofstudy.com/workshop-
helpdesk/teachingSecondGrade.asp.
Remember that in the f irst few weeks, kids are drafting two to four stories in a
week. Help them keep their volume high, both within a piece of writing as well as
across the pieces in their folders. Don’t feel the need to teach multiple strategies for
generating ideas or planning, devoting days to a process students know well. Students
should cycle through this process fairly quickly, jumping right into the work of drafting
and revising. Many teachers have their students write in the third person, the voice of
the narrator. Encourage your students to choose topics that will present a problem for
the character, and then teach ways to build tension, making the problem hard to solve.
In Part Two students will be working on lifting the quality of their stories. Remember,
many of your students will have grown tremendously since your f irst on-demand writ-
ing sample. Look at your students’ writing folders and study their pieces for trends
that you are seeing. As you think about the lessons for this next part of the unit, make
sure that it matches what your kids need. Remember, you are moving your kids up a
ladder of skill development. Refer to the RWP Narrative Continuum to help determine
the direction your class needs.
In the last part, we lay out some ideas for minilessons that support revision and
editing. This doesn’t mean this should be the only time when writers are practic-
ing these strategies this month. As you have noticed, the work of revision has been
threaded throughout the unit because it should be a part of the ongoing writing pro-
cess. There are more than enough teaching points to help your kids move their pieces
toward publishing, but don’t forget to take time to study your students’ work and
ref lect on where they are successful and where they struggle, and tailor your teaching
to those needs. We included more ideas than are possible to implement, so some can
serve as ideas for teaching shares and mid-workshop teaching points. These can also
be turned into conferences and/or small-group strategy lessons.

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One Possible Sequence of Teaching Points

Part One: Writers Draw on Everything We Know to Write

F iction Stories

n “Today I want to teach you that writers get ready to write stories by dreaming. I
do not mean sleep-dreaming. Instead, I mean the sort of dreaming that writers
do. Writers dream about the possible stories we might one day write. And then,
when we get to our writer’s desk—like during writing time—we often write just
the f irst page to the books we might someday want to write. After we have writ-
ten a bunch of f irst pages, we choose one and get started!”
x Tip: “Writers can also use Tiny Topic notepads to collect new story ideas.
We jot a few words like, ‘story about a boy who wants a video game and
tries to convince his parents to buy it.’ Then, we rehearse it, telling the story
to ourselves, and grab a booklet and write.”

n “Today I want to remind you that writers have different ways to plan stories, and
as we sit down to write a piece we decide which one we will use. We can choose
to sketch across the pages of a booklet, jot a quick Post-it for each page, touch
the pages to tell what we’ll write, or say the story across our f ingers. Regardless
of the strategy we choose, we tell the story multiple times and in multiple ways
before writing to make it the best f irst draft possible.”

n “Today I want to teach you that writers don’t save revision for last! Writers revise
right from the start! We can reread what we have written so far and, remember-
ing all we know about making our pieces better, f ind places to f ill in the gaps.”

n “Today I want to teach you another way that writers can revise with partners.
We can give each other suggestions for making our pieces even better. One way
we can do this is to get together with our partner and share the stories we have
written to discuss other possible ways the stories could go. Together, we can act
out different versions of our story and then decide which one is best.”

n “Today I want to teach you that writers know that when we f inish one story we
do not sit there and squeak, ‘Help me, help me! I am done.’ Instead, when writ-
ers f inish one story, we start another. We think of a new idea, study the charts,
and then write that story out across the pages of our booklet using all we know
about writing realistic f iction.”

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 Part Two: Lifting the Quality of Effective F iction Writing

n “Today I want to teach you that writers create characters that feel real, just like in
the books that we read. We make sure the people in our stories have big wants
or needs. Writers think, ‘What does my character really want? Does she just
want a doll or does she really want a friend to play with?’ Then we plan, draft,
and/or revise our stories to show that in our stories.”

n “Today I want to teach you that realistic f iction writers not only think about
what happens in the story but also think about the main character and what
he or she is like. One way we can do this is to step into the character’s shoes,
acting out what he or she does, says, and feels. We can do this work with our
writing partners, too! Then, we can go back to our stories, revising or drafting
our writing to include the small details we acted out to make our characters
come alive for our reader.”

n “Today I want to teach you that writers make mind movies of our exact story
and imagine we are the main character, living through each part. We try to write
down, bit by bit, exactly what we are imagining so our readers can picture it, too.
We know the tiniest details help our readers out a lot.”

n “Today I want to teach you that writers think carefully about each scene we are
writing, making sure they f low. One way that writers move from one scene of
our story to another is to use time transitions.”
x Tip: “We can look at ways mentor texts transition through time to help us
get ideas of ways to do this.”

n “Today I want to teach you that as writers write drafts, we make sure that each
part of our story is giving our readers a clear picture. One way we can do this is
to reread and check our mental movie to make sure our words match. We can
also read aloud parts to our writing partner to make sure our words are clear.”
x Mid-workshop teaching point: “Partners can also read pieces to each other to
make sure our stories make sense. We can say things like, ‘That part was a
little confusing,’ and then go back to make those parts of our story clearer
for the reader.”

n “Today I want to teach you that writers show rather than tell how our characters
are feeling. One way we can do this is by describing the character’s actions or
facial expressions. This helps our reader understand the character and make a
clear picture in their mind as they read.”
x Mid-workshop teaching point: “Remember, writers, that another way writers
show rather than tell how our characters are feeling is to include dialogue.
We can ask, ‘How is the character feeling? What would she say in this scene

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 to show that?’ We also think about how the character would say those words
and include stronger words for said, like shouted, whined, or mumbled.”

n “Today I want to teach you that as writers, we can study our favorite realistic
f iction books, using them as mentors to help us f ind ways to make our pieces
even better. We can get ideas for how to start a story, how to make the character
come alive, how to get the main character in and out of trouble. Then we can try
out these strategies in our own books.”
x Tip: Remind students of strategies taught during the Small Moment unit if
you taught ways to begin stories by conveying the weather or by showing
the main character doing or saying something very specif ic.

n “Today I want to teach you that writers can build tension in our realistic f iction
stories to make readers worry, drawing them to the edge of their seats and push-
ing them to turn the page! One way we can do this is to think about how the
problem in our story will get worse before it gets better. We can think, ‘What
trouble will get in my character’s way to make this problem hard to solve?’”

Part Three: Choosing Our Best Work to Revise and Publish

n “Today I want to remind you that writers are always revising. We can go back to
the pieces in our folders, adding or taking away parts to push ourselves to make
our stories even better! We have many revision tools in our writing center to do
this important work! One way we can add to or remove parts from our stories is
to use paper f laps or strips.”
x Tip: “Another way is to take apart our booklets with staple removers and then
add or remove pages to make our books longer or shorter in certain places.”

n “Today I want to teach you that writers work with partners to think of what to
add in and what to take out of our stories. Writing partners help us f igure out
what is missing and which parts need more information.”

n “Today I want to teach you another way we can revise our pieces. We can think,
‘Which page is the most important? Where in my story does the main character
have the biggest feelings?’ Then, we can rewrite that page from top to bottom,
using a f lap or a new blank page, this time stretching out the moment even
more, including details that show feelings and that slow down the actions.”
x Mid-workshop teaching point: “Another way writers revise is to look back at
our beginnings or endings and try out a few different versions. We can look
back at mentor texts from our classroom library to explore different ways
authors start and end their stories and then try out different beginnings and
endings to see which sounds best.”

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 n “Today I want to teach you that writers know there are certain words that need
to be capitalized in stories. We already know to capitalize character names. Now
we also need to capitalize the names of special places like parks, schools, streets,
and stores, which appear a lot in our realistic f iction stories.”

n “Today I want to teach you that writers edit our writing. Before we begin to fancy
up the pictures and the title, we reread to make sure our writing sounds like we
want it to sound. We check to see whether we need to add in anything that we
forgot, or f ix something that we think is not quite right. If we aren’t sure how to
f ix something, we can ask our partner.”
x Mid-workshop teaching point: “Writers reread our stories to make sure we
are writing in a third-person voice. We make sure all of our characters
have names and that we use he and she, not I, when we talk about our
characters.”

n “Today I want to teach you that writers reread our stories to make sure that what
we have written is clear and easy to follow. We can add in words that we forgot
and add punctuation when we haven’t used it.”
x Tip: “We also want to make sure that we are helping our readers know who
is doing and saying what and where because sometimes it gets confusing in
our books. We might need to add things like ‘he said’ or ‘__________ held
out her hand.’”
x Teaching Share: “Writers reread what we’ve written to make sure that our
stories sound like the books we’ve read. We can include some of our favorite
story language, like One day/night/morning, or Then, All of a sudden, Suddenly,
F inally. Writers know that this language makes our stories sound like the
f iction stories that are on our bookshelves.”

n “Today I want to teach you that writers can publish our realistic f iction stories by
writing blurbs for our partner’s books. We can read the books and think, ‘What
might I say about my partner’s story that would convince people to want to read
it—without giving the whole story away?’ Then we can study a mentor blurb,
thinking about what and how the author said something to get ideas for how
we will write the blurb for our partner.”

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 unit four

Expert Projects
Informational Writing

DECEMBER

T
  hink about the reading and the writing that you do. You probably read the news-
paper, some blogs, emails pertaining to school, books about teaching, brochures
about upcoming events, magazines and websites and articles on whatever topics
interest you. All these texts f it under the broad category of informational texts. And a
good deal of the texts that you write, too, can be characterized as informational texts. It
makes sense, then, that the school year provide youngsters with ample opportunities to
develop a sense of themselves as people who make informational texts.
The unit has several goals. F irst, it gives each student an opportunity to mine his
or her own experiences and to engage in research to develop expertise on a topic
of interest. In schools where this unit has f lourished, students develop reputations
throughout the grade level and the school as experts on the topics that they inquire
about within this unit. They’ll say, “Oh—Abigail—she knows everything about but-
terf lies. She’s wild about them.” The fact that writing positions a person differently is a
big deal. In many primary classrooms, children have had the experience of feeling that
they are the author of stories—true or otherwise. This unit has double power, because
it anoints the writer as not only an author (this time, of a nonf iction book) but also as
an authority on a topic.
A second goal is for this unit to help develop students’ muscles so that they con-
tinue to progress along the continuum of skills toward being prof icient writers of
informational and opinion texts. Specif ically, the unit will teach students to think
analytically about a topic, sorting through the subtopics—the component parts—of
a topic. It helps students think about categorizing information and organizing infor-
mation within a category. Because part of their writing may also be persuasive, the
unit helps students become more prof icient at providing evidence for a claim and at

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unpacking the relationship between a claim and the supportive evidence. Does this
detail go with the claim? Is more detail needed to convince a reader of the merit of
the claim? So often, when students think about qualities of good writing, they think
about qualities that are important to f iction writing. This unit will explore whether
those same qualities are equally important to nonf iction writing, and the unit will help
youngsters understand other values for evaluating a text, including that of answering
the reader’s questions. The Common Core State Standards emphasize that students
will not only recall information from experiences to answer questions, but they will
also gather information from provided sources to do so.
F inally, students will read nonf iction books entirely differently if they, themselves,
are brought backstage to think about the decisions that the authors of nonf iction texts
need to make. They’ll look at the texts written by other authors, understanding that
those authors are trying not only to put facts onto the page but also trying to make
readers feel, think, and act in certain ways. A book about whales may not be simply
an objective just-the-facts account, it may, in fact, be a plea—sometimes subtle and
sometimes less so—for readers to respect, admire, and yes, advocate for these beauti-
ful, massive creatures. The picture on the cover of the text was chosen not just because
it’s “on topic,”—but because it connotes the feelings that the author wants to convey.
The subheads not only name the focus of a part of the text, they also lure the reader
to read on.

Planning the Unit

As always, it is important for you to begin this unit by considering your own students’
skills and thinking about the grand plan for the unit. We hope that you did an on-
demand informational writing assessment early in the year and that you redo that same
assessment now, at the start of this unit, and note the growth that has already hap-
pened—and that which has not happened. Notice whether your children tend, for the
most part, to be writing texts that are comparable to those that are ranked as Level 4
texts, or those that are Level 5, or are they writing texts that are more advanced? The
Common Core State Standards call for second graders, by the end of the year, to be able
to produce a text that is at least equal to the Level 5 texts in the RWP Information Writing
Continuum. Specif ically, the Standards call for writers to write informative or explana-
tory texts in which they introduce a topic, use facts and def initions to develop points,
and provide a concluding statement or section. The Standards also expect students to be
able to focus on a topic, strengthening their writing through revision and editing with
the support of adults and peers. The great news is that students often vastly outdo our
expectations if we simply let them know that more is expected of them. Show them texts
that are like those you believe they will be able to write (calibrating your goal so that it
is a stretch but within reach for most of the class). Think carefully about what students
are not yet doing that you need to teach them to do. You will, of course, notice that your
students are different, one from another, and some of your instruction will end up being
small-group and individual, giving you chances to give individual writers the informative

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feedback about concrete next steps that research has shown has such payoff. But you
will probably also see that in many ways, many of your students will be similar to each
other, and that is because kids are very vulnerable to writing instruction. There will be
things that few writers are doing, and the chances are good that they are not doing these
things because no one has taught them differently.
In any case, as you assess your students and think about the consequent plan for
the upcoming unit, double-check that you want to follow the plan of this write-up. If
your students are just writing a sentence or two on a page and your real hope is for
them to write more—say, a few sentences on a page, a few pages in a day—then your
students may not have had solid writing workshop experiences in kindergarten and
f irst grade, and you may decide that the f irst-grade informational book write-up (and
unit) will better support your students. This write-up is new, and the ideas have been
developed for classes of students who are already f luent as writers.
Essentially, the plan for this unit is that students write one book only and an
oral presentation aligned to that book (oral presentations are very supported in the
Common Core State Standards). The unit unfurls in a more sequential and restricted
fashion than is typical for most units. The children spend two (or fewer) days generat-
ing possible topics, studying mentor texts, and choosing between possible topics to
begin to generate ideas for the content of their book. They use prior knowledge about
the topic to make rough plans for how their books might go. Then children learn that
revision is important to authors, and authors revise even before they have written any-
thing. You can teach students to study the structure of mentor texts more closely, to
learn more, and to think and rethink possible plans. After revising plans for the book,
your writers will begin work. The f irst project will be to create a table of contents, and
then to consider each chapter, thinking, “What kind of writing will this probably be?”
and then to create a book, f illed with pages to match the planned chapters. Be sure to
have lots of loose paper around in case students write more than expected. Then, with-
out skipping a beat, your writers will get started right away on the second part of the
unit. They will be writing long about each chapter from their tables of contents, allow-
ing them to tap into their prior knowledge about the topic in a big way. You’ll want
to encourage kids to write down everything they know on the page, using prompts
such as, The important thing to know is _______ or What might surprise you is _______ to
extend their thinking. Writing what they already know will help kids also see what’s
missing by realizing which chapters are much shorter or more diff icult to write about,
so that they can f ind out more. At some point—probably soon after the start of the
unit—you will want to teach students to think about the genre or form in which each
of their chapters will be written. Is this page on “How to Get a New Kitten” a how-to
text? If so, might it help to use the how-to paper from last week? Or does it make more
sense to use lined paper and to create a paragraph on that page that has a how-to feel?
As in any unit, and most certainly during this part of the unit, you will want to study
some mentor texts with your writers to help them imagine possibilities for their own
books that they can try to emulate. Claire Llewellyn’s Earthworms, Jennifer Dussling’s
Bugs! Bugs! Bugs!, and Nicola Davies’ Suprising Sharks are just three we recommend.

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 During the third part of the unit, once kids are on their way, you’ll introduce
various methods of research for collecting even more information on a topic—you’ll
suggest that children review their chapters and collect some related “artifacts.” This
means they might include some observations or diagrams to support their writing,
or they might bring in photographs, objects, or books from home related to their
topics. If a topic is truly interesting to a child, chances are she has something related
to it at home. Many kids choose topics because of something at home. You’ll show
kids how to look at an object closely, how to write from photographs, to search for
information in books, or even take photographs on their own to write about in detail
and include in their chapters. You might even teach children how to conduct mini-
interviews with people to include as part of a chapter or as separate chapters in their
informational books. They’ll use this information to revise their existing chapters
and to add new ones.
F inally, you’ll teach children how to prepare their work for presentation at the class
Expert Fair by considering word choice and how their writing sounds when read aloud
by rehearsing their presentations with partners, and by f ixing up their writing to make
it easy to read. At the fair itself, each second grader might hold court in a different
corner of the gym or cafeteria, teaching a different small group of visitors about his or
her topic of expertise. The opportunity to present their work helps children understand
that they are writing for a real, live audience. Your class will leave this unit with the
knowledge that informational texts are written to teach.

Launching the Unit

This may be your children’s f irst time selecting a topic that they will persist with for a
whole month (a long time for seven-year-olds). You will want to be sure, then, that your
children select topics they particularly care about and that they want to study further.
During the f irst day of the unit, you may want to teach children that if writers are going
to be working for a long time on one piece of writing, we sometimes generate lists of
possible topics and then choose from among them. In this instance, children will be
thinking about subjects they could teach others. Each child can write fast, making a
giant list of everything he or she knows about one topic, just to see if they have a lot to
say, then do the same for another, and another. Alternatively, they could discuss with a
partner all the information they know about one topic, deciding on which one sounds
like an especially good topic. Encourage writers to consider whether there is also more to
learn about their topic and whether they can imagine sources they could go to in order
to research it. Even if they already know a lot about a topic, there is always more to learn
and you’ll probably want to encourage research work at some point in the unit just so
children have practice researching a topic they know well before researching unknown
topics. If a child considers writing about f ish that are excellent swimmers, she could think
about how she’d be able to gather information on these f ish by observing her own f ish
as it swims in the tank, or by visiting a pet store.

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 Note that we’ve just shared a variety of strategies a child might use to generate
topic ideas for this writing project. Keep in mind that when we suggest these strate-
gies, or any strategies, you will not want to respond by insisting that your students do
each of these little things. These are all optional ways that some writers sometimes go
about generating ideas for writing. Students could use one of these strategies many
times over, or use none of them. The important thing is the goal—that writers gener-
ate ideas for informational writing, and some momentum to write about those ideas.
Perhaps some children will jot lists of topics they know a lot about and then star favor-
ite ones. Alternatively, some children may take an early draft of a table of contents and
turn three of the chapter titles into whole book titles. Sometimes the child can’t come
up with anything that feels worthy. Rather than hovering over this child’s desk, sug-
gesting topic after topic, we encourage you to cluster these “stuck” writers into a small
group, give them a quick strategy to try (perhaps eliminating choice in the interest of
momentum), and then get them working in pairs to quickly generate some possible
topics. You can than help each child settle on one (be forceful—onward!). Remember
that E. B. White, one of the most famous writers in the world, has written whole essays
on warts, chickens, and commas. No topic comes with ready-made interest—instead,
authors make a topic interesting. For children who have trouble deciding or commit-
ting, your power of positive thinking and pace is probably important.
By the second day in this unit, your students will each have chosen a topic. Now
you will want to help each child make a rough plan for how his or her books will go.
Each writer needs to create a table of contents that lists the big categories of informa-
tion that this child imagines teaching the people who attend the Expert Fair at the
end of this unit. Encourage children to write more than one version of the table of
contents. You may decide to ask children to touch the lines on their table of contents
and to write-in-the-air how their chapters might go, and then to rethink that plan, and
rewrite-in-the-air how those chapters might go. Writers can do this multiple times,
since each time you give yet more tips that set children up for writing well-organized
texts. Often the logic that kids use f irst is just “chaining”: A writer thinks of one topic,
writes it down, then the writer thinks of another topic, writes it down, then a third
topic. This process results in chapters that are not parallel or comprehensive. Such a
writer might write a book about second grade with one chapter on the writing work-
shop, one on the child’s best friend, and one on the room arrangement. Had this child
instead thought about a way to divide the content, she might f irst have had four chap-
ters that were subjects: math in second grade, reading in second grade, and so forth.
Then again, this child might have written a book about second grade and each chapter
might be the name of a different person. Instead of writing about this whole terrain,
the child might zoom in on a more specif ic topic (e.g., the child who is writing about
New York City might decide instead to write about Manhattan, or about the subways,
or about the A Train). The child who at f irst plans to write about assorted topics related
to subways decides instead to write about topics that are sequentially organized, start-
ing with what the rider does f irst—subway tickets, then subway maps, then stations,
then subways themselves. Children will not think about ways of ­organizing their chap-

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ters without help from you, so you will want to be writing your own informational text,
and to show children different ways you think about dividing your topic into subtopics.
The class can then do similar work with many of each other’s topics, until they begin to
grasp the principle behind this work. Of course, children will worry as they do this—
what if I don’t have anything to say about some of these subtopics? But you can help
them know they can begin by writing the topics on which they do have expertise and
you will show them ways to learn about any topic in the world. 
As you help children plan for their writing, be sure that you talk often about the
fact that they are planning for how they will teach others at the Expert Fair. Because
informational writing is all about writing in ways that reach (and teach) an audience,
it is important that you talk about the Expert Fair often, and emphasize the audience
who will attend the fair. 
As mentioned earlier, you can later teach children to look over each of their planned
chapters and to ask, of each topic, “What kind of writing will this probably be?” A
chapter on “How to Get a Puppy” will be how-to writing, so the writer can prepare
for writing that particular page by putting how-to paper into their booklet. A chapter
on “When I Got My Puppy” is narrative writing, suggesting that the writer will want
to include a page or two or three for story writing. “Take Good Care of Your Puppy!”
will be persuasive writing. Once children have labeled the kind of text each chapter
will be, they’ll construct a booklet full of paper to match their plans for their book. 
If some children have additional time for planning, you will def initely want to
remind them that it can also be valuable to study texts that resemble those they aim
to write, and ask, “What is the main way that this kind of text seems to go? What do
I notice about the genre of informational writing? What’s different about this kind of
writing in comparison with narrative writing?”
This work—of planning the informational books that they’ll write—is complex, and
the good news is that some writers can make a fairly simple plan and then get started
writing, while others can learn about more complex ways to plan the structure of their
book. Either way, however, you’ll want to be sure that you do not have children who
sit around planning for their writing for a whole sequence of days. It is unlikely that
a seven-year-old will be able to devote more than two days to writing and revising a
table of contents, and deciding on paper for the different chapters.

Writers Draft and Revise Informational Texts

Children will then begin writing up a storm. You can decide whether you’d like the child
to begin by writing an introduction that draws readers into the topic and helps generate
interest and enthusiasm for the topic. Many teachers f ind that writing such an intro-
duction, in which the writer works to rally interest among readers, actually generates
interest and investment in the topic in the writers as well as the readers, so drafting the
introduction may well be a good place for writers to start. You’ll want to show writers
ways that authors of other books have written this all-important part of the book. Some
writers, for example, tell the story of when they f irst became interested in the topic, and

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then what they did that kindled those sparks of interest, and what fed the interest even
more. Note that such a chapter has an organizational structure that is a common one in
informational writing. The author traces the story of her study, and does so in a way that
brings readers along on that same journey.
Then again, a writer might address the reader directly, asking the reader questions
such as, “Have you ever stopped to think about . . . ? Every time you do . . . you are
. . . Did you know that . . . ? It is also true that . . .” Then, having provoked readers’
interest, this writing might launch into an overview of the topic. That overview might
well be structured in the same way that the book itself will be structured. For example,
if this book teaches readers about a writing workshop, it could be that the book is
organized to teach f irst about the minilesson, then about writing time, then about
partners, then about the share. Or it could be organized to teach f irst about narrative
writing, then about all-about writing. Either way, the introduction might follow the
structure of the book.
There are lots of other ways that the introduction can be organized, and you’ll want
to share examples of especially well-written introductions. When you do this, you’ll be
setting children up to write with voice from the start and to remember that informa-
tional writing is not just the facts. Of course, to help writers write with voice, you may
want to encourage them to try alternate drafts to their introduction.
Presumably, your writers will need to radically rewrite the introduction before their
books are actually published after the rest of the books are done, so you may decide to
not encourage a lot of revision just yet, and you may instead channel students to begin
selecting chapters they especially know a lot about and to write those. Encourage
writers to write up a storm, not waiting so that the whole class moves in sync from
one chapter to the next. That is, on one day, some children may start and f inish four
chapters. Another child, producing just as much text, might write just one chapter, but
it could be a very long chapter. Keep in mind that your students should be able to write
something like twenty to thirty sentences a day, equal to four to f ive pages with f ive
to six sentences on each page. You will not want the fact that children are writing just
one book for this whole entire month to mean that their level of productivity drops. 
Once children have written for a day or two, you’ll want to gather up their work
and pore over it, deciding what the most important instruction will be for you to give
the whole class and deciding on instruction that is best given to small groups. You may
look f irst at the organizational structure of students’ writing, because if their writing
is a hodgepodge, with information thrown together without any rhyme or reason, the
last thing you want to do is to encourage writers to elaborate, to write more, until they
have begun to grasp the importance of organization. So look f irst at whether the writer
has sorted information so that a chapter on “Teaching Your Dog to Come” doesn’t
contain information about dry kibble. If the information is a jumble, that is okay—but
it means that you will want to teach writers to become readers, rereading their writing,
asking, “Does everything go here, or does some of what I have written go on another
page, or outside this book altogether?” This writer will later need to learn to plan a
chapter more carefully, perhaps jotting a list of what information goes into the chapter,
what does not go into the chapter. But for now, this writer needs to learn to revise with

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scissors in hand, and to use tape. You can look next at whether the information within
a chapter is a jumble—and frankly, it can only be a jumble if there is a reasonable
quantity of information. A page about teaching your dog to come that only contains
three sentences is not apt to be organizationally chaotic, but a longer page might well
lurch from what to do f irst, to what to do after the child has done this, to what to do
next, and so on. This sort of intra-chapter disorganization is totally expected, and can
be revised in just the same manner as writers revise chaotic organization that spans
the whole book. The child needs to look at the chapter just as the child has looked at
the book as a whole, and the child needs to think, “What will the table of contents be
for this one chapter?” Will chapter one (which really is paragraph one, or subheading
one, or part one) be about calling the dog to come, and chapter two (or paragraph two)
be about what the dog should do when called, and will the f inal chapter be about what
you do when the dog disobeys?
Remember, if you teach a minilesson to help children think about the organization
within their chapters, your students can then revise whatever chapter they’re working
on to make it more organized. This will probably involve some scissoring, but it could
also require an entirely new draft. Presumably they’ll have some chapters they have
already written that can also be revised, and as they go forward, they should be able
to plan their chapters differently based on this work.
Another quality of good writing that you will want to support is elaboration, and
more specif ically, using sources to defend one’s claims and discussing the relationship
between evidence and the claim. Help students know the value of specif ic, detailed
factual evidence that supports whatever they have said. So if a child writes, “We learn
a lot of things in the writing workshop,” then that child needs to understand that he or
she must defend this claim by producing evidence, or supporting details. Help children
value quotations, numbers, and specif ic examples. If the writer has written, “Dogs eat
a lot,” then the text is inf initely more effective if the writer follows this with, “Last
week, we went through three small bags of dog food in just one week.”
Of course, once the writer has produced evidence, it is important to talk about that
evidence, linking it to the claim. You can explain to writers that it is almost as if they
have a partnership conversation about the evidence, only they have the conversation
on the page. It may help them if you provide scaffolds for such thinking-on-the-page
by giving them a list of thought prompts such as, This is important because . . . You might
be surprised to learn that . . . This shows that . . . I used to not realize that . . . but now I have
found that . . . The thing I am realizing about this is . . . The surprising thing about this is .
. . and Notice that . . .
As children elaborate on their ideas those ideas will change, and so it is likely that
they may need to rethink some of their chapter titles. The goal is for students to take
ownership of the process of writing and for them to be deeply engaged in a f lurry of
activity. Children should be working at a fast clip, trying to write as much as possible
onto the page, generating more and more thinking. After four days of writing fast and
furiously, you can expect your children to have written at least four multipage chap-
ters, and that many of these will have been revised extensively. The writing they have
done will still leave lots of room for revision. Certainly, plans for books will change as

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students work on them. And once children have written a lot, you’ll need to remind
children to think again about organization. Remind them to return to all the work you
will have taught earlier, rereading their writing to see when things are jumbled and
then engaging in the hands-on revision work to categorize their information. Show
children examples of chapters that are in fact two or three chapters and demonstrate
how to separate these.
Stretching out a portion of a text does not always involve simply saying more. This
can also involve trying to write in ways that allow a reader to envision. You may decide
to remind children that writers of all-about books “show, not tell,” in much the same
way that f iction writers do. Children may not use all of the same strategies they used
during the Realistic F iction unit; however, many of those strategies may apply to this
unit. Teach your children that nonf iction writers use examples, often written in little
scenes, to help readers visualize information. Nonf iction writers also use comparisons
to help readers picture things. For example, a child might write, “A cartwheel is a fun,
easy trick to do in gymnastics. A cartwheel is like making your body into a pinwheel.
You spin upside down and right side up.” Or “A butterf ly uses its proboscis to suck
the nectar out of a f lower. The proboscis is like a straw. It’s like the butterf ly is sipping
nectar out with a straw!”
Although it is not a second-grade expectation, the Common Core State Standards
do emphasize that as kids grow in their acquisition and use of vocabulary, they should
be able to incorporate a range of general academic and domain-specif ic words—the
lingo of the f ield—into their writing. Help children to do this even when they are not
entirely sure if they are using the new terminology well. Approximation is the f irst step
to learning. Moreover, some of your students are now ready to take on more complex
informational writing techniques.
You will also want to help writers include transitional phrases to help guide readers
and language such as most, some, and for example, which will support their familiarity
with standardized testing language in third grade. You might also teach kids to create
more sophisticated sentence structures by using prepositions such as beside, during,
and on.
At this point in the unit you might teach your kids that writers reread drafts look-
ing for missing pieces, for claims that we haven’t yet supported, for questions readers
will have that have yet to be answered. Writers ask, “Are some of my chapters a lot
shorter than others? Where could I get more information to add to that chapter?” and
“Is there a chapter missing?” “What will readers ask, that I haven’t answered?” “What
parts of this will be confusing to readers?” These questions may sometimes just lead
to revision or to adding on, but sometimes that will provoke research.
During this part of the unit you will want not only to teach your writers to add more
to their books, you will also want them to begin to think more deliberately about the
organization of their information. You will want them to go back to their mentor text,
and look now not just at favorite parts, but at what unif ies the book as a whole. You
might, for instance, have your students, in small groups, study the books they like and
then come to the meeting area ready to create a classwide chart of some techniques
writers use to unify a book. You can also study some books with a small group, perhaps

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with some of your more struggling writers, so that you’ll be able to get the methods
on this chart that you think will most help your writers. Then over the next few days,
you might teach a few of these methods in more detail, showing your writers how to
go back over their pages and begin to put them together. You will want your kids to
look at nonf iction texts thinking about why the authors of such texts made particular
decisions around the placement of sections or chapters in his or her book. For instance,
you may want to point out how an author uses his f irst and last sections to get a reader
to feel a certain way about a particular topic. Then you might say, “Writers, you can
do the same thing! If you want your reader to feel good about your topic, or worried
about your animal and its habitat, then you need to think about where you are going
to put in the parts that leave the reader feeling a particular way.”

Writers Become Researchers, Searching for More Information and

Integrating That Information within Their Texts

You will want your students to see themselves not only as writers, but as researchers
too. You might teach them to rely on artifacts, photographs, and even interviews as they
continue to add information to their books. For example, you might ask that students
bring in a couple of artifacts that are essential to their topics, creating expertise shoebox
collections. A child who might be writing about dogs may f ill his box with a leash, a col-
lar, a bone, a brush. If the artifact a child selects f its into an existent chapter of his book
he can work the artifact into that chapter. If an artifact doesn’t “go” into any chapter,
the child can write about it on a separate page titled, aptly, “Artifact.” The child can f ind
a place for this new information later, or may even create an entirely new chapter if the
artifact feels important enough to stand on its own. Either way, teach kids how to study
these artifacts closely, observe them, ask questions, and try to come up with answers.
Some of the artifacts are likely to remind children of experiences they have had that
relate to their expert project topic. They might want to write “small-moment chapters”
for their books by thinking of something they experienced that f its with their topic and
then writing the moment bit by bit, in sequence. You can show students examples of
narrative writing (stories) that incorporate information that teaches about the topic, such
as the book Pumpkins by Ken Robbins or the narrative sections of some of Gail Gibbons’
books. Then, too, the artifacts will trigger a variety of new chapters. An artifact of a dog’s
leash can result in a diagram of the different parts of the leash, with several pages about
each of the parts and their purposes. The leash can also trigger an entire chapter about
tips of kindness when dogs wear leashes. Or even writing about thinking of other inven-
tions in lieu of a dog’s leash that might look different.
Think of this phase of the unit as the research phase and imagine your class as a
busy newsroom. By now you will have taught a repertoire of ways to research topics
and children should be able to switch seamlessly, and with increased independence,
between any number of writing-to-think activities. They can pose questions, imagine
and research possible answers, observe objects, read books, interview people with
expertise on their topic, view their subject through one lens, then another. They can

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draw on any number of ways to generate information—and they should be doing so
with some autonomy. If your students are not using these writing-to-think strategies
independently, you may want to teach lessons or lead conferences that highlight deci-
sion making and incorporate charts that can serve as menus for students. As they learn
more about their topics, continue to push children to write feverishly, not letting one
day go by without lots and lots of writing.
As children begin to feel that their books are complete, be sure that you can actually
see the revision work they have done. A complete piece may have sentences crossed
out, f laps added on to make more room for more writing, labels added to diagrams,
headings written and rewritten, and some chapters added in and others removed.
Teach children to reread and f ix up their work to make sure it all makes sense, cross-
ing out parts that “don’t go” and f ixing parts that are confusing. Children might need
to rework chapters (starting fresh sometimes) to draw out the main idea they are
trying to show. Partners often help each other write with more clarity and precision;
students may work with partners to determine whether they need more information
or more ideas in their chapters. The writer can also take a chapter of the book and
begin to teach the information to his partner, checking for clarity. Often when teach-
ing information, gaps will pop out and signal places where changes need to happen.
Now is also the time for a f inal check-in on the table of contents, revising to ref lect
on the chapters that were added in and the chapters that were deleted, and a time to
decide whether to create any other additional kinds of chapters or whether to add a
glossary of terms.

Writers Edit, Fancy Up, and Publish Our Writing to Make Sure We Can
Teach Our Readers and Audience in the Most Exciting and Clear Way

In every unit of study, children can be coached to use editing strategies they know, right
from the beginning of the unit. By this point in the year, second graders should already
be in the habit of checking their writing for word wall words and spelling patterns they
have been working on in word study. Near the end of the unit, you might introduce
a few new editing strategies to add to students’ growing repertoire, such as underlin-
ing or making technical vocabulary bold. Writers may also adapt a system to showcase
important vocabulary that they are trying to teach, such as putting a blue box around
their vocabulary text boxes—if they made text boxes—or underlining the words and
then repeating them in a simple glossary. Again, formatting these nonf iction features
will help your children learn to recognize these features and use them in the books they
read and will also give them a sense of being real authors. 
As your writers get their pages ready, they’ll be ready to make their front and back
covers for their books. This is an opportunity to again study your mentor texts and
work on persuasive writing skills. Your young writers will love to write blurbs for the
back covers of their books that persuade the reader to choose their book. “Read this
book if you want to be expert at soccer!” or “Sharks can be our friends! Famous author
Carly Smith explains the truth about sharks.” You might create a word bank of words

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that often appear on the backs of nonf iction books, such as surprising, famous, exciting,
thrilling, f ind out, explore. Then, on to the front cover. Your writers can probably do
more than write the title. They can think carefully about the colors and picture they
want to put on the cover, and how those will inf luence the reader—just as they are
inf luenced by the covers of the books they pick up—so be sure to return to those men-
tor texts. In this part of the unit, it doesn’t really matter that your writers accomplish
the same techniques that these published authors do, so much as that they begin to
read alertly and write like authors who expect to be read. This is a terrif ic opportunity
to get your children to really notice how the books they read work. Kids who have
chosen their own cover images carefully study the covers of nonf iction more carefully;
kids who have made vocabulary boxes actually use the ones they encounter in the
books they read.
Certainly you will continue to teach children how to punctuate in powerful ways
and to use commas strategically in their writing. You will probably want to create a
chart that lists the four or f ive main things you hope your entire class will check for
in their writing. In addition to this class editing checklist, you might even create indi-
vidualized editing checklists for those who might benef it from such a tool. Teach kids
specif ic strategies for checking their work, like pointing under each word, or reading
aloud to a partner as she reads along.
At the end of the unit, it would be nice to give your writers an opportunity to share
their writing with an authentic audience. You will want the children to teach others
what they know about their topic. To prepare for this, you might use one writing
workshop to teach children to rehearse a “mini-presentation” where they tell visitors
the most important things about their topics, most likely the titles of their chapters.
Students could even make presentation boards and captions, and practice using a
pointer to present their work. For example, in one school a child who wrote a book
about scooters set up a presentation board with photographs of herself riding her
scooter, complete with captions. She put her expert project book on display. She even
brought in her scooter, helmet, and knee pads. Then, as she presented, she actually
rode her scooter around to illustrate her points! For the Expert Fair, you could lay all
your children’s work out on display, complete with extensive revisions. As visitors
enter the classroom, they may be invited to stand with individual students, and listen
to their expert presentations. It is often nice to ask visitors to rotate around the room
so that students have several opportunities to present their work orally.

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 unit f  i v e

Opinion Writing
Persuasive Reviews

JANUARY

K
ids naturally speak in persuasive ways. They give their opinions about the books
they read, the foods they eat, the movies they watch, and the video games they
play. They argue for a later bedtime, a trip to Disneyland, and the opportunity
to get a new puppy. It’s a small step, then, to teach children to write persuasive reviews.
This unit builds on the f irst-grade unit on persuasive letter writing, although children
who bypassed that unit will not f ind this unduly challenging. The unit will give second
graders the power to use their writing to persuade others to believe what they believe,
and ultimately, to take action as a result of their writing, which is ultimately what the
Common Core State Standards are aiming students to do. This is a unit that allows stu-
dents to really recognize that they have a voice and that writing can be a great vehicle to
share what they think with others. Not only do you want to teach writers to write with
great detail and support in this unit, but more importantly you will want to show them
the importance of using strong examples that will convince others of their argument. As
with any writing unit, you will want students to begin writing a lot right away. In this
case, they will dive straight into writing reviews. Of course you will not expect these
reviews to be structured or supported in the ways that you will want to teach across the
unit, but that’s why you’ll want to get your students writing! You can then use these
approximations to inform how your teaching will unfold. In January of second grade
you will expect your writers to produce several pages of writing a day, and so you do
not want the introduction of this new structure to slow them down. Once your writers
have written a number of reviews, they will then be able to go back to all those reviews,
revising them to add more details to support whatever it is that they are trying to say and
to improve them in other ways. In the third and f inal part of the unit, then, you will ask
your writers to look over all the reviews they have written and revised to decide which
ones they might actually polish up to share with others.

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 The unit not only gives students an opportunity to see power in their own writing,
but it also supports the emphasis on opinion writing that the Common Core State
Standards call for. The Standards for opinion writing in second grade only require
that students make a claim, supply supportive evidence, and include a conclusion. In
our work with second graders we know that these writers can actually do more, and
therefore, in this unit we have expectations that exceed these standards. To see what
your kids are already able to do before embarking on this unit, you’ll want to devote
a day to doing a quick on-demand assessment of your children’s abilities as writ-
ers of opinion pieces. The RWP has developed a continuum for assessing students’
opinion writing and tracking their progress, similar to the continuum many of you
have used to track students’ progress in narrative writing. The RWP Opinion Writing
Continuum is available at www.readingandwritingproject.com. You may worry about
assessing students’ opinion writing, thinking, “Is that really fair? I haven’t taught
them anything?” Others have asked similar questions—especially the many kinder-
garten teachers who gave this assessment to their f ive-year-olds! Rest assured that
children enjoy the invitation to think of an idea or opinion that they have strong
feelings about, and, when asked, many of them have produced work that has f lab-
bergasted us. We encourage you to take the risk of asking your students to devote
one day’s writing workshop to respond to the following prompt: “Think of an idea or
opinion that you have strong feelings about. Tell your opinion and tell why you feel
this way. Use everything you know about persuasive letter writing and reviews.” You
will want to give them a choice of several different kinds of booklets and letter writ-
ing paper as they engage in this on-demand assessment. After your students have
done this writing, you’ll want to pore over their work, noticing what many of them
can do, and can almost but not quite do. If your children worked in a persuasive/
opinion writing unit during f irst grade, chances are good that many of them produce
work that may fall in the Level 4 to Level 5 range on our opinion continuum, with
notable gaps that you’ll want to address throughout the unit. If your students are
already at a Level 5 on the continuum before the unit begins, you’ll want to think
about what you’ll need to teach to get them to the next level.
If your school has done the persuasive letter writing unit in f irst grade, remind the
students of the power that writing had. You might say, “Boys and girls, remember last
year when you wrote persuasive letters? I remember Juliana got a puppy because she
wrote to her grandparents and persuaded them to get her a puppy. I remember how
one of the f irst-grade classes wrote to the custodians to ask for more paper towels in
the bathroom. Do you remember some of the things you wrote last year? Turn and
tell your partner!” Then, ask the kids to recall what they learned during the preceding
year about ways to actually persuade someone to do something. “What do you know
already about being persuasive?” You may decide to chart some of these student-
generated tips to get them excited about writing both letters and reviews this year.
Most children in writing workshop classrooms will have ended f irst grade creat-
ing pieces similar to the Level 4 and Level 5 samples on the website, and now you
will coach your second graders to use all they know from f irst grade, along with new

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tips from this unit, to create pieces that look like the Level 5 and Level 6 samples.
These higher-level pieces will show that the students can begin to group reasons
or supports into subcategories and elaborate on those subcategories from personal
experience. A unit of study on reviews provides the perfect opportunity for kids to
develop these muscles.

Getting Kids Started Writing Lots and Lots of Reviews

It is important to start this unit with a bang, and to get your students excited about walk-
ing in the shoes of movie critics, restaurant reviewers, book reviewers, and video game
critics. You may want to gather your kids and remind them how people see reviewers
as friends to lean on for advice. You can show youngsters where they can f ind reviews;
that book reviews are posted online, movie reviews are played on the news every Friday
night, and the local bookstore has travel guides for their favorite neighborhood restau-
rants, shops, and hotels. Then too, you might read aloud Check Please!, one of the books
in the Frankly Frannie series, to show students the power a persuasive writer has over the
audience, conveying to your writers that reviews matter and that as reviewers we need
to write with passion and vigor. Once you have rallied their energy and enthusiasm,
channel it directly toward writing, inviting the children to think of the things they like or
dislike and to write reviews that will, like the reviews they have read, inf luence others.
For example, a child’s review of a pizza restaurant will become part of a restaurant guide,
written either by that child, alone, or by a collection of children from the class.
To create a drumroll around this unit, it will help if you display the reviews that
children collect from newspapers, magazines, and the Internet. You can also encour-
age children to interview adults in their lives to learn how those grown-ups rely on
reviews to affect their decisions. Meanwhile, you’ll want to show children that you use
reviews as well. Perhaps you’ll read a few reviews of possible read-aloud books, and
help children see that those reviews inf luence your choices. Tell them how you lean
on reviews to f ind the next movie you want to see or decide which cupcakes to buy
for the publishing party. 
You might want to also consider kicking off the unit by giving children a shared
experience that invites reviews. Perhaps they can taste different sorts of chocolate or
ice cream (be sure to get permission from caretakers for an idea such as this). Clusters
of children who prefer one kind of chocolate or one kind of ice cream can work on
shared reviews to promote whatever it is they like best. Such an activity could provide
a grand start for the unit and could help you and your children alike realize that chil-
dren already know a lot about how to write persuasively and needn’t wait before they
begin cranking out tons of reviews. 
You’ll f ind that you needn’t spend a great deal of time and effort helping children
generate ideas for reviews. They need only gather information and state an opinion
from experiences, think about their favorite things, or books they have read, or recall
recent places they have visited. Don’t worry if their f irst reviews are a far cry from

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those written by the New York Times food critics. For example, a budding food critic
may write, “The food here is so good. It is yummy, yummy, yummy. I love almost all
of it but the hot dogs.” This, of course, is not what your children will be writing by the
end of the unit, after you have had a chance to teach them ways to lift the level of their
reviews, but it should not surprise you if this is what children write early on. The most
important thing is that you start the unit by inviting children to work with zeal and
independence, drafting one review, then another, and another. You def initely do not
want all children tied to each other and working in sync under your direction so that
they all crank out one made-to-specs review.
Once your children are writing reviews, they will begin living differently, seeing
their lives as rehearsal. Students can use little scratchpads or memo pads just like the
New York Magazine food critic, Adam Platt. These pads can be made from half-sheets
of paper with eight to ten lines and perhaps a small box to sketch, stapled together at
the top. You might want to cover the staples with thick tape (they make colored duct
tape if you want to get fancy) to make the binding stronger. The children can carry
these around with them to jot notes about school lunch, the local pizza joint after
school, and the movie they rented for the weekend. F igure 3.1 on page 44 of A Quick
Guide to Teaching Persuasive Writing, K–2 by Sarah Picard Taylor (Heinemann, 2008)
has more ideas for students to generate ideas for their reviews. 

Making Reviews More Persuasive: Adding Details and More Specif ic

Language, and Using Mentor Texts

After children are writing up a storm, you’ll add instruction that lifts the level of their
work. You’ll want to use mentor reviews, explicit teaching, conferring, and small-group
instruction to do this. Teach children that it is often helpful to look at work that other
reviewers have done and to think, “What did this reviewer do that I, too, might try to
do?” That is, you’ll remind your children that just as they learn from mentor authors
of narratives, they can learn from mentor authors of reviews. The Common Core State
Standards emphasize the use of mentor text to help the students in their writing.
One thing you will want to help children notice is that in order to really affect a
reader, it generally helps to write with details. This is true in narrative writing and true
also in persuasive writing. You can teach your children that writers select and add
details that convey what they want to convey. So if a child wants to convey that the
pizza is delicious, the child might write about the steaming hot cheese that oozes over
the edge of the pizzas at one restaurant. As children learn to add details, they’ll also
be learning to elaborate. Then, to support this revision work, you may want to help
children use Post-its. The Post-its can be strategically numbered to match the revision
places in their reviews. Using Post-its will make revisions more inviting and much
neater, making it easier to incorporate the revisions into the published piece. 
You will also want to teach children that reviewers tend to have in mind the sorts of
things that are important to describe, whether they are writing about a book, a movie,

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or a restaurant. They can study different sorts of reviews and discern, for example, that
food critics tend to elaborate on the taste and texture of the food, the decor and ser-
vice in the restaurant. Book and movie critics tend to elaborate on the characters and
setting in the text. Video game critics elaborate on a game’s graphics, sound effects,
and on what is required of those who play the game. You may want to invite kids who
gravitate toward food reviews to gather round those mentor texts and chart some of
the kinds of details they notice. Other kids will be known as the movie reviewers in
the room, and they can gather similar mentor movie reviews and create a list of their
own. Soon your classroom will be budding with experts of all different sorts of reviews
and using language like, “I could add some more about the ambiance,” or “I haven’t
said anything about the sound effects yet.” Then you can encourage those students
to work in partnerships and refer to the charts as they reread and revise their reviews.
Students can also make their reviews more persuasive if they tuck small anecdotes
about their subject into the review. Students can use what they learned from the Small
Moments unit of study to craft tight narratives that illustrate the example they are
using. The food critic may tell the story of the friendly waiter who delivered special
straws for the kids shaped like f lamingos to illustrate the high quality of service at the
restaurant. Of course one of the most important things to teach young writers is that
they need to introduce the topic or book directly, state an opinion, and write with
reasons and details. You may help them learn to structure reviews by writing a claim,
then writing, “One reason is . . . Another reason is . . . Also . . . Because . . .”
Another way for students to elaborate on their reviews is to have an audience in
mind. If they can visualize their readers, they can craft sentences with language tai-
lored to that audience. If the review is about the fourth Harry Potter movie, the student
needs to decide whether he is writing his review for people who have seen the f irst
three Harry Potter movies or none of the movies, or for both audiences. Or, writers
can persuade through sentences that make readers believe the subject appeals to all
people. A food critic may write about the long lines outside a restaurant that stretch
across the entire block to feed all the hungry kids and adults. Sentences like this make
readers feel like they are missing out on something really important if they don’t read
a book, play a game, or eat at a specif ic restaurant. You may decide to tuck these ideas
into a revision minilesson or two that supports kids to revise their introductions or
conclusions. You can teach kids that some reviewers build credibility in their intro-
ductions by writing something like “I eat pizza at least twice a week and I believe that
Gino’s is by far the best place in the neighborhood to get plain cheese pizza.” Other
writers begin with an introduction that quotes an expert or perhaps a character in the
book. Showing your students these options, charting the possibilities with mentors
nearby, and providing choice will be important. You can then teach students to revise
their endings by providing conclusions that sum up their opinions, tell readers similar
books or restaurants they would recommend along with this book or restaurant, if the
opinion is positive, or perhaps direct readers or diners to a better book or restaurant,
if their opinion is negative. A star rating system or another trademark ranking code
invented by your young critics can also be added to the end of the review.

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Getting Our Reviews Ready to Share with the World

Once children have been writing for two weeks and have drafted and revised a bunch
of reviews, you may want to teach them that some reviewers choose a review they
want everyone to read and publish it on the Internet, in an anthology of similar kinds
of reviews, or in the local newspaper. Other writers only want to persuade a small audi-
ence, so after reading a spectacular book, a writer may write to her closest friend to
recommend a book and tell the reasons why her friend should read it. The same writer
may also choose to write to the author of the book to tell him why the book was so
great. Likewise, students may decide to write a persuasive letter to the chef at the local
pizzeria complimenting him on the yummy pizza, but also suggesting a change in the
decor. Meanwhile, the child who excels at movie reviews may want to study that genre
in earnest and work with other movie reviewers to create an anthology. Similar work can
occur around other sorts of reviews. As you and the kids discover qualities of effective
reviews—of persuasive reviews—you’ll be encouraging children to revise the half-dozen
drafts of reviews they have going, and you’ll teach them to incorporate all they are learn-
ing in more ambitious plans for the new reviews they are writing.    
Students will need to reread the reviews in their folders and imagine where the
reviews might go. You can encourage them to post their reviews on popular review
websites, in gamer magazines, or in the school newspaper. One second-grade writer
decided to make his own travel guide book for Ocean City, New Jersey, which included
a hotel review, two restaurant reviews, and a bicycle rental shop review. Other stu-
dents in his class decided to read their movie reviews in front of a camera and create
their own weekly movie review show just like Ebert and Roeper.

Additional Resources

Teachers, as you start this unit, make sure that your students are writing reviews right
from the start. Don’t feel like you need to teach your students about each type of review
before they write their own. We want students to pick topics they are passionate about
and can’t wait to share with the world. For additional information, you can refer to A
Quick Guide to Teaching Persuasive Writing, K–2 by Sarah Picard Taylor. For more sup-
port materials visit the Project website at www.readingandwritingproject.com and www.
unitsofstudy.com/workshophelpdesk/teaching.asp (includes a list of mentor texts).
You will need to assess your students and to study what it is they need to know.
You can use an on-demand writing assessment to understand where your children are
on the RWP Opinion Writing Continuum. The Common Core State Standards expecta-
tions suggest they should be at Level 5 by the end of this year. This can help you orient
yourself to the goals of this unit. You’ll need to assess not just at the beginning of the
unit how to alter your planned pathway from the start, but also at many points along
the way. For example, in the f irst part of the unit, you are hoping students generate
lots of reviews, coming up with topics and audiences, and writing at some length. If

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your students are slow to generate topics, you’ll want to teach either whole- or small-
group lessons to equip those that need help with a strategy for doing this. If students
are not writing with f luency and volume, you may decide to use a timer and to call out
voiceovers such as, “By now, your hand should be f lying down the page.” “By now,
you should have written half a page.” You may need to gather a small group to nudge
them into writing more quickly, and do some close observation of your students to
understand what is slowing them down.
In the second part of this unit, you will be looking for students’ writing to begin
to resemble persuasive writing. You’ll look for the essentials—claims or requests, fol-
lowed by reasons. Then you can look for other qualities of effective writing mentioned
in the unit write-up, with an eye toward pushing your students toward Level 5 writing,
which is more detailed and focused than Level 4. Meanwhile, watch to see if students
are engaged in revision. If you teach a new quality, you should see your writers going
back to previous letters—to several of them—rereading to judge if they already do
whatever you have highlighted, and then initiating revision when they haven’t done
this. This part, then, supports revision as well as the qualities of good writing. You will
also look for independence. On any one day, some children will be revising previously
written reviews and some will be writing new ones. Keep an eye on volume and be
prepared to set clear expectations and to plan for extra time during the day for children
to make up the missed work if they haven’t produced at least six lengthy reviews each
by the end of ten days or so of work within this unit.
You’ll look also for children’s willingness to edit and their particular needs. Note
what they can do without help, and think about how you can help different groups
of your children progress in this arena. If some are not using commas in a list, for
example, you can teach that now. If some are not rereading for meaning, noticing
when their writing makes no sense or is overly repetitive, you can do small-group
work to support that.
The teaching points below are far from comprehensive, nor are they set in stone.
They are meant to help you imagine a possible pathway, one that will need to have
detours, and alternate pathways to the same end that may branch out very differently.

One Possible Sequence of Teaching Points

Part One: Getting Kids Started Writing Lots and Lots of Reviews

n “Writers, we all have passions, likes, and dislikes. When we love something, we
try to convince others to try it because we want them to love it as well. When
we don’t like something, we try to caution others to keep away. Today I want
to teach you that writers write to share our opinions with the world. We write
about the people, places, and things we like and don’t like—musical groups, res-
taurants, games, movies, books, vacation spots, shows, and songs, and we put
our opinions down on paper to convince others why something is exceptionally
great, terrible, or just okay.”

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 x Tip: “Partners can help each other think about different people, places, and
things to review by having conversations about our likes and dislikes. Some
reviewers also keep a running list of possible reviews.”

n “Writers, it is important for a reviewer to think about for whom we are writing
our reviews. We think, ‘Are we writing the review for a grown-up or another
kid? Is my audience music lovers, other avid readers, expert game players, or
pizza af icionados?’ Today I want to teach you that writers think, ‘How can I
convince my audience? What details and reasons will persuade those people?
What do they need to know?’ and we write lots of details and reasons to support
our argument.”
x Tip: “Sometimes when we are writing our reviews, our audience can be wide
and varied—we may be trying to convince lots of different people. We want
to make sure we write in ways that include everyone. For example, we can
say, ‘Not only is it great for kids, but parents will love it too because . . .’”

n “Writers, today some of you are starting new reviews and some of you are add-
ing on to reviews you started earlier this week. I want to teach you one thing
about how to write reviews that people want to read. It often helps if those
reviews sound like you are talking to the reader. For this to happen, try saying
what you are going to write in your mind. You can touch the part of the page on
which you might be writing something, and say out loud what you plan to write
before putting the words on the page.”
x Tip: ”We did this when we planned for our stories and our how-to books,
and now we can do it in a special and fun way for reviews. We can pretend
that the person who will read our review is sitting right next to us, when we
plan for all we want to say in our reviews.  We can ask our writing partner
to pretend to be the audience for whom we are writing. Then, we can say
out loud the words we want to tell our readers. We can practice saying the
words we want to say in a few different ways so we know exactly what we
will write when we put the words on the page.”

n “Writers, do you remember that when we wrote our how-to books, we made
sure to include all the things our reader would need to know? Well, when writ-
ing reviews, we also need to think about our reader. Today, I want to teach you
that it can be helpful to reread each review before we start new ones. Writers
reread and f ind places where we may have left out a word or idea. Then we
quickly pick up our pens and add in those words so our readers will understand
and care as much as we do.”

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 Part Two: Making Reviews More Persuasive: Adding Details and
More Specif ic Language, and Using Mentor Texts

n “As we revise our reviews, we want to make sure that our reader gets a clear
picture of our experiences with the thing we are reviewing. Today I want to teach
you that as we describe, we use lots of details and precise language to help our
reader envision our experiences. We can use our senses to describe ambiance
and foods, and action to explain scenes in video games, books, and movies. We
can use character traits to describe people. We may even try some show-not-tell
to describe the way songs, books, and movies make us feel.”
x Tip: “When we are writing details, one thing we might do is look back at
artifacts, such as restaurant menus, movie tickets, playbills, or video game
guidebooks, to spark a memory of the experience we had, and to then add
those specif ic details to the review.”
x Tip: “When we are revising to include details, it is helpful to look at other
reviews to notice the things that other critics write in their reviews. We look
to these mentor critics and think about the things we can add or try in our
own writing.”
i Examples: “Food reviewers usually include f lavors, textures, and the
presentation of foods as well as the chef’s name. Restaurant review-
ers include information about the menu offerings, service, cleanliness,
ambiance, and price. Video game reviewers describe the graphics, sound
effects, and required skill level to play. Book reviewers describe the char-
acters, summarize the plot, and talk about the way the author writes.”
x Tip: “Sometimes we need to leave ourselves a note or give ourselves the job
of f inding more information about our subject. For example, we may need
to look up the price of an item, the name of an author, or the spelling of
a character from a book we are reviewing. We can use Post-its to f lag our
notes as a reminder to f ind more information.”

n “Writers, as we revise our reviews and begin to write new ones, we want to
make our reviews as persuasive as they can be so that our readers are convinced.
Today I want to teach you that critics can not only include reasons, we can also
give examples, specif ic details (like when, where, how, how much), and make
comparisons. For example, we can say, ‘Unlike the Kindle, the Nook is lighter
and thinner, which makes it easier to carry. It weighs only eleven ounces and is
a half-inch thick, whereas the bulkier Kindle . . .’”

n “When we are writing reviews, we want our reader to experience exactly what
we experienced. Today I want to teach you that aside from details and descrip-
tive language, we can also include a Small Moment story that storytells our
experience.”

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 x Possible Tip: (See pages 31–33 in A Quick Guide to Teaching Persuasive
Writing, K–2 to see how a teacher used the letter of a f irst-grade writer to
show how she made a clear picture for the reader with a little mini-story.)
x Possible Tip: “Writers, today I want to teach you that when we want to be
more convincing, sometimes it helps to add details to the most important
parts of the mini-story. We might go back and add these details into a let-
ter we already wrote, or we might start a new letter and plan to add those
details.”

n “Writers, reviewers do everything we can to convince our audience to agree with

our opinion. Some reviewers build credibility in our introductions by writing
something like, ‘I eat pizza at least twice a week and I believe that Gino’s is by
far the best place in the neighborhood to get plain cheese pizza.’ Other writers
begin with an introduction that quotes an expert or perhaps a character in a
book. Today I want to teach you that writers often try out different introductions
to pick the introduction that sounds most impressive or persuasive.”

Part Three: Getting Our Reviews Ready to Share with the World

n “Writers sort through our folders full of reviews and choose the ones we want
to put out into the world as a local restaurant guide, movie or book review blog,
or a travel guide for our favorite cities. We can even create an anthology of dif-
ferent kinds of reviews. Today I want to teach you that writers choose our best
work for revision. We reread each of our reviews carefully to decide which ones
to publish. If a writer thinks, ‘I’m completely done with this review, there is not
one thing I want to change,’ that is not the right piece to choose for publishing.
Writers choose pieces that we want to revise.”

n “As we get ready to share these reviews with the world, we must do more revi-
sion work. Today I want to teach you that when reviewers reread to revise our
reviews, we often think about taking away parts that don’t support our claim.
We ask ourselves, ‘Do I have any details that don’t support my idea?’ and then
we cross those parts out.”

n “Writers, we have a toolbox full of revision strategies that we know how to use.
(Gesture to the charts the class developed together when they studied mentor
texts.) Today, I want to teach you that we choose the strategies that will make
our writing more persuasive. When we reread to revise our reviews we think,
‘Should I add more reasons to express my opinion? Should I envision the scene
and add more descriptive details to give a clearer picture? Should I add more
specif ic details?’ Then we decide which strategies we will use to make our review
more persuasive.”

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 n “Today I want to teach you that we can revise the beginnings of our reviews to
make them more persuasive. We can choose from a few different strategies to do
this. We can start by explaining our expertise so people trust our opinions (‘I eat
pizza at least twice a week and I know a good pizza when I have it’), by quoting
experts like the chef at the restaurant, or by asking the reader a question (‘Are
you a thrill seeker or roller coaster enthusiast?’).”
x Tip: “We can also revise our endings to leave the reader with a lasting
impression and we can look to our mentor critics to give us ideas of how
to do this. Sometimes we demand that the reader try the thing we are rec-
ommending (‘You have to get to Six F lags for the adventure of a lifetime’).
Other times, we anticipate and answer the reader’s questions (‘If you were
wondering where to celebrate your next birthday party, ‘Fun for All’ is the
place to host a birthday bash’).”

n “We have been working hard to make our reviews convincing for the reader, and
so we want to be sure that others are able to read what we have written. Today
I want to remind you to use our editing checklists as you reread your reviews to
make sure that they are ready to share with the world. You can check to see if
all of the word wall words are spelled correctly, that you used your best spelling,
that your sentences as well as any proper nouns or titles begin with capital let-
ters, and that you ended your sentences with punctuation that makes sense.”
x Tip: “Writers, another way that we can get ready to publish our writing is to
think about words, phrases, or titles that we want to emphasize or have the
reader pay special attention to. We use boldface type, underlining, italics
and exclamation points(!) to show parts that are important.”

n “Today I want to teach you that writers try to quickly catch the reader’s attention
and publish in ways that are persuasive. Some reviewers add real photographs
or rating systems like three stars, f ive doughnuts, or catchy titles. Writers often
study what other reviewers have done to gather inspiration for how to publish
our own work.”

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 unit six

Write Gripping Stories with

Meaning and Signif icance

FEBRUARY

T
 his unit is back by popular demand. The goal, of course, will be to raise the qual-
ity of your children’s narrative writing and, indeed, of all their writing. But your
goals will also include supporting their volume of writing. Many third graders at
the start of the year write a full-page narrative in a writing workshop. That’s a far cry
from the sequence of drawings and captions that many second graders produce at the
start of the year! In this unit you will be teaching to grow both quality and quantity of
writing. You will be beginning to build the bridge that your second graders will cross
over into third grade. 
It will be important for you to remind children of what they already know how to
do and then to extend that repertoire. Writing gripping stories (sometimes known as
“edge of the seat stories”) especially channels youngsters to write with tension. This is
a quality of good writing that can turn a sequential chain of events into something that
actually feels like a story. To do this, you will want to teach your students how to really
develop characters in a way that builds tension in their stories, giving them dreams,
desires, fears, and frustrations. Your young writers will soon be entering third grade,
where the Common Core State Standards not only require that they write strong
narratives, but also that they further “develop experiences and events or show the
response of characters to situations.” Therefore, this unit will set them up nicely for
the work that lies ahead. 
You will have some choices to make. We have written this unit with the intent that
your students will further develop their own life stories as they write personal narra-
tives in gripping ways. You may stay on this road all the way through the unit or you
may decide to give your students the option of writing f ictional narratives toward the
end of the unit. If your second graders are writing personal narratives with tension at

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the end of two weeks, then you may decide to challenge your students to bring their
tension-creating skills to writing a f ictional story or revising one they have already
written in the earlier f iction unit. But if your children are struggling with quantity
and quality in their writing, then you will probably decide to make this entire unit a
personal narrative unit. You will also need to decide if you will have your students
write only a few, maybe two or three, gripping stories during this unit, doing a lot of
revision and new drafts on each. Or maybe your young writers need opportunities for
productivity, in which case your students will work on more pieces during this unit.
The choice is yours.

Assessing Writers before You Begin to Clarify Your Students’ Needs

As with any unit, you will want to begin by reviewing your children’s writing in general,
and specif ically their narratives, to determine what it is they can already do and what
they will need more support for in order to master. You might choose to give them an
on-demand assessment at the beginning of the unit, asking them to do their best Small
Moment writing, and to do it in one class period without any assistance. Study that writ-
ing, placing it on the RWP Narrative Writing Continuum (www.readingandwritingproject.
com). To align with the Common Core State Standards, you will want your writers to
produce narratives that meet the Level 5 expectations on our continuum. However, at
this point in the year you will probably f ind many of your writers are writing pieces that
exceed these expectations, mirroring Level 6 expectations or beyond. Once you have
located your writers on the continuum, look at the pieces just beyond those your children
tend to write. This will give you a rich sense for some of the skills you can teach in this
unit. 
You will also want to study your students’ previous narratives. Did the writer pro-
duce a chronological account? Is the piece a focused Small Moment event that occurs
over a small period of time? Can you live through the story or does it seem like a sum-
mary? That is, did the writer tend to take smaller, more precise steps? Are the actions
of the character told in several sentences? Did they include some specif ics about what
the characters say, think, and feel? Again, the Common Core State Standards do not
yet expect second-grade writers to include such details, but this work is named in third
grade and beyond, so you will be setting your writers up for the expectations down
the road.
Once you have studied your children’s narrative writing and determined both
strengths and next steps, you will want to begin charting your path of instruction.
We imagine that your students, like many of their age, will need support writing with
elaboration to stretch their small moments. You will want to help them carry forward
what they already know. Note skills that students have mastered as well as those they
have attempted, and call upon these strengths to help them set a plan for what they
will do next in their writing.

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Using Our Previous Stories as a Springboard for New Work

You might begin this unit by asking children to revisit the Small Moment stories they
wrote earlier. Children might also take out the f iction stories they wrote in November
and reread them with their partners, discussing what they were trying to do as writers.
You will want to remind them of all they know about writing stories. You might take
this moment to reintroduce charts from past units, putting them up in the writing area
and highlighting the idea that while we will be growing our repertoire, we already know
quite a bit that we can lean on.
Now that your children have recalled what they know about writing true stories
from their lives, as well as the qualities of good narrative writing, you will want to take
the time to celebrate how much they have experienced and grown as writers and as
people. Build excitement around the opportunity to write about the many things that
have happened since the previous small moment unit. 

Remembering All We Know about Strong Narrative Writing: Revisiting

Our Old Small Moments and Generating New Ones

As you begin this unit, you might say something like this to your students: “Writers, we
have an exciting opportunity ahead of us. We are going to again write true stories from
our lives, but this time, we are going to write edge-of-the-seat stories. We will write
stories that will keep our readers wanting more, so that as readers read our stories, they
think, ‘Oh, no, how will this story end?’ and ‘Oh my goodness, I can’t wait to turn the
page.’ We will write stories that captivate our readers’ attention and that have them, lit-
erally, on the edge of their seats, riveted by emotions and suspense!” The words you say
will not be as important as the stories you read that are edge-of-the-seat stories. Short
Cut by Donald Crews, The Ghost-Eye Tree by Bill Martin, Koala Lou by Mem Fox, and Too
Many Tamales by Gary Soto are among four great examples—and they represent a range
of ways to build tension. You can, of course, choose other stories and may turn to the
chapter books that many of your students are reading, for example, Iris and Walter and
the F ield Trip or a chapter from Junie B. Jones or Horrible Harry. Some of the stories you
share might be from movies. You could show a part of a movie that has tension, like the
garbage incinerator scene from Toy Story 3. You might show the kids how this part of
the movie is shown bit by bit. You might even narrate and storytell as the scene plays to
give your writers a greater understanding of what it means to build tension in a story.
You will want to support your writers in generating important Small Moment sto-
ries, providing them with strategies that will lead them to f ind the gripping stories in
their lives. For this unit, draw on Launching the Writing Workshop from the Units of
Study for Teaching Writing, Grades 3–5 (Heinemann, 2010). Be careful not to give the
exact same minilesson, but draw upon the minilesson and mid-workshop teaching
point in Session II of this book. Since the point will be to write stories with emotional
buildup to get writers excited, one idea-generating strategy you might teach is think-
ing of strong emotions—like jealousy, embarrassment, frustration, or surprise—as a

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way to recall signif icant and gripping moments we have experienced. Whatever the
strategy, you will want your students to spend the f irst few minutes of writing time
creating a list of possible small moments. Then, they will select the most compelling
from the list and begin to write that story, much like they did in the last unit when
they created expert projects.
Because your students have been focused on informational and opinion writing
for the past couple of months, their storytelling abilities will likely be a bit rusty. You
will want to take time at the start of the unit to help them practice telling their stories,
working on showing, not telling, and adding more information. You will want to help
them f ind their storytelling voice yet again. Students could practice by telling their
stories across pages a few times, f irst to themselves and then to their writing partners
or to you during their conference. You may want to use many of the shares for children
to practice their stories, which will help them lift the level of their storytelling as they
go and add more when they encounter a kernel of information that they realize they
left out but are dying to share. 
As students improve their stories with each verbal retelling, make sure that they
have a system for quickly jotting down the additions and changes. For instance, you
could teach your kids how to use their jotting and Post-it note writing skills from read-
ing to help them save their thinking about their own writing. If children are doing this
oral storytelling work with a partner, the partner could be jotting on Post-its to help
the storyteller hold onto her revisions or versions. The Common Core State Standards
ask second-grade writers to respond to one another in order to answer questions to
strengthen their writing, so this work aligns nicely.
We hope you will notice a fervor in your children, a deep desire to pick up their pens
and begin telling story after story from their lives. Children love to share moments
from their lives and this unit will give them a vehicle to do so with a partner, with
you, and with a larger audience. You will want to take this energy and use it to stretch
children’s volume. At this point in the year, you’ll probably expect children to write
two to three stories per week, though you may f ind that some of your writers will write
two to three stories across the entire unit, with several drafts per week, revising their
writing in deeper ways. Either way, you will expect the volume to continually increase
and to be much greater than it was at the beginning of second grade or even two
months ago. At the start of this unit, writers should be working in f ive-page booklets,
with an opportunity to add more pages as needed. As the unit progresses you will
likely want to push them to write more, perhaps introducing booklets of loose-leaf
paper that resemble what your children will encounter in third grade. You might say,
“Writers, over the past few days I have noticed you going through more booklets than
ever before. You are writing across your f ive-page booklets and then you are looking
to pick up another one and begin the next story. I’m thinking that instead of moving
on to the next story, we might want to try to stretch one story. Before, we used to write
across f ive-page booklets that had a few lines on them, but now I see you are ready
to stretch your moments across pages with more lines. You will write just as much as
before, but now instead of writing a few different stories, you are going to go deeper
into one story, adding more and stretching it out to show the importance of it.”

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 We hope that, when presented with the added space, children’s eyes will light
up and their hands will begin to move faster than ever before. Sometimes, however,
children meet the business of writing longer stories with groans and complaints.
Not surprisingly, the single most powerful ingredient in children’s enthusiasm is the
teacher’s enthusiasm and attitude. If you focus too much on volume, demanding that
students write a minimum number of pages, it is likely that students will bend their
heads faithfully to this task, creating minimum pages that will be just that: minimum.
Instead, if you present the opportunity to write longer stories as a new freedom, or
even as a characteristic of more accomplished writers, your young writers are more
likely to be so excited by the challenge to f ill the space that they will begin to write as
much as possible across those pages. You might show how, as a writer comes to know
more about how to craft a story, she simply needs more space to tell the story with all
the details that help the story come alive for the reader. One teacher we know used
a well-loved picture book and wrote an alternate version with only half the text, say-
ing that the author might have chosen to write her story this way. She presented this
bare-bones version to students, who easily recognized that the shorter story had lost
much of its signif icance and power compared to the original. The same effect might be
achieved using your own model text or the story of a shared class experience.
The challenge, of course, will be to help them write more while staying within
one small moment, since the Common Core State Standards call for the “recount of
a well-elaborated event or short sequence of events.” You do not want your students
to elongate their stories by including extraneous details or writing “bed to bed” sto-
ries. Rather, you will help them keep their focus on a short snippet from their lives,
zooming in to elaborate with details so the story doesn’t feel like just a snippet. One
way you might begin is by helping students to stretch out the action, going bit by bit,
blow by blow through the small moment. For example, instead of writing, “I opened
the door,” a child might write, “I gripped the knob and pulled with all my might.” To
practice visualizing how each bit of the story went, partners could act out their stories
for each other. They can go page by page, acting out what happened and then quickly
writing down all the things that they did. So the writer working on stretching out the
part where he opens the door might stand up and actually act out opening a door with
his partner. Then, the two can sit down and write all of the little things that the writer
had to do to get that door open.

Pulling Readers to the Edges of Their Seats

We don’t want children to add just any details to their stories, but details that will make
it come alive, making it feel more exciting and meaningful. The next step, then, will be
for children to turn to the parts of their stories that carry the most signif icance. Often
we call this the “heart” of the story. This is the part that brings the meaning of the piece
home for the reader. Writers underscore the heart of the story by spending more time
in that part, giving it more lines and more weight. It is, literally and metaphorically, the

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“biggest” part of the story. The longer that part of the story is, the more the reader knows
it is important to the author.
Another way you could help your writers improve their stories is by helping them
build tension. Explain to your students that tension is that quality in a story that com-
pels the reader to keep turning the pages and makes them feel that they need to know
what happens next with the characters. Tension keeps the reader on the edge of his
seat! While the heart of the story usually comes in the middle or close to the end, writ-
ers weave tension throughout the story, especially at the beginning. Tension builds up
the momentum to the heart of the story, like a train slowly chugging and then speed-
ing along the tracks. We can begin by adding a line about how the character is feeling
or what the character is thinking. This starts showing the inner story and piquing the
curiosity of our reader, encouraging them to read on looking for what will happen
next. We might say to children, “When we read books, we often think, ‘Oh my, I bet
_______ will happen next!’ We want the readers of our stories to do that, too, but they
need our help. They need us to drop a hint here or there so they can begin to think
about what is going to happen next. We can do this by sharing what we are thinking
or feeling.”
Extra paper can also help with tension. Once your writers are f inding the heart of
their story, you can teach them to use their paper to help them make sure they are
telling these parts bit by bit, drawing them out. One way you might do this is by hav-
ing kids take their crucial moment, the one they probably told fast and in just a few
sentences, and then write a sentence per page across several pages. So, if the heart of
a story was told in six sentences, a child would have six pieces of paper that tell that
part of the story. Each piece will hold one sentence. You could then teach children to
f ill in the rest of the lines on each page to take them to the next sentence in a bit-by-bit
way. By teaching with this mini-booklet inside their larger booklet, you are showing
your writers how to revise inside a story. You are keeping them from simply adding
more pages on at the end because they were told to write more. This is really revision
with a purpose, as opposed to revision merely for the sake of revision.
Writers also develop tension in a story by complicating a problem as the story goes
on. Teach your writers that if there is a problem in their story, they will usually intro-
duce it at the start. As the story goes on, they can build upon that problem, adding in
more hurdles that complicate the situation and leaving the reader thinking, “Oh, my
goodness! What is going to happen?” For example, if you are modeling a story about
the time when you and your best friend went bike riding and she had an accident, you
might begin by writing that she fell off her bike. Then, in the next part of your story,
as you try to help, you notice that she has cut her upper lip and is bleeding. You try
to help her up so that you can walk back to your house when you realize that she has
sprained her ankle and can’t move. Now you have developed your problem, spiraling
from a fall off the bike into a major accident, leaving your reader thinking, “Oh, my
goodness! How are they going to get out of this?” You could increase the tension even
more by having a time limit—perhaps the friend’s favorite uncle is visiting for dinner
and she’s desperate to get back home in time to see him.

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 Sometimes stories are tense because the person in the story has to try many times to
solve a particular problem. They are confronted with a challenging situation and after
creating a plan of action to address that situation, they realize that it will not in fact
work. The person in that story must then try over and over again to solve his problem.
Each time the situation often feels more dire, drawing the reader to the edge of his seat,
thinking, “Wow, this is gripping!” So, if you are writing a story about wanting to take a
bag down from a shelf you cannot reach, you will want to write about the different ways
you went about solving the problem. You might f irst write about how you tried to get the
bag down by pulling a chair over and standing on it. Then you might write about what
you did when you realized the chair was not tall enough—perhaps you scanned your
surroundings looking for something taller. As you continue to plan what you’ll write
next, you might say “Then I noticed a stool and decided to try that. It was still not high
enough. On my third attempt, I brought over the stool and a large phonebook. Stacking
one on top of the next, and standing on my tippy toes, I f inally reached the bag.”

Repeating the Process, and Accumulating Lessons along the Way

These concepts are sophisticated for our young writers, and so you will want children
to practice them in a few pieces. Each time they begin a new f ive-page booklet, you will
want them to draw upon all that they have learned so far, working at making their next
piece even better. Therefore, you might say to your children that the f irst thing we must
do before we begin a new story is to sit down and think about what we know makes for
good writing. Then we set a plan for what we will do to help our writing improve. If your
children are embarking upon a new story that day, they need to ask themselves, “What
did I do in my last story that made it so good I want to do it again? What else might I
try?” And, if your children are returning to a piece they began the day before, they might
look at it and ask, “What did I begin doing in my story that I could try in more places?
What else might I work on today to make this my strongest piece of writing yet?” To
support this work, you will want to refer to the charts and to their plans during your con-
ferences. You might ask them, “What is your plan for today? What goal are you working
on as a writer?” Then you will likely want to help them set up a plan of action for carry-
ing out their self-selected goal in order to foster independent writers in your workshop.
You might decide to make endings a big deal in this last part of the unit. The
Common Core State Standards for reading call for children to be able to recount sto-
ries and determine their central message or lesson by the end of second grade. You
might ask your children to do this same kind of lesson or message work in their writ-
ing, too. You could teach children to ask themselves, “What does my story teach other
people?” Kids could do this work with a partner. The partners could read each other’s
writing and then try to jot down the story’s message or what they learned. You will
probably want to teach your writers that the lesson and the heart of the story usually
go together. You could refer back to the incinerator scene in Toy Story 3 to help teach
this concept. This scene is one of the hearts of that movie, and it sends the message

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that friends stick together no matter what. You will want your writers to think about
what they want the heart of their story to teach others.

Celebration

We imagine that your children will write multiple pieces during this unit, and you will
likely have each child pick one piece that he or she will publish. Encourage them to
reread their pieces to f ind the one that builds the most tension and/or carries the most
signif icance. Then you might make your celebration an accountable talk celebration. You
might ask your authors to read their stories aloud to the class and then give the class
time to talk about these moments. If you have done the message work as described for
the f inal part, you will be especially acknowledging that their stories are very important.
They are so signif icant that they need to be read and also discussed. In preparation for
this, children could practice reading these stories in their best read-aloud voices, slow-
ing down at parts and then reading with excitement at others. You may even decide to
have children think of a place in the classroom or school where their story might live.
For example, stories about getting hurt might live at the nurse’s off ice or stories about
being a new kid at a new school might live in the main off ice. Or you could organize by
message. Your kids could group their stories in the classroom library by putting together
ones with similar messages. Whatever you choose to do with the writing from this unit,
your larger message will be that we worked hard to make this writing stand shoulder to
shoulder with the best writing on our bookshelves.

Additional Resources

At this time in the year, your children have done an incredible amount of writing. You
will provide children with an opportunity to ref lect on their own learning, drawing upon
what they already know, as well as the opportunity to add to their repertoire of strate-
gies, pushing them to go further, taking their small moments and making them into big,
signif icant, tense, well-developed narratives. This unit also provides you an opportunity
to help your writers prepare for third grade.
Your teaching will rely on assessing your students often—not in big fancy ways,
but by watching the work they do—and on you seeing their work as feedback on your
teaching. If you have taught something and only a handful of kids are able to sustain
that work to good effect, then you’ll want to decide whether that skill was essential,
whether you want to reteach it in a new way, or whether you want to detour around
it. You will want to consider ways that you can push your kids to write more on the
page. Your class may be ready to learn ways to elaborate and stretch their stories onto
notebook paper (which children will see regularly in the third grade). As you look at
your student work, you will make the best decision for your students, one that enables
them to do their best.

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 As with all units of study, you will want to select mentor texts to accompany your
teaching so that you can provide your writers with examples. One text you might use
during this unit is Those Shoes by Maribeth Boelts. Another is Too Many Tamales by
Gary Soto. And, remember that you have your own writing, stories from your life that
you can write with meaning, signif icance, and tension as a way to demonstrate for
your children all that is possible. You can tailor these pieces of writing to demonstrate
the skills that your students need. As a last note, remember to consult professional
resources, like the narrative continuum (see our website for suggestions) and to draw
on the work of the children in your classroom. Workshop teaching is most powerful
when we respond to and teach into our kids’ successes and struggles. In the end, a
good portion of your teaching will revolve around the responsive instruction you pro-
vide as you move kids along trajectories of skill development. You’ll want to become
accustomed to f ine-tuning your teaching through an attentiveness to student work,
because the work your students do is not just showing you what they can do or can’t
do, it is also showing you what you can do.

One Possible Sequence of Teaching Points

Part One: Remembering All We Know about Strong Narrative

Writing: Revisiting Our Old Small Moments and Generating New
Ones

n “I want to remind you that before we write, it helps to take a little time to
remember and to practice all the things we already know as writers. So, for
example, we might make a list across our f ingers of all that we already know
about how to make a good story and then tell our story a couple of times, touch-
ing the pages and saying it aloud, recalling how to make this the best story in
the world. We would do that before we write even a single word.”
x Tip: “We can use charts and lists in the classroom to remind us of ways
to go about our work. We use everything we know about good writing to
help us.”

n “Writers, in the past we’ve learned that one way writers generate ideas for
small moments is to think about things that we like to do and moments when
we have done those things. Today I want to teach you that when we want to
write gripping, true stories, it often helps to think about times we felt some-
thing really strongly—times we were angry, excited, embarrassed, hopeful, or
worried.”
x Tip: “We don’t just storytell our story one time before we write it. We sto-
rytell it over and over, trying to say our story better each time. We do this at
least four times, and then we write.”  

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 n “Today I want to teach you that writers have strategies for making our writing
long and strong. For example, we can recall a Small Moment story we’ve experi-
enced—one we’re keen to write—and think, ‘How did it start? What happened
f irst?’ then sketch or jot notes across the pages of our booklet and then write the
story, making sure to stretch out the story, tucking in important little details.”
x Tip: Refer to the f irst book in the Units of Study for Teaching Writing, Grades
3–5 series, Launching the Writing Workshop, Session I Mid-Workshop
Teaching Point for support.

n “Today I want to teach you that one way writers stretch out a story is to set a
goal of writing a whole page (or a longer amount that we’ve already written).
We select a page from our booklet on which we’ve done some writing, tear it
out, and rewrite that page, top to bottom, aiming to make it even longer than
the original version. Doing this can help us come up with even more ideas for
how that bit of writing will go.”

Part Two: Pulling Readers to the Edges of Their Seats

n “Today, students, I want to teach you that writers make sure that the most
important part in our story is f illed with details that help our reader know exactly
what is happening and why. One way we do this is to f ind the heart of our
story. We can think about the part that has the biggest meaning and is the most
important to us and then make sure it has the kind of details that will help to
situate the reader.”  

n “Today I want to teach you that when writers want to make a small moment
big, we rewrite the parts of our stories where we had strong feelings, showing
exactly what happened f irst and how we reacted, then what happened next and
how we reacted.”

n “Today I want to teach you that writers check our work to make sure each part
of our story has details that show feelings. We can read our stories to our friends
and ask them what feeling they get in different parts.”
x Example: “You may start out really happy playing with your friends at the
playground until you fall down and hurt yourself. Clearly, your feelings
will change and you’ll be upset or disappointed that you can no longer
play, or scared that you’re bleeding. By showing our feelings we help our
readers understand what we were going through during the different parts
of our stories.”

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 n “Today I want to teach you that writers keep our readers ‘hooked’ on our stories.
We don’t want to say our big feeling right away. Instead, we slow down the big
problem to create some tension. Remember when we read Those Shoes? We didn’t
f ind out right away that the shoes don’t f it Jeremy, right? And we also didn’t f ind
out right away that Jeremy gives the shoes away. Instead, we read pages and pages
about all the things that Jeremy does and thinks leading up until the moment
when f inally, we learn that Jeremy leaves the shoes for Antonio.”
x Tip: “We can do this too in our own writing. We can tell what our characters
think about and do up until the big moment in our story.”

n “Writers keep readers at the edge of their seats, wondering, ‘What will hap-
pen next?’ We do this in many ways! One way writers do this is by making the
stories come alive and telling each part bit by bit. Partners can help us envision
how each bit goes and we can act out the scenes together, writing all of the little
things that we have to do in each part.”

n “Today I want to teach you that another way we can keep our readers at the
edge of their seats is to weave little bits throughout our story about how the
character is feeling or about what the character is thinking. This way we can give
the reader clues about the story, encouraging them to read on, anticipating what
will happen next.”

n “Today I want to teach you another way we can give readers that ‘Oh my good-
ness! What is going to happen?’ feeling is to introduce the problem at the
beginning of our stories and then complicate it (make it even bigger!) as the
story moves forward.”
x Tip: “Writers can also do this by describing how the character in the story
tries many times to solve a problem before successfully f inding a solution.”

Part Three: Repeating the Process, and Accumulating Lessons along

the Way

n “Today I want to teach you that writers always use everything we know about
good writing so we can create a plan to make our stories even better! If we are
starting a new piece we can stop and think, ‘What did I do in my last story that
made it so good that I want to do it again? What else might I try?’”
x Tip: “And, if we are continuing a piece we’ve already started, we can
reread and ask, ‘What did I begin doing in my story that I could try in
more places? What else might I work on today to make this my strongest
piece of writing yet?’”

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 n “Today I want to teach you that writers give our stories powerful endings. One
way we can end our stories is by sharing the lesson that the character learns.
We can reread our writing and ask ourselves, ‘What does my story teach other
people?’”
x Tip: “Once we f igure out the lesson our story teaches, we can go back to the
heart of the story and make sure that the lesson comes through in that part
of the story.”

n “We know that in stories all the parts f it together and the author tells us what we
need to know. Well, we can do the same thing when we read the stories we’re
writing. I want to teach you that writers reread our writing to make sure all the
parts f it together. We can reread one part and stop and ask ourselves, ‘Does this
part go with the last part I just read?’ If it does, we can continue to read the next
part. If it does not, we may need to take out extra writing that does not belong
or add in writing to make the parts f it.”

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 unit seven

Using Nonf iction Texts as Mentors

to Support Nonf iction Writing

MARCH

T
 his is the third unit of study on expository writing this year, and one that we think
will recharge your students to write with purpose and enthusiasm. By this time,
your second graders will have completed their expert projects, as well as their per-
suasive reviews. Now that it is March and kids are moving back into nonf iction reading,
it is a wonderful time to return to nonf iction writing, especially because this unit forges
a deep connection between reading and writing nonf iction books. This unit teaches
children to write about topics they are passionate about and to organize their informa-
tion intentionally. This unit relies heavily upon the use of mentor texts so that kids may
generate many different possibilities for how their books might look and sound. After
studying different kinds of nonf iction mentor texts, children will write and organize their
books to communicate information and ideas in new ways. This unit is where the work
students do as readers, as writers, and as learners comes together in closer, tighter ways.
You might think of it as a time for children to lace all their work together, much the way
they lace up their shoes, threading the laces all the way up and pulling them tight. This
is what the work of this unit is about—the reading, writing, and learning that second
graders will be grasping and tying tightly together.
In this unit, your teaching will weave together the work that the Common Core
State Standards require of your second graders—to both read and write informative/
explanatory texts. The work of this unit cuts across all strands in writing including
text types and purposes, production and distribution of writing, and research to pres-
ent knowledge. The corresponding reading unit parallels this work, cutting across all
strands in reading including key ideas and details, craft and structure, and integration
of knowledge and ideas.

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 Undoubtedly, as you read through this writing unit, you will stop and think to
yourself, time and again, this sounds more like the work of a reader than of a writer.
In fact, your children will be doing some reading work in writing workshop. The work
we envision you and your writers doing throughout this unit blossoms from what they
have learned to do as readers. It shouldn’t be surprising to you, then, when we state
that as your writers craft and create informational texts using various text structures,
features, and elaboration to convey their knowledge, they’ll actually be doing this
work as readers as well. For example, the Common Core State Standards require that
second-grade students know how to ask and answer who, what, where, when, why,
and how questions to understand key details in a text. You will use this knowledge
to teach your writers how to write to answer these questions for their readers in their
informational texts.
Many of the nonf iction books that students read in levels K, L, M, and N have a
wide range of text structures and means of elaboration. Looking through nonf iction
books at these levels, you will notice several ways the books tend to be organized.
Sometimes, a book will explore a topic through questions and answers, such as, How
do plants grow? or, True or False? Facts about Birds. Other texts use a compare-and-con-
trast structure, which is something that students will need to be familiar with across
grades according to the Common Core State Standards in reading. Other books relay
information about a topic by telling a story, such as the book, A Day in the Life of a
Snake. As children read different nonf iction books, you will teach them to read not
only for information and content, but also for craft and structure. As you and your chil-
dren read and study these mentor texts, you will notice the different choices authors
make when they set out to teach others about a topic. Ultimately, when students begin
writing their books they will need to decide how best to structure them to teach others
about the topics they have chosen. 
In this unit, unlike the expert projects where students wrote one book, children
should write many books. Second graders are able to generate ideas and write a book
in the span of a few days. As children progress through this unit, you will help them
consider and try out different text structures to best convey the information about their
topics. Children may also return to a previously written book and rewrite it, perhaps
organizing the information differently. As is always true in a writing workshop, chil-
dren will cycle through this work at different rates and will be doing different things
at different times. One of the main goals for this unit is volume, writing a lot of books
and trying out different organizational structures. When children are learning new text
structures it is often helpful to try out many different structures and topics before set-
tling on a f inal topic and a text structure for their f inal book. Since it is March in second
grade, your students have probably developed a signif icant repertoire for generating
topics, writing with stamina and focus, and writing with detail. Just think back to all of
the rigorous work they did during their Expert Projects writing unit. This unit stands
upon the shoulders of the expository writing work that students have done earlier this
year and in years past, and gives them the opportunity to write to convey information
about their topics. 

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 Regardless of the structure writers chose, you’ll keep paper choices ambitious with
multiple pages and lines on pages for writers to f ill. A question-and-answer book does
not mean one question followed by a sentence for an answer, but rather, a question
to hook the reader, and then whole paragraphs of writing to answer the question and
teach information to help readers understand the answer to the question. Think too
about providing students with plenty of revision and elaboration tools, including f laps,
extra pages, and paper choices.
In this nonf iction writing unit, the children will not conduct heavy research. Instead,
you will teach children to think of topics they already have some knowledge of or are
interested in, and write about these topics in ways that teach or help others learn
something. You could teach children to choose social studies or science topics they
have previously studied or are currently studying outside writing workshop, keeping
in mind that children should be able to draft their whole books quickly so that they can
move on to another topic and another book. This would be a nice way to give students
choice over their topics while still teaching in a way that cuts across the curriculum.
Or you may decide to teach children to choose topics that are more personal, such as
being a great artist or writing about the country where they were born. Children might
also consider writing about something that would be important to teach a particular
audience, such as their peers or children in another class or grade. Most importantly,
children are making their own choices, not only with regard to topic, but also with
regard to structure and craft. This way, children will learn to write with voice and con-
viction simply because they feel strongly about their topics.
Of course, before launching this unit it is important to gather enough mentor texts
to use with your students. You’ll want to f ind a wide range of nonf iction books that
ref lect a variety of text structures, making sure to collect texts that will inspire your
children to try out different strategies for organizing ideas and information aligning
with the Common Core State Standards. As you gather and collect these texts, you’ll
want to take time to study them yourself, thinking about how you might use them
to demonstrate different strategies for organizing, elaborating, and teaching about a
topic. For instance, you may investigate multiple mentor texts for structure, noting the
different ways authors organize information. Then, you might return to those texts
and investigate the various ways authors elaborate, such as using partner sentences,
def initions, or anecdotes. This way, you enter the unit with a repertoire of ways to talk
and teach children about the qualities of this genre of writing.

Getting Started by Trying Out New Text Structures: Writing Lots

of Drafts

When you launch this new unit of nonf iction writing, you’ll want to think about how to
rally students’ enthusiasm. Second graders tend to be fascinated by the world around
them and by doing the work that older kids or even grown-ups might do, so you will
certainly want to harness this fascination and excite them about writing books that
are similar to some classroom favorites. In this unit, students will have the chance

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to study some of their all-time favorite nonf iction books and learn to write in simi-
lar ways. You’ll want to spotlight a few nonf iction books that you know your kids
love, highlighting the text structures and features that really caught your kids’ atten-
tion—remind them how much they loved the way those books were written, how they
couldn’t stop talking about the way the book looked, or how it opened up with f laps
on certain pages, or how you had to turn the book vertically to read certain pages. You
might say, “All those books that make us go, ‘Ooh! Ahh! and Wow!’ Those books that
we thought were so cool can help us write our own books!” In this unit, children will
experiment with text structure and write books that will leave readers with important
information and ideas. Students will have the chance to think about who it is they
want to reach, teach, and inspire, in perhaps a similar way that a favorite author or
book has reached, taught, and inspired them.
This unit coincides with a nonf iction reading unit in the reading workshop. As
children devour nonf iction books during reading workshop, they will have two big
jobs to do as readers. The f irst will be to read for key ideas and details and to integrate
knowledge and information, comparing and contrasting information from various
books, sharing what they’ve learned with partners or groups. The second big job will
be to read with an eye for craft and structure. You might ask children, “Why do you
think the author wrote the book in this way?” Or perhaps, “How does structuring the
book as question and answer help us understand more about this particular topic?”
Be on the lookout for books about the same topic that are structured in different ways,
because these can help you teach your students to inquire about the nature and power
of different approaches. For the f irst few days in the writing workshop, you’ll want to
highlight a few ways some of your favorite nonf iction authors have structured their
books. Demonstrate how some authors organize their books using questions and
answers to write about insects and bugs while another author uses compare and con-
trast to teach about animals in the wild. You may show them how in a book like Bugs!
Bugs! Bugs! the author organizes the sections quite differently—the text is organized
into sections of information for each insect: praying mantis, wood ants, and stink bugs.
This unit will inspire your children to experiment with a variety of structures for writing
about their topics.
Remind your students that they have learned many strategies for thinking about
what they could write about or teach people. For example, if a child were to write a
book about traveling, he or she could imagine a few different possibilities. Perhaps
the chapters or sections could be questions, like “What do you need to pack to go on
a trip?” or “How do you get ready for an airplane ride?” Alternatively, the child might
compare and contrast traveling to a faraway place for a vacation with staying at home
for a vacation. As your children consider each possibility for how to structure their
texts, you may want to teach them to consider the pros and cons of using a particu-
lar structure for a particular topic. For example, they may want to say to themselves,
“What will I be able to put in my book if I write it this way? What will I have to leave
out if I write it this way?” Of course, the best way to f igure out which structure is best
is to simply try them out and see!

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 It may take children one to three days to quickly draft an entire book, with the
emphasis on getting the words down, moving on to a new idea as soon as they’ve
f inished. Again, this is a unit where students should be writing many books and writ-
ing with lots of volume. One way to teach kids to elaborate and write with volume is
to remind them to use the accountable talk strategies they learned when writing their
expert books in the Expert Projects unit, such as “This is important because . . .” or
“This makes me wonder . . .” or “As I write this, I am realizing that . . .” or “The sur-
prising thing about this is . . .” As students draft, remind them that they are writing to
f ill a particular audience’s mind with knowledge and to move them to say, “Ooh! Ahh!
and Wow!” just as they do when reading their favorite authors’ texts. 
Because students will generate many ideas in the f irst week of the unit, and return
to generating ideas after drafting each book, you may confer or pull small groups of
children who struggle to f ind ideas for topics. Some children may feel they are out of
ideas and have nothing left to teach, and you may need to help those children f ind
topics just by looking around their communities and classrooms. Because this unit also
focuses on writing with an audience or reader in mind, it may help children to think
about what will be important for their friends, classmates, and family to learn. They
may ask themselves, “What is important in our lives? What information do I know
that may help other people?” Children might decide they want to write about how to
be a good student or a good friend, how to succeed in second grade, or how to be a
good older brother. Linking their writing to real-world change may be just the thing
that sparks reengagement with the unit.

Write with Precision, Persuasion, and Power

Although the buzz in your classroom will be about the topics your children are writ-
ing about and the ways they are experimenting with structure and organization, it is
important to remember that you are always teaching the qualities of good writing. As
students draft their books, you’ll want to help them make sure they aren’t simply writing
lists for each chapter, but are, instead, writing with precision and specif icity. We want to
teach children to show, not just tell, about their topics. You might teach children to give
specif ic examples, providing several instead of only one. As they write, children should
be encouraged to write in a step-by-step way so the reader can really envision what it is
the writer is trying to convey or teach. Another strategy you might teach is to use stories
as a way to show and teach a topic. Students might write, “One time . . .” as a way to set
up the reader to hear a story about a particular instance or example. 
In this unit you have the opportunity to teach children how to write with specif icity
about their topics. Teaching them to write where something is, how something works,
or why something is a particular way challenges students to write more complex sen-
tences. You will teach children how to expand their sentences using connector words
(such as so, and, and but) and prepositional phrases that lend more clarity and preci-
sion to their writing, aligning with the Language section of the Common Core State
Standards. As children draft, you will want to encourage them to reread their mentor

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texts to notice the ways different authors provide information through elaboration.
You might also notice the way authors surprise us or help us see and understand
things in new ways. Thus, you are not only teaching students to attend to the differ-
ent structures authors use to organize their books, but also the ways they elaborate.
As children write their books, teach them to keep their audience in mind as they
write. Students will need to think carefully about who it is they intend to teach and
how to write in ways that will reach this audience. Considering audience will encour-
age students to think not only about how to structure their books, but also how to
write to teach, inspire, convince, or surprise their readers. Knowing that you are trying
to teach a population of young soccer players how to be better players has an inf luence
on the content, voice, and structure of your book. Writing to teach adults all about
recess as a way to convince them for more free time would, of course, also inf luence
the content, voice, and structure of your book. Ultimately, this unit helps children
understand that all texts are written with a particular audience in mind, and thereby
plants the seeds for critical reading. You’ll want your students to begin to understand
that the way to inf luence their reader is to not only think about the topic that he or
she is writing about, but also to create titles, chapters, and headings that are angled
toward a feeling about the topic. You may want to teach your children that the infor-
mation comes f irst, and the feelings second, because this is an informational piece
not an opinion piece. However, feelings may still be incorporated in a way that helps
to draw out what a story is really about. For example, if a student is writing about the
topic of coming to the United States from the Philippines and the adjustments with
such a move, she may decide to change the initial title from “Being New to America”
to “American Schools and the Treatment of Immigrants.”
Though this part of the unit focuses on the qualities of good writing and teaches
children to write with precision to reach their intended audience, keep in mind that
children will return to generating and planning books with different topics, or perhaps
different structures. That is, students will rotate through the writing process. So, as you
confer and work with small groups, it’s safe to assume that you’ll continue to teach
children strategies to generate possibilities for books and to plan the sections of their
books. Children may decide to rely on a different mentor text for inspiration or ideas,
so be sure those texts are circulating and in use during your workshop.

Revise, Edit, and Celebrate

During this part, children will look over their books and drafts to revise. You will teach
children to study their writing to be sure they have enough information and to be sure
their writing is clear to readers. Children may look over their chapters and realize that
they need to revise their headings, rewrite particular chapters, or rearrange sections to
support their readers. Perhaps a student is writing a compare-contrast book about her
country of origin. Most of the chapters may compare the country of origin, say Ecuador,
with the United States. But as the child looks over her book, she realizes that some
chapters don’t follow that structure. This could be because the writer got tired or couldn’t

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maintain the structure across the entire book. F ind out the thoughts and intentions the
writer had and teach her how to solve the problem. Usually, this means that you need to
think about how you would solve this problem and then create a strategy for the student
by breaking the work down into smaller steps.
Students may also work in partnerships to lift the level of their writing and help
each other f ind places where they need to add more information or say more inside
a particular chapter. You might teach students to listen to their partner’s work with
a specif ic set of questions in mind. Does each chapter have enough information? Do
some chapters have too much information and others not enough? Do some chapters
not f it with the structure you have chosen? How could you rewrite some chapters so
they match the structure you have chosen?
As children edit their books, you may want to teach them to reread their books with
an eye for writing more complex sentences. At this point in the year, we don’t want
students to continue writing in simple sentences. You may teach students how to write
more complex, compound sentences with clauses and more sophisticated punctuation.
For example, you may teach students how to combine elements in a list. You will focus
your editing work with students to meet their needs. For example, if appropriate, you
may teach children to go on a proper-noun hunt in their books, or to edit for spelling
of particular vowel patterns. 
At the end of this unit, celebrate the challenging, intellectual work of writing
nonf iction books. You may want to celebrate by asking each student to share the
mentor text that inspired him or her to write his or her book and how the mentor
book inf luenced the student’s published book. Students might talk about the text
structure and craft of their f inal published piece and what inspired those choices,
aligning with the emphasis on authorial purpose found throughout the Common Core
State Standards. For example, a child might share her f inal question-and-answer book
and the mentor text that inspired it. Also, because you have been teaching children to
consider their audience throughout this unit, perhaps your children will think carefully
about who it is they would like to invite to the celebration. Children may write a letter
to an individual or a group inviting them to attend the celebration to learn more about
their topics. Perhaps it is another second-grade classroom, or the administration of
your school, or a younger group of children. You’ll have to decide if each child chooses
an individual or two that he or she would like to invite, or you may decide as a class
about the best audience for your new books.

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 unit eight

Writing Adaptations of Familiar

Fairy Tales and Folk Tales,
and Perhaps Writing Original
Fantasy Stories as Well
APRIL

T
 his unit was once just an option for second graders, but we’ve given the unit
its own place in the sun because the Common Core State Standards spotlight
the importance of children growing up knowing folk tales and fairy tales, so we
expect these to be even more present on the high-stakes tests that kids will encounter
in years to come. Furthermore, we agree with the Standards that these tales have terrif ic
teaching power. Because they are by nature taut tales with clear story arcs, archetypes,
and lessons, these tales are terrif ic models of craft moves that youngsters might apply
to their own writing.
We know many of you are well versed in fairy tales and folk tales—perhaps adapta-
tions of Cinderella and The Three Little Pigs f ill your bookshelves, and you’ve no doubt
loved hearing the familiar tales told from new points of view and seeing them situated
in new settings. In preparation for this unit, you may want to revisit some of these
classics, and reread several versions of them, too. Children will be doing this, too, in
the parallel unit in reading folk tales and fairy tales we’re offering this year. Students
will read multiple adaptations of well-known tales from all over the world. In writ-
ing workshop, you’ll invite children to write their own adaptations of some of their
favorites. This invitation gives children a way to know those few fairy tales deeply,
in their bones. Meanwhile, children will also grasp recurring elements in fairy tales.
This unit also aims to use fairy tales as a vehicle for furthering your children’s abilities
to write any kind of stories. You may want to reread the November unit on realistic
f iction writing as you plan this unit because, above all, your goal is to give children
more practice writing f iction.
Your children will know some fairy tales, but probably will not have turned the
genre inside out to think about its constituent parts. They probably have yet to discover

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that things in fairy tales (and in many other stories) often come in threes—there are
apt to be three sons or daughters, three wishes, three pigs, and magical people are apt
to say incantations three times. They may not yet know that fairy tales often begin,
“Once upon a time, long, long ago, in some setting, in some situation, there lived
someone with an unusual trait.” When they read, “Once upon a time, in a land across
the sea, there lived a king with twelve beautiful daughters,” the words will probably
not resonate against a memory bank of similar story beginnings. The rhythms of these
stories may not be familiar to young children yet, and so they don’t realize that the
main character will no doubt have cares, worries, wants—and that these will probably
lead to troubles. They’ll be surprised that the king who loved his daughters was so
worried that they’d be snatched from him that he kept them secreted away—whereas
you won’t be. And they may not realize that before long, there will be a sentence that
marks the beginning of a turning point: “But then, one day . . .” Many second graders
haven’t yet learned that in fairy tales the good tends to win over bad, nor do they know
that, as often as not, the younger, smaller, unlikely person will rise to the occasion and
save the day, usually outwitting the far stronger opponent. Many of them have yet to
make the spectacular discovery that the same tale can be told in many ways. Don’t, by
all means, plan to dump all this information on them, because the fun (and the work)
will come from their making some of these discoveries on their own.

Rehearsing and Planning for Stories, Paying Careful Attention to Fairy

Tale Language and Structure

In this unit, as in the previous narrative units, children will take a day before writing
a story to plan it, perhaps using the temporary scaffold of informal planning booklets
(made by the child by folding an empty sheet of paper into a booklet with four pages,
then quickly sketching the main progression of one draft of the story, then storytelling
this several times before trying an entirely different sequence on a different planning
booklet). And in this unit, as in the previous narrative units, you will teach children
that writers revise before we actually write. Writers revise as we plan in many ways,
but one of the most important involves reconsidering where, in the sequence of events,
we’ll start the story (wanting to start it close to the main action). Specif ically, writers
ask, “Where in the sequence of events will my story start?” and “What exactly will the
main character be doing or saying when the story starts?” and then writers become that
main character, mentally acting out what that character does, thinks, and says, while
scribing this mental movie onto the page. Before children write, they settle on one likely
sequence and transfer the sketches from an informal planning booklet onto paper con-
taining a picture box and lots and lots of lines, designating each page for one further
sequence in the plotline of the story.
As we mentioned earlier, before you embark on the unit, it would be great if you
read and reread several versions of two or three fairy tales aloud to your class. This
will allow your students to begin to compare and contrast two or more versions of the
same story by different authors as stated in the Common Core State Standards. In this

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part you will not only want your students to notice the similarities and differences as
readers, but you will want them to start thinking about the authorial decisions behind
such versions so that they begin to listen and read like writers. One class, for example,
may have heard the teacher read and reread the traditional versions of The Three Little
Pigs. At the start of this unit, you will want to reread yet again at least two (and ideally
three) variations of one tale. Even if you will later bring out another fairy tale with all
its variations, you’ll probably stick with just one at the start of the unit. You’ll need
to decide whether some of those variations are told from opposing points of view, as
when Scieszka retells The Three Little Pigs from the wolf’s point of view, leading to a
radically different sequence of events. An alternate point of view adds an entirely new
level of complexity and challenge, and we suggest that for the time being, you select
variations that hug the shores of the original text in more straightforward ways. But
this is up to you. In any case, if you read lots of versions of one story to your children,
by the time you are on your third adaptation, let children know before you read even
just a page of that version of the story that you are speculating over how the writer
will have adapted the tale this time. Let them know before you read even a single page
that you expect the writer may have changed the setting from countryside to city, or
altered the characters so that instead of being boys they are girls, or instead of pigs
they are cats. Even before you begin reading, help children know that any one change
an author makes will lead to others. If the author writes a variation on The Three Billy
Goats Gruff and turns the goats into raccoons, they are certainly not trip-trapping over
a bridge to get to a meadow! Will they skitter across the bridge? Or will the author
invent a different route to their destination? If their destination is a brim-full garbage
can in the alley, are the raccoons crossing a porch instead of a bridge? That is, as you
read aloud the third or fourth adaptation of one story, you can recruit children to co-
author possible adaptations, and show them how the choices an author makes set
things into motion. As you do this work, of course, you are helping children consider
how yet one more adaptation can go—the child’s adaptation!
It will be important for your children to use the existing text to scaffold their author-
ship of a new version. For example, after reading the text aloud as we just described,
we recommend you give children time to reread the text on their own or with part-
ners, thinking about how they might change the story so it bears the imprint of what
they know and care about (the alterations are not random!). You’ll want to give each
partnership a copy of the text (or one version of it, anyhow) and during writing time,
encourage partners to reread and rethink the text. (Don’t give them dittos to guide this
work, though you may be tempted to do so! This is a writing workshop!) Or, you’ll give
children blank books, ask them to sketch a version they have read in those books and
then to use that sketched re-creation of one version to scaffold the version the child
invents. If many of your children cannot actually read the words on copies of the book,
that is okay. As long as you have read the text at least three times, they can use the
pictures and their memories of the text to re-create the general sequence, which is all
they will need to study in order to imagine how the text could have gone differently.
Partners could also support one another in the rereading of the texts.

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 To help children imagine how they can tell the tale differently, you’ll need to give
them some quick lessons on reading critically. Authors rewrite traditional tales for
reasons. Sometimes we rewrite a familiar tale because we disagree with the way the
tale stereotyped girls (the good ones are beautiful, the bad ones are ugly, and girls in
general are not the active doer but the passive prize). Then, too, authors may disagree
with the way wolves or foxes or stepmothers are stereotyped. In a similar way, authors
may disagree that the real prize worth going after is money or food—we may want the
prize to be world peace, or ways to help others. Sometimes authors rewrite a tale to
make it more relevant to readers who live in cities. Sometimes we want the tale to be
more appealing to children. Teachers, you will need to help children mull over their
options and to show them that one way to do this is to revisit one version of the fairy
tale, talking about how the story could be told differently. During writing workshop
partnerships can reread a version of a fairy tale and talk about the choices the author
made and the choices they could imagine reconsidering.
Of course, most of this work will center not so much on mulling over decisions,
and more on imagining the implications of any one of those decisions. If one child
wants to explore the possibility that The Three Little Pigs be renamed The Three Little
Dogs, then that child will probably end up wondering whether the villain should still
be a hungry wolf. Might it be an eager dog catcher? Would the story still be set in the
country, or might it be in a city? Meanwhile another writer may decide to take issue
not with the fact that the main characters are pigs or the villain is a wolf, but instead,
with the ways the pigs treat the wolf. The pigs show no concern over the fact that the
wolf is hungry. What if they’d worked with ingenuity to help the hungry prowler?
During the workshop, children will reread, exploring ways the one plot line could be
tweaked, stretched, or twisted so as to create a host of other stories or adaptations.
Once they begin to imagine other ways in which the story could go, they’ll need to
shift to planning booklets. They’ll probably need more than the four pages they’ve
used in the past for planning, and so you may suggest they begin with not one but
two sheets of paper, folded over as described in the f iction unit, creating eight-page
blank planning books.
A word of caution: If you worry that children may not be able to be successful at
this unit without a lot of support, don’t act on those fears by setting the whole class up
to plan one fairy tale variation in unison, with every one of your children then writing
a tale that the class has planned together. Instead, say to yourself that it is totally f ine
for seven-year-olds to try something as ambitious as the work you’ve laid before them
and to produce a text that simply represents their seven-year-old best effort. You are
asking these youngsters to try their hand at something that we would probably f ind
challenging—let them have a go! Their seven-year-old efforts to draw aren’t all that
professional either, and you let them “have a go.” Do the same with this unit. This unit
serves as a nice scaffold to prepare your writers for the expectation that the Common
Core State Standards set forth for third grade, to not only write and develop real nar-
ratives, but imagined ones as well. 

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 The work described so far will probably require two or three days at the start of this
unit, and none of those days will have involved a lot of actual writing. So as children go
about rehearsing (as described above and in the unit on f iction writing), you’ll prob-
ably want to use conferences and small-group work to channel them toward the actual
writing. As before, your children will need booklets of at least f ive pages, and for most,
each of those pages will look rather like notebook paper, with space on each page for
about f ive to seven sentences. You may f ind that some of your especially prof icient
second graders could literally be writing on lined notebook paper—fold a page over
at its waistline, and you’ll create booklets containing four half-pages. Be sure children
sketch or jot a word in a corner of each page, signifying that on that page the child will
tell the beginning, middle, and end of just the one micro-event that goes onto that
page, represented in that icon. The f irst page of a Three Billy Goats Gruff variation may
tell about Goat number 1 crossing the bridge, the second page might be Goat number
2, the third page, Goat number 3 (joined in this version by the nearby brothers). The
author may need additional pages, which is f ine. Be sure when the child goes to write
that each page is written a bit like a Small Moment story, with the writer starting by
thinking, “What exactly is this character doing at the start of this episode? (Goat num-
ber 1 crossing the bridge)—The littlest billy goat looked across the bridge and saw a
nice green meadow. ‘Mmm, that looks good,’ he thought, and then stepped toward
the bridge . . .”
Teachers, while teaching any unit of study, you will want to gather with your col-
leagues to think together about the predictable problems children are apt to encounter.
You should anticipate that the challenge of helping children storytell (as we did above)
rather than summarize (“The littlest goat crossed the bridge and the troll attacked
him”) will be an enduring one. You should have a whole repertoire of teaching strat-
egies to draw upon to help children draft and revise toward the goal of storytelling
rather than summarizing (also called “show, don’t tell”). Remember, you can sug-
gest children reenact (dramatize) and then write, you can suggest children storytell
repeatedly, and so on. If you are expecting children to revise a summarized story so
as to make it a story told, know that this will probably require an entirely new draft. If
a child tries to simply add a few details to a summary, the resulting text is usually not
much better than the f irst one.
In this unit as in earlier units, each of your second graders will write a handful
of stories during this month of writing. You will need to decide whether these con-
tinue to be variations of the one fairy tale or whether children tackle another fairy
tale altogether. If the latter, will this be another fairy tale that you’ve read aloud and
discussed with lots of whole-class work? Or will the children’s work with the next
fairy tale be more independent? These are all great options, and we recommend that
you and your colleagues refrain from seizing too quickly on one tack or another. As
is always the case with curricular decisions, each choice will have its own possibilities
and its own limitations.

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One Option: Revising and Elaborating Your Story to Create Tension,
Convey Meaning, and Consider Different Possibilities

There may be advantages to spending another week or two (or three) writing adapta-
tions to the one single fairy tale that you and the class have already studied. After all, the
real goal of this unit is for children to come to know fairy tales so well that these texts
become part of them—and lift the level of their writing. When Hemingway was asked,
“How do you learn to write?” he answered, “Read Anna Karenina, read Anna Karenina,
read Anna Karenina.” It is arguable that one of the best ways for your children to learn
to write is to read (and rewrite) The Three Billy Goats Gruff, and then to read and rewrite
The Three Billy Goats Gruff all over again.
If you decided that you’d like your children to invest another week or two working
with the one fairy tale for which they’ve written an adaptation, our suggestion is to
try rallying them to reread the adaptation they’ve already written, and if they like it, if
they regard it as full of potential, then help them realize that real writers write not just
one draft, but several drafts, before their story is done. Suggest that this time, children
might reread the original story noticing not only the broad outlines of the choices the
author made—that is, noticing not only that the characters in The Three Billy Goats
Gruff are goats, but also noticing the way in which the original text was written.
You can encourage your writers to bring out the template of craft charts from across
the year when apprenticing themselves to mentor authors, and to again notice places
where the fairy tale gets to them—makes them feel something or see something—and
then ask, “What exactly did the author do to create this effect?”
Of course, children will notice all sorts of things—the way the wolf breaks into
verse before huff ing and puff ing at the little pig’s house, the fact that the pigs don’t
seem to have specif ic names. Some of these will represent traits that are common to
many fairy tales, some of these will represent qualities of good writing that you hope
writers emulate often, and some will just be peculiarities of the text under study. Either
way, help youngsters to ask, “Why might the author have decided to write this way?”
and “What would the text be like if the author had written it differently?” and “Are
there places in my own writing where I could try my hand at something similar?”
As children study and emulate the craft in fairy tales, you will certainly want to call
their attention to features that you think are worth noting. For example, you’ll prob-
ably want to help children notice that fairy tale writers often incorporate a certain kind
of literary language, using phrases such as, “Once upon a time . . .” and “But then, one
day . . .” or “Not long after that . . .” You may also want to show children that fairy tale
writers often write with complex sentences. Instead of writing “He did this and then
he did that and then he did this and then he did that”—chaining simple sentences
together, using ands as linking words—fairy tale writers often begin a sentence by tell-
ing when or where or under what conditions or with what sorts of feelings, someone
did something. For example, “Just after the little goat reached the other side of the
bridge, the middle goat took a step towards the bridge.” Another example, “Worrying
that the troll would appear again, the middle goat walked quickly across the bridge.”

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This work with language aligns nicely with the Common Core State Standards for
Language that call for second graders to be able to use words and phrases acquired
through conversations, reading, and being read to. The Standards also expect that the
students will produce, expand, and rearrange complete simple and compound sen-
tences when writing and speaking. 
Fairy tales are almost invariably structured like classic stories, with a character
wanting something, running into trouble, and f inally f iguring out a way to tackle the
trouble. We do not recommend that you expect children in second grade to develop
the metacognitive sophistication necessary to be able to think with any specif icity
about the story grammar that underpins most stories, but while children are rereading
and writing fairy tales, you will probably want to highlight just the simplest, most obvi-
ous aspects of these stories. That is, you can help children see that the main character
has something he or she wants, something the character is trying to get, and then
the character ends up encountering trouble, diff iculties, and obstacles. Eventually, to
the reader’s great relief, the main character usually f inds some way to surmount the
diff iculties so the story can end “happily ever after.”
You may decide to look specif ically at the structure that supports many stories,
and to see if they can see this structure underpinning the story the class has studied
together. Does that same structure support the child’s rendition of the tale? More
specif ically, you can suggest that writers locate the points in the published fairy tale
and in their own version in which characters encounter trouble. Usually, that trouble
will get worse and worse before it is resolved. Reading this section of a story, the
reader almost feels as if he or she is reliving the trouble. Things begin to get bad, then
they get worse and worse. Tension builds. Children can study how fairy tale authors
build tension and can reread their own drafts asking, “What can I do to bring out the
tension even more in my story?” Of course, in order to bring out the tension in a story,
writers are wise to shift into the role of storyteller, saying the story aloud, hoping to do
so in ways to give listeners goosebumps.
Over the next few days you will also help children decide what it is they really want
their story to show and convey. For instance, a story about a child’s trip on the roller
coaster can show that the child’s father will do anything for his son, or it can show
that the child is able to combat his fears. Children need to learn that, for example,
the story will start differently, largely depending on the meaning the writer wants to
advance. Different sections of the story will be stretched out and highlighted. Again,
the decision will relate to a student’s decision to advance one meaning or another.
Fairy tales usually contain a fairly heavy-handed moral. One story, for example, will
teach that intelligence wins over brute force. Another teaches that kindness and gen-
erosity accompany (or create) beauty, and that anyone can become a princess. These
stories, then, provide children with chances to practice highlighting a meaning or
moral. You will help children make decisions as to what moral they might wish to
teach in their stories.
You’ll decide if there are other aspects of published fairy tales that you want to
highlight. Make this decision by reading over student drafts and asking, “What gets
in the way of these being better?” and “What do many students seem to be on the

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brink of being able to do?” Look over the narrative writing continuum and think about
where most of your students seem to fall at this time of the year, and look ahead to
notice the skills that writers who are working at just a bit more advanced level dem-
onstrate. For example, if many writers seem to write narratives like those in Level 4 on
the narrative continuum, you may decide that one way to help them become stronger
writers is to help them realize that a fairy tale, like any story, contains just a couple of
scenes and those scenes can be written as Small Moment stories.
As you do this, remember that qualities of good writing need to be turned into
processes. So, for example, if it seems to you that all the characters in many of your
children’s stories seem similar to each other, you might suggest to writers that they
act out a scene from a child’s story during a partnership share, thinking carefully about
how each character walks or talks. The goats trip-trap across the bridge—but how
does the troll move? Surely he doesn’t trip-trap! Once children have acted out the
ways that one character moves differently than another, then they can reach for precise
accurate words to depict what they envision.
Of course, instead of suggesting children write entirely new drafts of their fairy
tale rendition, you might have encouraged them to write very different versions of the
familiar story. As part of this, you could teach them to borrow Jon Scieszka’s technique
of telling the same tale through the point of view of a different character.

Another Option: Crafting Your Own Version of an Old Tale

Then again, teachers could decide on a totally different route through this unit. You
could suggest that after children all write a variation of a fairy tale that you read to them,
then they can continue to do the same work with another fairy tale, only this time work-
ing more independently. The second fairy tale could be one that each child chooses from
those he or she knows or from another two or three that you have read aloud to the class.
In either instance, writers who can do so could also do some of their own reading and
research. Some teachers have created reading clubs, gathering children around different
fairy tales. If the teacher has a couple of versions of Jack and the Beanstalk that children
who can read level H/I books can read, then she might see if some readers who could
handle that book (and some of their friends) might want to try writing a new variation
of that tale. If she has an audio tape of one Cinderella book and could recruit someone
to read a second version of that tale aloud to a small group, then that group, too, would
be well on their way. The plans that a teacher decides upon will obviously be shaped by
the second graders’ reading abilities and by the classroom collection of fairy tale books.
If teachers opt to encourage second graders to tackle a second and perhaps even
a third fairy tale, writing new versions of each, it will still be important to leave time
for some of the revision work described above. Perhaps before the last week of the
unit, children can be invited to reread all the fairy tales they have written, selecting
their best for further revisions—and those revisions can incorporate some of what was
described earlier in this write-up.
 

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A Far-Out Option for the F inal Week: Fantasy

If children have been revising all along, there is another alternative for the f inal week of
this unit. You may want to give children a chance to write their own imaginative f iction,
relying on everything they know from the work with realistic f iction and also the work
with fairy tales. Do you know that feeling you get when you browse a bookstore and
spot a book that feels like an invitation? You pick it up and have this palpable sense of
excitement turning the pages. “My students could write a story like this!” you think.
For the f inal week of the unit, then, one option is to lay books side by side that feel a bit
like that: Ella George Lyons’ beautiful text The Star F isher, for example, and Sendak’s
Where the Wild Things Are, or Anthony Browne’s Gorilla. You can decide—there are lots
of options. Choose books that are as lean and beautifully written as possible, and that
exemplify much of what children have learned about Small Moment writing and yet
are not bound by that. Choose books, too, that carry many of the traits of fairy tales and
yet are not fairy tales. Then you might say to children, “For our very f inal week before
vacation, let’s do something magical, something special. Let’s try our hands at a project
second graders don’t usually do—writing imaginary f iction.”
Point out to children that very often, the f irst few pages of an imaginary story reads
as if it is realistic f iction. The start of the story usually shows a character, grounded in
the real world, who has a problem. Then something happens, something very specif ic
and precise and sensory. And that micro-event ignites a story that reads as if it is true,
that spins out just like a Small Moment story or a fairy tale, but that in fact contains
magic. When children write the magical sections of their text, teach them something
Madeleine L’Engle once said. To summarize, “If you want people to believe that ele-
phants are f lying overhead, you need to be especially precise. Don’t say, ‘I looked
up and saw elephants f lying overhead.’ Instead say, ‘I just looked up and saw seven
elephants—six grown-ups and a baby—f ly through the gap in those trees over there.
They were all in a line, the baby f irst. Then they f lew around that building.’”
Be sure that you remind children of all they know—that they use the planning book-
lets, or do some variation of that work with the booklets in which they will be writing.
Be sure they act out the story and tell it several times before they write it, and that you
help them storytell rather than summarize—and absolutely encourage them to start
page one by having the character do a very small (smaller than they think) action or
say something. Remind children of the power of literary language and those beautiful
phrases they learned from studying fairy tales. Help them remember that stories tend
to involve a character who encounters some sort of trouble, and who f inds the trouble
getting worse and worse before something happens to resolve it. Above all, be sure that
children are not moving along in sync with every one of them sketching out how their
story will go on one day, and trying three leads on the next day, and writing the whole
story fast and strong on the next day. Let children internalize how the process unrolls
and progress at their own pace! Let them draw from your charts and their knowledge,
becoming their own decision makers, becoming independent writers. 

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 One f inal point: This week will culminate f ive months of work with narrative and
you should see evidence of all that children have internalized. You will probably want
to end the unit with another day of assessment, so go back to the start of this curricular
calendar and reread the directions for assessing narrative writing. Give children the
same amount of time, and once again, refrain from hints and reminders.
Will this last part of the unit ignite energy? Will it lead children to grow a bit taller
and stronger as writers? Those of us at the TCRWP are dying to hear—send us your
news and your students’ writing! If you email them to us, we’ll share them with the
rest of the community: contact@readingandwritingproject.com.

Additional Resources

As you approach this unit it will be important for you to read the entire write-up and
not just the teaching points below, because kids learn through the work they do, and
the write-up is jam-packed with ideas and teaching to help you organize and create
opportunities for children to engage in work that matters. The unit write-up can help
you issue the generous invitation that rallies kids not only to work with heart and soul,
but to also engage in deliberate practice, trying to get better at specif ic skills that the unit
aims to highlight.  
In the end, a good portion of your teaching will revolve around the responsive
instruction you provide as you move kids along trajectories of skill development. Keep
in mind that your students are working toward a Level 5 and in some cases a Level
6 on the RWP Narrative Writing Continuum. Look at your student work and decide
the best path you need to take with your kids. This part of our teaching relies on you
assessing your students often—not in formal ways, but by watching the work they
do—and on you seeing their work as feedback on your teaching. If you have taught
something and only a handful of kids are able to sustain that work to good effect, then
you’ll want to decide whether that skill was essential, whether you want to reteach it
in a new way, or whether you want to detour around it. You’ll want to become accus-
tomed to f ine-tuning your teaching through an attentiveness to student work, because
the work your students do is not just showing you what they can or can’t do, it is also
showing you what you can do.

One Possible Sequence of Teaching Points

Part One: Rehearsing and Planning for Stories, Paying Careful

Attention to Fairy Tale Language and Structure

n “Writers, we have been reading many different adaptations of fairy tales and we
have noticed that each author has given the story their own spin. Some authors
changed the characters—turning girls to boys or people to animals. Others have
changed the setting—moving the story from a kingdom far away to the middle

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 of a big city. Well, today I’m going to teach how you can get started planning
your very own adaptation. One thing that writers do is think, ‘What would I like
to change?’ and ‘How will the change affect all the parts of my story?’ We then
plan out our stories, either in a booklet or storyboard.”
x Tip: “We may do quick sketches or jottings to remember all the parts of the
story that we want to include.”
x Tip: ”Writers, we revise our plans or plan another adaptation, then another,
playing with different ideas before we get started in writing. As we revise
our plans, we think ‘Where exactly will my story begin?’ and ‘What will my
character be saying and doing?’ so that we can begin our stories close to the
main action.”

n “Writers, today I want to teach you that you have to make many important
decisions as you are writing your fairy tale. Writers ask ourselves, ‘Why am I
rewriting this fairy tale?’ ‘Who am I writing it for?’ and ‘What is it, exactly, that
I am trying to say?’ One thing that we can do to answer these questions as we
plan and write our own is to reread, re-study, and re-think the fairy tales we’ve
been studying with our partners. We study and talk about the choices the author
made to change their version and how we might revise our plans or stories so
that our adaptations are meaningful.”
x Example: “Sometimes, we rewrite a familiar tale because we disagree with
the way the tale has stereotyped girls, with the good ones always being
beautiful and the bad ones always being ugly, or authors may disagree with
the way wolves, foxes, or stepmothers are stereotyped as nasty, evil, and
mean. Sometimes authors rewrite a tale so that it makes more sense to
readers who live in different places or in other cultures.”
x Tip: “Writers, remember, as we are exploring ways our adaptations could be
tweaked, stretched, or twisted, we can come up with a few different story
ideas. Once we imagine other ways the story could go, we can create other
mini-booklets to plan through our ideas—we may even need many pages!
If this happens, begin with two sheets of paper folded in half, and in half
again, creating eight (or more) page-long planning books.”

n “Writers, we have come up with lots of plans for our adaptations and we are
ready to get started in our writing. Today I want to teach you that we choose
one of our plans, take the number of pages we need to make a book, transfer our
ideas from our planning booklets by jotting a note in the margin or sketching a
quick picture on each page, and begin writing using everything we know about
storytelling and fairy tale language.”
x Tip: “Writers, we are storytellers, not summarizers! We need to use every-
thing we know from Small Moments and realistic f iction, including to show
not tell as we write our story. We use action, dialogue, and internal thoughts.
So, imagine that you are the character. Act out the f irst scene, say what the

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 character would say, think like you are the character and use lots of action.
Then, add it to your writing.”
x Tip: “Writers we can act out the scenes to our tale and then storytell it again
and again, both to ourselves and to our partners. After we have retold our
stories many times, we have a clearer idea of what to put onto the page
when we go to write.”

Part Two: One Option: Revising and Elaborating Your Story to Create
Tension, Convey Meaning, and Consider Different Possibilities

n “Writers, as you f inish up your writing, it is important to reread what you have
done and make a plan for what you will do next. Today I want to teach you that
we reread and decide if we should rewrite the same story again, trying to make
it stronger. We can think about craft that we have learned from other authors
in other units and we can even go back to our fairy tale books to look for things
that those authors have done that we may want to try out as well.”
x Tip: “Writers, as we begin to notice the things that fairy tale authors do, we
pay close attention to the language they use to write. Notice how the stories
often begin with Once upon a time, and when another scene begins, authors
use words like But then one day or Not long after that . . . ”
x Tip: “Writers, as we continue to notice the language in fairy tales, pay close
attention to the sentences. Notice that they are not short and simple sen-
tences, rather, they are longer. They might sound like two sentences linked
by words like and, so, but, and because.”
x Tip: “Writers, as we continue to notice the fairy tale language, also notice
that sentences begin by telling when or where or under what conditions, or
with what sorts of feelings, someone did something.” (For example, “Just
after the little goat reached the other side of the bridge, the middle goat took a
step towards the bridge.” Another example: “Worrying that the troll would
appear again, the middle goat walked quickly across the bridge.”)

n “Writers, as you have been reading and rereading fairy tales like a writer, you
might have noticed that the structure to the tales is similar. Today I want to teach
you that as we rewrite or revise our fairy tales, we try to use a similar structure.
We introduce the main character and then create a wish or a problem for that
character. We may include a bit of magic or trickery that either complicates
things or helps to solve matters. The trouble grows for the character, getting
worse until the end, when it is resolved and then, we tell our reader, the main
character lives ‘happily ever after.’” 
x Tip: “Writers, as you are revising, remember to stretch out the problem and
build tension—use lots of action, dialogue and show-not-tell to keep the
reader nervous and on the edge of her seat.”

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 x Tip: “Writers, as you stretch out your stories and write scene after scene,
remember to make each one like a Small Moment story. Act it out with your
partner, notice how the characters walk and talk, and use precise language
to storytell.”

n “Writers, just like before, during, and after we read books we often think, ‘What
is the author trying to teach me? What am I supposed to learn?’ When we write,
we set out to teach our readers something. Today, I want to teach you that fairy
tale writers also teach readers a lesson. We can think, ‘What do I want my reader
to learn?’ Maybe we want to teach that intelligence wins over force, or that kind-
ness and generosity can make anyone a princess. We can read our stories with
our partners and give each other advice on how to make sure each of our stories
has a lesson.”

n “Writers, we have been writing some great adaptations to our fairy tales. Today,
I want to teach you that one way to adapt a story is by writing a whole new ver-
sion of the fairy tale, that is told from a different character’s point of view (like
The True Story of the Three Little Pigs).”

Another Option for Part Two: Crafting Your Own Version of

an Old Tale

n “Writers, we can think of other fairy tales that we know well or we can read a
few adaptations of a new fairy tale with our partner and try our hand at a whole
new tale. Today I want to teach you that as we get started we use everything we
have learned about how to write—we use our planning booklets to sketch how
our fairy tale will go, we work with our partners for advice, then we storytell and
write each scene like a small moment, using fairy tale language and tension.”   

Part Three: A Far-Out Option for the F inal Week: Fantasy

n “Writers, we have learned a lot from realistic f iction and this month, from fairy
tales. We can take what we’ve learned from both units and try out a new type of
writing—fantasy. Today, I want to teach you that a fantasy story, much like real-
istic f iction, features characters who have a problem. Then something happens
. . . there’s a bit of magic and sometimes an imaginary setting (like a world where
people can f ly, as in Harry Potter, or one that is accessible through a wardrobe,
as in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe).”
x Tip: “Writers, as you think of your ideas, remember what we have learned
about planning and how we use planning booklets to sketch out our ideas a
few times before we transfer our ideas into a book.”

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 n “Writers, as we get started writing our fantasy stories, we can act out the parts
and storytell each part over and over again with our partner. Today, I want to
teach you that when we act out the parts, we use dialogue and very small actions
and we put the words and mini-actions into our writing with precise language
to make a clear movie for the reader.”

n “Writers, we stretch out our fantasy stories just like our realistic f iction stories
and fairy tales.  Today, I want to remind you that our characters encounter trou-
ble when they try to solve their problems or get what they want. The problem
often gets worse and worse before it gets better. We include obstacles that give
the reader that ‘uh-oh, now what?’ feeling.”
x Tip: “Remember, we are writing fantasy, so think ‘outside the box’ about
how to use elements of magic to help your characters deal with the prob-
lems they face.”
x Tip: “Writers, remember that everything we have learned about tension,
craft, and ways to stretch the problem and say more are all on our classroom
charts, old and new. Make sure you look at those charts and make good
choices in your writing.”

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 unit nine

Informational Writing
about Science

MAY

We have several goals for the upcoming unit of study in writing workshop. F irst, we
want children to use writing to explore an aspect of science that is essential. Last year, we
wrote this unit as if children were studying plant diversity. This year we are writing it as if
they are studying forces and motion. The reason we’re channeling you toward forces and
motion rather than plants is that we hope this unit provides children with opportunities
to use writing to engage in the work that scientists do—developing and testing hypoth-
eses, gathering data, and studying information for patterns. This unit aligns with the
informational writing that the Common Core State Standards require, allowing second
graders to participate in shared research around a common topic to then inf luence their
writing. Plants grow slowly, over time, whereas balls roll or bounce in a matter of min-
utes, so the topic of forces and motion seemed more conducive to fruitful, expeditious
experimentation. But the topic that you and your children study together is your choice.
You can easily use the basic outline of this unit to support studies of any topic that you
believe will be engaging for your kids and will bring them toward an understanding of
one of the concepts that is essential to science.
This unit builds on the energy and enthusiasm children carry about the world
around them. You have probably noticed that the children in your classroom are eager
to learn about their world. They gather leaves as they change colors from summer to
fall, collect rocks and seashells, and come to school excited to talk, draw, and write
about the things that surround them. Before now, your second graders will presumably
have been engaged in some science studies and workshops, and they will probably
have learned to observe closely, to ask big questions, and to follow procedures to pur-
sue those questions. You will now channel their burgeoning interest in science into the
writing workshop, showing learners that writing need not be an end in and of itself,
but that it can also be a tool for learning.

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 You will want to approach this unit with a grand plan for the overall design of it. As
in many other K–2 units, children will cycle through repeated tries at doing the work
of the unit, but this time the work is not rehearsing, drafting, revising, and editing
writing so much as it is writing to record, to question, to hypothesize and observe, and
f inally, writing to teach others. As children engage in this work repeatedly, you’ll teach
in ways that lift the level of what they are doing, so that over time they will use more
sophisticated moves as they record, question, experiment, and teach.
Obviously, the unit breaks with tradition in that it is a hybrid—it is science and
writing rolled into one. Usually your writing workshops have been an hour long and
have begun with a minilesson, then included a big chunk of time for kids to write,
and ended with time for children to share their writing with partners. In this hybrid
science-writing workshop, however, we hope that at least twice a week you’ll be able
to extend the hour-long writing workshop so that it is ninety minutes for the hybrid of
science and writing. Although each day will still begin with a minilesson, the miniles-
sons will not all just invite kids to do the work that writers do, they will also invite kids
to do the work that scientists do. And when children go off to their work spots and
begin working, they might well be wrapping balls in tinfoil to see if the foil alters the
height of the bounce, or rolling square and circular objects down an inclined plane,
recording the relative speeds. 
Of course, this is still a writing workshop as well as a science workshop. Imagine
the hybridity by thinking that on the one hand, kids will at some points be engaged
in scientif ic processes of hypothesizing, and on the other hand, they will be engaged
in writing processes of recording observations and drawing conclusions aligning
with the Common Core State Standards. Imagine your two hands, folded together,
with f ingers interlocked. In just that way, your youngsters will shift from doing the
work of being a scientist to doing the work of being a writer. In the f irst part of the
unit, children will study a whole-class topic during a daily science-writing workshop,
and will write, sketch, and jot questions in order to record and grow their thinking.
They’ll conduct experiments, f irst as a class and then on their own, and learn to write
­second-grade versions of laboratory reports, complete with hypotheses, observations,
diagrams, and conclusions. They will also write how-to, or procedural, texts as a sci-
ence student does after working on an experiment. These records of work done will
teach others what the young researcher did so others can replicate the experiment
and see if they get similar results. This unit, then, provides children with purposes for
writing—and those purposes are diverse, so the writing that students will be doing
will also be diverse. Children will draw on much of what they know about different
kinds of—and purposes for—writing in this unit, using aspects of what they have
learned from writing how-to’s, persuasive texts, and nonf iction books. Don’t be too
concerned if your children’s initial writing feels sparse. Like you, they will need a bit
of time to f ind their footing in this hybrid unit and learn to balance scientif ic inquiry
with the writing process.
In the second part of the unit, children will launch into their own experiments,
writing proposals, trying experiments out, and writing them up. You’ll build on what

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children learned to do in Part One, teaching them new ways to record information, to
write more detailed how-to texts, and to explore questions in writing.
In the third and f inal part, children will compile all the information they have
learned about their topics and make informational books that teach others how to
conduct similar experiments. These will include an introduction, information about
the topic, a description of the procedure, talks about their daily journey, and their
conclusions. Children may select to write up one experiment that they tried or a series
of experiments that they tried to help answer a question aligning with the Common
Core State Standards. We’re recommending I’m a Scientist: Kitchen (DK Publishing,
2010) as one possible mentor text for the f inal product of this unit.

Preparing for the Unit

The very f irst preparation you will probably want to do for this unit is to decide on a
whole-class topic, preferably one that aligns with your science standards. This is a critical
choice. Remember that your whole class will be living like scientists around and inside
this topic for the whole month. We’re suggesting Forces and Motion, as it aligns with
second-grade science standards and offers many component parts (gravity, magnets,
inclined planes, levers, and so on) for students to study. You will, of course, want to
consult your library when making a topic choice, since you’ll need nonf iction books on
the topic to serve as writing mentors and sources of information. You’ll also want to con-
sider choosing a topic about which your children have some prior knowledge, or which
they can study simultaneously in science workshop. Whatever the topic, you’ll want
to ask yourself, Does this topic have breadth? In other words, will you be able to divide
the topic into plenty of component parts for children to study in greater detail over the
course of the month? Can this topic accommodate a multitude of in-class experiments?
For example, a topic like “The Life Cycle of a Butterf ly” might be too narrow a topic for a
whole-class inquiry because it is hard to imagine a whole class writing about nothing but
this for the length of an entire month. It may be even more diff icult to imagine the kinds
of experiments they’d create to explore their burgeoning questions and hypotheses.
A second thing to keep your eye on while choosing a whole-class topic is whether
it is localized to students’ real environments, in other words, accessible to bring into
the classroom. Keep in mind that you want children living the real life of scientists this
month and so the topic ought to provide actual chances for them to make observa-
tions, conduct experiments, and note and describe f indings. Much as you would like
for kids to read up on their topics, in this month you’re aiming for kids to live out the
scientif ic method and not just summarize what they f ind already written in reference
books. In the end, you want your scientists to climb inside their topic and live with it,
channeling their natural sense of play into the act of being a scientist.
You’ll want to plan to teach science in your own classroom or collaborate with the
science teacher and chalk out several possible inquiries and experiments that children
might pursue this month on the chosen topic. You’ll also need books—ones that can

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serve as mentor texts for the kind of writing you hope children will produce, books
that serve as references, and books with diagrams and illustrations for children to
pore over and study. You’ll line up these books around the children’s work area, read
aloud excerpts from these, and reference them as touchstone texts during conferring
and during the demonstration portion of your minilessons. If you have the books to
support it, you may want to have some of your book clubs studying the whole-class
topic during reading workshop. You won’t want to underestimate the power that read-
aloud will have in propelling this unit forward, exposing your young scientists to a
wide variety of nonf iction texts on forces and motion: narrative nonf iction that takes
readers through the process of how forces make things move; expository nonf iction
that teaches all about springs and magnets and pulleys; nonf iction procedural texts
that teach how to accomplish a scientif ic experiment; and question-and-answer books
that invite the reader to wonder along with the author, and answer questions. The
work done in read-aloud and reading workshop will not only support a growing con-
tent knowledge but also the skills of scientif ic writing. Through read-aloud you will
want to teach children to synthesize portions of text, identifying big ideas, and then
show them how these big ideas can serve to propel their experiments. For instance,
after growing some big ideas about gravity in read-aloud, children might then plan for
experiments these ideas lead them to want to conduct. You’ll hear children say things
like, “Gravity works differently on different objects. I’m going to drop an eraser and
a pencil and see which falls faster to the ground.” Then too, as they develop conclu-
sions from their own experiments, children can use what they’ve learned from reading
about forces and motion to add evidence to bolster their own ideas: “My experiment
showed that the eraser fell faster. In What Is Gravity? it said that gravity pulls more
on heavier objects. I think this is why the eraser fell faster than the pencil. It is heavier
than the pencil.”
Lastly, you’ll want to decide where your students will do all this writing. You may
decide to have students start a scientists’ notebook, in which case you’ll want to build
it up as a place to observe, sketch, question, and wonder—a place to write with volume
and stamina as they study the world around them. Then again, you may feel that start-
ing folders is a better option, where students can continue to use varied paper choices
and use this folder to collect their writing and experiments.

Scientists Write to Learn about the World around Them, Experiment to

Answer Lingering Questions, and Use What They Know about Nonf iction
Writing to Teach Others What They Have Learned

As the unit begins, you’ll want to immerse your children in a topic for scientif ic study.
We’re recommending that you expose them to one area of Forces and Motion in the f irst
part, narrowing their study to only inclined planes, for instance, or simply magnets. You’ll
expose them to far more in the second part—once they’ve learned to observe, research,
and write like scientists. So, on Day One, you’ll want to spread materials around the
room relating to inclined planes (or whatever topic you’ve chosen), spreading marbles

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and rubber balls and various planes around the tables. Give your children this f irst day
to immerse themselves in the study of these objects, to play and experiment and play
some more. You’ll equip them with paper, or their science notebooks, and show them
how to record observations and questions about the objects they’re studying, knowing
that throughout the unit you’ll probably want to teach children more and more ways
scientists use their notebooks or folders.
One form of writing you might teach f irst is sketching with labels and captions,
where scientists draw the setup from an experiment and then label it using precise
vocabulary and adding in captions that explain the process in greater detail. It is con-
ceivable that some students feeling full of the energy and enthusiasm of discovery will
add a few words to one sketch, then move onto another and another. Therefore, it is
important to teach them that scientists (and writers!) linger. This means teaching them
to add all they can add to their sketches, in both words and images. For example, if a
child has drawn a simple sketch of a pulley, then you will teach him to not just draw
the base and the string, but to draw the wheel around which the string is wound and
the object that hangs from the hook on the end. You will teach this child to label all
the parts using the language scientists use (referring to books and read-alouds for this
information when necessary) and then to elaborate on those labels by writing captions
to accompany them.
As early as Day Two of this unit, you’ll be ready to channel all your scientists toward
one teacher-led experiment. You’ll remind students of all they’ve learned about the
scientif ic process. You might say, “Remember how in science you learned to ask ques-
tions, come up with a hypothesis, make observations, and then make a conclusion at
the end? Well, today we’re going to do an experiment using an inclined plane and
two different-sized balls and use everything we know about the scientif ic process
together.” You’ll want to give students the essential question that drives the experi-
ment on this day, rallying them toward a common inquiry, saying “Scientists, today
we’re going to do an experiment where we try rolling these two different balls down
the same plane. Let’s all be thinking about the question, ‘What makes some objects
travel faster than others?’ as we do the experiment.” Students will jot down lingering
questions, discuss their hypotheses, try out the experiment you’ve created for them,
and then jot a bit about their big ideas or conclusions. You might even teach children
that even after drawing conclusions, we can be led to new questions. For instance, if
my conclusion is that heavier balls roll faster than light ones, then next I might start to
wonder, “What makes the heavier ball move faster down the plane?” or “What would
happen if I used two balls that weigh the same but are different sizes?” You might also
consider giving your students special paper, or a template for creating their own paper,
on which to record the various stages of the scientif ic process (questions, hypothesis,
observations, and conclusion).
After students have conducted this experiment they will be ready, on the following
day, to teach others how to do the same by writing a how-to text. You’ll want to have
the experiment materials around, as many students will need to reenact the steps of
the experiment and remember each step before writing their how-to text. “Wouldn’t
it be fun to teach the f irst graders how to do this experiment?” you might begin.

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“Let’s use everything we know about nonf iction writing and how-to texts to write up
this experiment.’’ F inally, in the next days, you’ll teach children to design their own
experiments from their unanswered and lingering questions. For instance, the student
who wondered whether two balls of different sizes but the same weight would travel
with equal speed down an inclined plane might now design an experiment to test this
question. Again, children will try out the experiment, jot to explore and record their
observations, and write procedural how-to texts to teach others how to conduct the
same experiment.

Collaborating with Partners and Recording Our Experiments, While

Raising the Level of Our Non-Narrative Writing 

You’ll begin this part by setting up tables, much like you did at the beginning of Part I,
but this time with a far greater quantity of materials. In Part I you focused your children
on one area of forces and motion (inclined planes, say) but will now give them free reign
to explore the many areas of this f ield. You’ll want to pull out all that you have related
to this area and borrow from your science teacher and science kits, as well. Planes, mag-
nets, pulleys, springs, various weighted objects and balls—chances are, once it’s all out,
children will f ind more uses for much of this than we ever imagined!
Children enter this week with new musings and ideas to test out and experiment.
As they move from teacher-initiated experiments to child-initiated experiments, you
might consider allowing children to collaborate with partners or science clubs to
discuss which experiments would be best to administer in the classroom, pitching
their hypotheses and working together in choosing a project to pursue, aligning with
the Common Core State Standards under Speaking and Listening. As children are
deciding which experiments to pursue, you’ll want to help them consider some of the
following questions: Do we have all the materials we need? How long will this experi-
ment take? Do we have enough time? Which experiment will we want to start with?
You’ll then want to show children how to write proposals of experiments they want to
try, select one, and get started on following the inquiry process. 
Their notebooks or folders are beginning to f ill with the fruits of their scientif ic
labor, and you will want to take this opportunity to help students f ine-tune and build
upon what they’re already doing. In this part, one of your roles will likely be to help
children understand that writing plays a vital role in science, helping us to question,
analyze, record, and teach others. In Part I you taught students to sketch and label,
and you will probably want to begin by teaching them yet another form of observa-
tional writing. You’ll want to show them how scientists record, in as much detail as
possible, all that they observe while studying magnets or springs or pulleys or planes.
They return to their sketches and this time write words, phrases, sentences, and even
paragraphs about what they have seen and sketched. Teach them to use prompts
like I notice _______  , I see _______  , This reminds me of _______ to elaborate on their
observations. One way to ensure that your children are doing this writing in as much
detail as possible is to teach them to observe with categories like color, texture, shape,

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and size in mind. A word of caution: Some children may write assumptions rather
than observations. That is, upon noticing that a heavy ball falls faster than a feather,
a student might write “Heavier objects fall faster than light objects.” You will want to
teach students to write the observation “The heavy ball fell faster than the feather.”
Teaching this reinforces that scientists observe without inferring.
Another way that scientists use notebooks is to keep track of data. So, you might
teach kids to measure and record their f indings or to sort and classify and record that
data. This writing might take the form of charts, graphs, or timelines. Children might
graph, for instance, the distance different objects travel when sent rolling down an
inclined plane. You will want to teach children that when recording data, being exact
matters. Teach them to transfer what they are learning in science to the writing work-
shop, specif ically, things like attaching units of measurement to numbers. Then too,
you’ll want to teach them more ways to expand upon the information they observe
and to formulate possible theories or hypotheses. You’ll f ind it helpful to chart out
several prompts and teach children to use them to develop and elaborate on their
ideas. Among others, you’ll certainly want to teach prompts like I noticed _______ ,
This makes me realize _______ , I used to think . . . but, now I know _______ , My thinking
changed because _______.
It will be important to help children negotiate time spent “experimenting” and
time spent writing. You’ll want to remind students that writing is a powerful tool for
thinking, and teach them new ways to record, analyze, and write about information.
Draw attention to child-created record systems and encourage your young scientists to
draw on all they know as they branch into this work. You might f ind yourself saying,
“Scientists, writers, I want to show you all what Charlie has created. He developed this
chart for keeping track of how long it takes each ball to roll down the plane. It’s really
helping him organize his data. Charlie has agreed to let us make some copies of his
chart and add it to our writing center so we all can use it to record our data.” Or, “Can
I stop you all? Sam just came up with a great idea. He realized that the prompts we
use to have ideas about our books, This makes me think _______ , I wonder _______ , The
idea I’m having about this is _______ can also help us to have ideas about what we’re
seeing in our experiments!”
Then too, you’ll want to teach children to question and wonder about forces and
motion with pencils in hand. Because it is important that children continue to write
with volume and stamina, you will want to teach them to try to hypothesize answers to
their musings according to the Common Core State Standards. You could imagine kids
saying things like, “I wonder why . . . ” or “How come . . . ?” Teach children to catch
these thoughts by quickly jotting them in their notebooks. Then, teach them to think
through possible answers (hypotheses) by using prompts such as Maybe _______ ,
Could it be _______? But what about _______? and The best explanation is _______. For
example, assuming that your topic this month is forces and motion, you might show
children a few observations you’ve made on the subway or while playing ball in the
park. “I noticed that every time I threw a baseball to my friend, it went up and then
slowly down when it got closer to her, sort of like the arc of a rainbow. Even though I
was just trying to throw the ball to my friend, I couldn’t get it to go in a straight line.

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It always went up and then down. That got me wondering why!” At this point, you
might lean in and share with the children how this led you to develop a hypothesis.
“Writers, I’ve been thinking about this and I came up with a few explanations for why
this happens, a few hypotheses.” You might then begin writing these out on a chart
or document camera. “My f irst hypothesis is that when I throw the ball up, there is
something invisible pulling it down.” Continue on, developing a second conceivable
explanation. “My second hypothesis is that there is something about the way I’m
throwing the ball that makes it arc, that maybe if someone else threw one it would go
straight across the air.”
Children will learn to write in these various ways throughout the unit, sometimes
through minilessons, other times through teaching shares, mid-workshop teaching
points, or while stopping and jotting during read-alouds. As we mentioned earlier,
you’ll want to see this unit as cyclical—you’ll be encouraging children to move through
the scientif ic process again and again across this month, each time teaching them new
ways to write, record, and polish.
Throughout this part of the unit, children will develop and harness questions into
plans for their own experiments. They will raise questions, conduct experiments to
answer those questions, jot observations, and draw conclusions, in the end creating
many little “lab reports” that will later—in the next part of the unit—become part of a
f inal published product. As students move through this process, you’ll want to remind
them that science is about experimentation and that, just like writers, scientists often
go back to revise and try again. Encourage partnerships to raise questions, conduct an
experiment, note what worked and what didn’t, and then design another, new experi-
ment. Once they have discovered a powerful experiment, they’ll move to documenting
it in a how-to text so others can replicate it.
As the young writers draft their how-to texts for their experiments, you’ll want to
teach into the various craft moves that procedural writers use. You will want to immerse
children in the sounds of these texts by choosing a few to read aloud and study, exam-
ining how writers use their words and pictures to teach readers. Some good models of
procedural books include Nature Science Experiments: What’s Hopping in a Dust Bunny?
and the I’m a Scientist series from DK Publishing. You’ll also want to reference the pro-
cedural portions of Move It! Motion, Forces, and You by Adrienne Mason, Get to Wedges
by Crabtree Publishing Company, and Learning About the Way Things Move by Dr. Heidi
Gold-Dworkin. These will serve as mentor texts as the unit progresses and provide lots
of possibilities for the ways children can write more in a procedural text.
Just as you used storytelling to help writers develop language that more closely
matches the language of good storytellers, you’ll want to coach students to tell and
retell class activities in ways that teach others, thus honing their ability to document
experiments with accuracy and detail. For example, they might teach each other how to
go across the monkey bars without falling, or how to make f lowers out of tissue paper.
As students practice retelling class activities, you can teach them how to use sequence
words (e.g., f irst, then, next, f inally) to organize their thinking and convey timing. You
will also want to teach them how to use very specif ic language to clarify their thinking
and instructions: if a student storytells or writes, “Get the toothpaste,” encourage her

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to verbalize how to get the toothpaste. If you help her to think about how she does it
or actually demonstrate the action, she may decide on “Slowly squeeze the tube to put
toothpaste on the toothbrush” instead.
It can be helpful for students to act out their experiments with partners as a way
to uncover precise actions and language needed for readers to effectively complete a
task. You will want to teach children that in order to write procedural texts, they need
to envision the steps they go through when they perform a given task. They should
see it like a “movie in their minds,” and then write each step they see in their “movie.”
Often, children will leave out big steps or assume their readers know more than they
do. This is a great way to use writing partners. One partner can read her writing aloud
while the other partner acts it out. You might give time in the middle of the workshop
for partners to get together and rehearse the steps for the experiment that they are
planning to write that day. You will want to teach children how to listen to each other’s
writing in order to follow the steps laid out and to see if they work. This way, writers
can see the effect of their words and steps on a reader and get input that will help them
revise their pieces for clarity.
In addition to teaching into the quality of the writing children are doing both in
their notebook and their procedural texts, you’ll want to make sure children are mak-
ing use of the wealth of knowledge they’re getting from their reading about forces and
motion, whether through independent or club reading, or during read-aloud. You’ll
probably want to show children how to supplement their conclusions with factual
information. For instance, students writing about the conclusion that smooth objects
travel faster than bumpy ones down a plane might want to add in information they
got from reading, about how smooth surfaces have less friction and therefore travel at
greater speeds. Then too, students will use the information they get from reading to
design and imagine their own experiments. You’ll want students, after reading about
particular information in a text, to question it and say, “That doesn’t seem true. Let’s
make an experiment and test it.”
You’ll want partners to support this work as well, pushing each other to be stronger
scientists and writers. You’ll want to teach them how to compare observations and
discuss what one can learn from another. For instance, “I see that you have all these
little details in your picture; maybe I could make my picture more detailed,” or, “When
you did that experiment you found that the rubber ball rolled faster. In my experiment
the marble went faster down the plane. Maybe we should try again.”

Putting All Our Learning Together and Publishing Our “Lab Reports”

In this f inal part, the children will compile all the information they have learned about
their topics and make informational books that teach others how to conduct similar
experiments. These will have an introduction, give information about the topic, describe
the procedures and daily journey, and discuss their conclusions. Children may select to
write up one experiment that they tried or a series of experiments that they try to help
answer a question.

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 You’ll probably want to begin by explaining to the children that part of being a sci-
entist is deciding how you’ll teach the world about what you’ve discovered. Remind
them of all they know from prior units, perhaps pulling out old charts and mentor texts
about various kinds of procedural, expository, and narrative nonf iction writing. You’ll
want to study these texts with your students as well as the texts that served as men-
tors through this unit, helping your young scientists to imagine the f inal product their
research will take. Nature Science Experiments: What’s Hopping in a Dust Bunny? and I’m
a Scientist: Kitchen are both strong examples of how these f inished products might
look. Do they have several experiments they want to publish, along with excerpts from
their science journals and facts to explain what their f indings show? Do they want to
showcase the long process of inquiry that led to one f inal conclusion, and therefore
publish a journal of sorts that brims with all their notebook entries, musings, research,
and f inal conclusions? These books, like other informational books, will have intro-
ductions and a section for conclusions, show the writers’ questions and their f indings,
and will also show others how to conduct the experiment.
You’ll especially want to refer students back to Unit Four, Expert Projects:
Informational Writing, and perhaps f lip back to that unit plan yourself. Just as in
December, you’ll most likely begin drafting the f inal product with a study of intro-
ductions. You’ll want to show writers ways that authors of other books have written
this all-important part of the book. Remind them that some writers, for example, tell
the story of when they f irst became interested in the topic, and then what they did
that kindled those sparks of interest, and what fed the interest even more. The author
traces the story of her study, and does so in a way that brings readers along on that
same journey. There are many other ways introductions can be organized, and you’ll
want to share examples of especially well-written ones with your children. Encourage
them to try many alternate drafts, much the way they try out multiple leads when
drafting stories, reminding them that informational writing is as much about voice as
it is about facts.
Then, of course, as with their December projects, a writer might address the reader
directly, asking the reader questions such as, “Have you ever stopped to think about
. . . ? Every time you do . . . you are . . .” or, “Did you know that . . . ? It is also true that
. . .” Then, having provoked readers’ interest, this writer might launch into an overview
of the topic. That overview might well be structured in the same way that the book
itself will be structured. For example, if this book teaches readers about gravity, the
book might be organized in a way that follows the scientists’ series of investigations—
beginning with the f irst, simplest attempts to understand the topic and eventually
moving toward more specif ic experiments and nuanced f indings. Or it could be orga-
nized to teach f irst about gravity, then about friction. Either way, the introduction
might follow the structure of the book.
Much of the revision work students engage in will involve the experiments they
choose to include in their f inal piece. You’ll want to assess the work your students did
writing these procedural texts and use your f indings to inform your whole-class and
small-group instruction. Certainly, you’ll want to revisit nonf iction how-to texts as a
class and use these as guides for revising and adding features of nonf iction to your

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children’s own pieces. These books are valuable models for the possible components
of a how-to. Some how-to books and manuals include a materials page. Others incude
cautions or warnings for the reader. Other books are persuasive, trying to get you to try
doing something new: “Haven’t you always wanted to . . . ?” or “Did you ever wonder
why . . . ?” Others have an ending that brings everything to a conclusion, like “If your
egg survives the fall, then bring it home and have your mom cook it up!” Children
can learn about these kinds of additions by studying a text, and they can then add the
features they like to their own books.
Additionally, you’ll want to encourage your writers to use some of the craft moves
they have been working on all year. This might include adding speech bubbles or dia-
logue, including setting, and using descriptive details to paint a picture in a reader’s
mind. Children can also try using sound words, ellipses, and playing with the size of
their writing and capitals to emphasize what they are saying. Be sure to refer to the
charts that you have in your classroom already.
As children begin revising their pieces, you will again want them to examine their
how-to texts for clarity, perhaps thinking more about how readers might perform cer-
tain steps. For example, a child who writes, “Put the ball at the top of the ramp,”
might ask herself, “How? You need to put the ball right in the center of the ramp so it
doesn’t roll off the side. And you need to hold onto it until you are ready to start the
timer because otherwise it will roll down on its own.” As they revise, young writers
can also begin incorporating further conventions of the how-to genre, such as making
their pictures teach more by eliminating extraneous details, zooming in close on the
part of the picture that teaches, and using labels and arrows in their pictures. They
might add warnings or advice that steer readers out of trouble: “Make sure not to
push the ball down the ramp. Just let it go gently. Don’t worry if you don’t get it right
the f irst time—being a scientist takes practice!” During revision, partners can also ask
each other clarifying questions, like “What do you mean?” or “How do you do that?”
or suggest possible tips or warnings such as, “You should write, ‘Do this experiment
outdoors,’ because if the egg breaks it will make a big mess!” 
As you move children through the process of drafting and revision, you’ll certainly
want to spend some time teaching into the art of writing conclusions, once again refer-
ring back to what they learned in the informational writing unit earlier in the year. The
scientif ic process leads to f inal conclusions, and part of your job will be to help young
writers craft these f inal ideas in ways that are both persuasive and full of voice. You
may begin by teaching writers the importance of using sources to defend one’s claims,
and discussing the relationship between evidence and the claim. Help students know
the value of specif ic, detailed, factual evidence that supports whatever they have said.
So if a child writes, “Gravity is very strong,” then that child needs to understand that
he or she must defend this claim, and to do so by producing evidence, or supportive
details. Help children value quotations, numbers, and specif ic examples. For instance,
they might tell about the time they and their partner tried, in vain, to jump into the air
and stay there. “No matter how hard we tried,” a child might write, “gravity pulled our
feet back down to the ground every time. We couldn’t stay in the air.”

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 You’ll want to pull out the charts from your informational writing unit, remind-
ing writers that once they have produced evidence, it is important to talk about
that evidence, linking it back to the claim. In this way, it is much like a partnership
conversation about the evidence, only they have that conversation on the page.
Scaffolds and thought prompts such as, This is important because . . . You might be
surprised to learn that . . . This shows that . . . I used to not realize . . . but now I have
found . . . The thing I am realizing about this is . . . The surprising thing about this is .
. . Notice that . . . will be immensely helpful.

Celebrating

Your students have completed a shared research project, where they have not only gone
through the writing process but have simultaneously been through the scientif ic method
of research. You will want to celebrate their work in a way that honors both! Many
teachers in the past have held a science fair where students set up booths with their
experiments, lab reports, and f indings. If you choose this option, you’ll want to prepare
students for the event by helping them to create a small oral presentation about their
writing piece, describing both the writing and scientif ic work they did throughout the
unit. Many children may choose to have live experiments set up during the fair, as well,
so they can showcase their f indings for onlookers. Other students might even choose to
present their work using a computer or PowerPoint. Whatever the device used to show
how to conduct the experiments and present the f indings, you will want to help chil-
dren understand how to talk to a live audience and present a project, referring to their
documents and materials and asking for questions from the visitors. Regardless of the
celebration method you choose, you’ll want to coordinate something special to highlight
the work of your young scientists and honor their focused efforts.

Additional Resources

In this unit your students will live like scientists. They will observe, question, and research
content together. They will be discovering things around them and writing to teach oth-
ers what they are learning.
As you approach this unit, it will be important for you to read the entire write-up,
not just the teaching points below, because kids learn through the work they do, and
the write-up is jam-packed with ideas, activities, and teaching to help you organize
and create opportunities for children to engage in work that matters. The unit write-up
can help you issue the generous invitation that rallies kids not only to work with heart
and soul, but to also engage in deliberate practice, trying to get better at specif ic skills
that the unit aims to highlight.
In the end, a good portion of your teaching will revolve around the responsive
instruction you provide as you move kids along trajectories of skill development. This
part of our teaching relies on you assessing your students often—not in big fancy ways,

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but by watching the work they do—and you seeing their work as feedback on your
teaching. If you have taught something and only a handful of kids are able to sustain
that work to good effect, then you’ll want to decide whether that skill was essential,
whether you want to reteach it in a new way, or whether you want to detour around it.
You’ll want to become accustomed to f ine-tuning your teaching through an attentive-
ness to student work, because the work your students do is not just showing you what
they can do or can’t do, it is also showing you what you can do.

One Possible Sequence of Teaching Points

Part One: Scientists Write about the World around Them, Experiment

to Answer Lingering Questions, and Use What They Know about
Nonf iction Writing to Teach Others What They Have Learned

n “Today I want to teach you that scientists record as much information as we can
while we are observing and studying our topics. We can draw detailed precise
illustrations and label using precise vocabulary. We can also add captions to
explain our work.”
x Tip: “Scientists can use specif ic tools to help us write and collect informa-
tion. We can use our rulers to jot specif ic measurements, graph paper to
draw true to scale, and hand lenses to see every little detail.”

n “Today I want to teach you that as scientists conduct experiments we want to

keep detailed accurate notes. We want to pay close attention to the materials we
use, how long things take, and what our conclusions are about what happened.”
x Tip: “Sometimes we may even conduct our experiment more than once
to see if we get similar results and to help us capture all the information
we need.”

n “Today I’m going to teach you that talking about science is a lot like talking
about books. We can use our book-talk charts to grow different kinds of ideas
in science. Whenever we need ideas for our writing, we can look at the chart
and say the prompt to ourselves and let the prompt lead us to an idea. We can
use prompts like I noticed ________ , This makes me realize ________ , I used to
think . . . but now I know ________ , My thinking changed because ________ .”

n “Today I want to teach you that as we observe, record, and grow ideas about
our topics we can also create questions that we want to pursue. We can ask our-
selves, What are our observations making us wonder? and What questions do
we have that we think we could test out? Then, we write our ideas about these
questions.”

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 Part Two: Collaborating with Partners and Recording Our
Experiments, While Raising the Level of Our Non-Narrative Writing

n “Today I want to teach you that as we are working with our partners, we need
to decide whether or not an experiment is possible to test. They may be good
ideas for an experiment, though they might not be possible in our classrooms.
Some questions we may consider when choosing our experiments are: Do we
have all of the materials we need? How long will this experiment take? Do we
have enough time? Which experiment will we want to start with?”

n “Today I’m going to teach you that talking about science is a lot like talking
about books. We can use our book-talk charts to grow different kinds of ideas
in science. Whenever we need ideas for our writing, we can look at the chart
and say the prompt to ourselves and let the prompt lead us to an idea. We can
use prompts like I noticed _______ , This makes me realize _______ , I used to think
_______ but now I know _______ , My thinking changed because _______.”

n “Today I want to teach you that as we observe, record, and grow ideas about our
topics we can also create questions we want to pursue. We can ask ourselves,
What are our observations making us wonder? and What questions do we have
that we think we could test out? Then, we write our ideas about these questions.”

n “Today I want to teach you to use everything that we remember from writing
how-to books and our class experiments to support us when writing our experi-
ments. We can think about what we need and each step in the experiment.”
x Tip: “As we are writing like a scientist, we want to think about: asking a
question, including background research, constructing a hypothesis, testing
your hypothesis by doing an experiment, analyzing your data, and drawing
a conclusion and communicating your results.”

n “Today I want to teach you that writers can revise our writing with partners to
add more specif ic information or additional steps, or to take away unnecessary
parts. Being specif ic allows our readers to replicate our experiments. We can add
information that teaches how much, how long, how it moves, and so on.”
x Tip: “When we are revising, we want to make sure that our steps match and
sometimes we need to take away parts that don’t match or are not clear.”

Part Three: Putting All Our Learning Together and Publishing Our
“Lab Reports”

n “Today I want to teach you that writers plan informational/experiment books

by rereading our notes and thinking about the big things we learned and the

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© 2011 by Lucy Calkins. Heinemann: Portsmouth, NH.
 experiments we conducted. Then, we can choose the information that is impor-
tant to teach others.”
x Tip: “As we are writing, working with partners can help us remember and
decide which information is the most important to include in our books.”

n “Today I want to teach you to use mentors to help us make our writing look
and sound like other science books in the world. We can think about how we
want our whole books to be structured, individual pages to be organized, which
details science writers often include, and so on. As we are studying our mentor
texts, we may ask ourselves, What is this author doing in her writing that I could
do, too?”
x Tip: “As we are writing, we can choose or design our paper choice to match
our mentor texts. We can keep our books at our writing spots and study
how the author organized the page.”

n “Today I want to teach you that writers use everything we know to revise
and say more in our lab reports. We can make comparisons, give examples,
use def initions, and so on. This will help our readers understand what we are
teaching.”

n “Today I want to teach you that writers can include an introduction and conclu-
sion to our books. When we are writing our introductions and conclusions, we
think about the important points in our books. We can highlight the important
information and give a little information about our topics in our introductions
and conclusions.”
x Tip: “It is great to glance back at our mentor texts to get ideas. In some
introductions, the authors ask their readers questions. In other books, the
conclusions recap the key ideas presented in the book.”

n “Today I want to remind you that you are writing for readers and we want to
make sure that our writing is as easy to read as possible. We have a toolkit full
of strategies to help us edit our writing. As we are editing our writing, remem-
ber to check our spelling, use capital letters at the beginning of sentences, and
punctuation at the end of sentences.”

n “Today I want to teach you to think about ways to make our books as visu-
ally attractive as possible for our readers. Some things we can include in our
books are photographs, changing the size of text, designing an eye-catching
cover, writing an intriguing blurb for the back, and creating an author’s page
that includes other books the author has written.”

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 unit ten

Poetry
Powerful Thoughts in Tiny Packages

JUNE

We think that poetry may enliven June more than other June units have been able to do.
The poetry work children do at the end of second grade builds a foundation of precise
language use and attention to detail and to close reading that will be important in third
grade, even in test preparation! Poetry can actually allow kids to show off all they have
learned. After all, poets plan, write with detail, revise, make reading-writing connec-
tions—the works! In this way, poetry can culminate a year of learning. Poetry writing
can also set children up for living intensely literate lives all summer long. Young poets
will f ind signif icance in the ordinary details of their lives.
For specif ics on teaching poetry, we strongly suggest you lean on Poetry: Powerful
Thoughts in Tiny Packages in Units of Study for Primary Writing by Lucy Calkins
(Heinemann, 2003). This is an all-time favorite unit from that series and a particularly
sophisticated part of it—teachers of upper grades have leaned on it as well!

Turning Our Classroom into a Place Where Poems Grow

You’ll want to think about what you might do to immerse children in poetry quickly so
they can start writing poems to good effect. There is no one way to pull off the immer-
sion part of this unit. You could devote two days to a deep involvement in choral reading
of a few beloved poems, helping children realize that one reads a poem in ways that
bring it to life. A poem about raindrops might be read with a splattering of voices, scat-
tered around the room, as kids call out words in a way that is reminiscent of raindrops
in a spring rain, and then as the poem progresses, the voices might change, ref lecting
the showers turning to a downpour. A poem might be read with two voices interacting,

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and perhaps for a time the readers stand back-to-back, turning at some point toward
each other. You could give a copy of one poem to six different clusters of readers, and
different readers can perform that one poem differently, in ways that ref lect different
interpretations. That could be your introduction to this unit. Or you could vary this by
adding an emphasis on dance steps, or gestures, or beats.
Then again, you could f ind other ways to immerse children in poetry. You could
share a read-aloud tape or video clip of a poet reading her poetry to integrate the use
of audio recordings of poems so that they too might try this oral work as suggested
in the Common Core State Standards. The class might decide to make such a tape, if
everyone f inds a special poem and practices reading it well—perhaps the tapes could
become gifts for loved ones. You could create poetry centers around the room and
invent various engaging things that students could do in the different centers. In one
center, students might make “found” poems, leaf ing through magazines to f ind words
(and photos) that could be cut out and taped in ways that say something profound
(and instant). In another center, students could draw the images that come to mind as
they read a couple of especially powerful poems, letting the class as a whole explore
the imagery those selected poems convey. In yet another poetry center, children could
look at little objects, such as a pine cone, aiming to see the object with a “poet’s eyes.”
You may look to Session I of Poetry: Powerful Thoughts in Tiny Packages (2003) to see
what this could sound like. You could use Nan Fry’s poem about the apple to show
children what it means to see with a poet’s eyes—she looks at an apple sliced in two
and sees a snow-covered f ield, and when someone takes a bite, she hears the sound
of boots, crunching on snow.
And at any moment, a child may feel inspired to start a poem—and should! No
matter what you do to immerse children in poetry, you will want them to be collect-
ing ideas for poems. Most teachers reincarnate their “Tiny Topics notepads” from the
Authors as Mentors unit and suggest children use these to f ind poems hiding in the
details of their lives. You might refer to Session IV in the book to remind students how
to use their notebooks as a tool: “Remember that earlier this year when we were learn-
ing to write like Angela Johnson, we kept Tiny Topics notepads. If we were at home or
at recess and we saw something tiny, something important that we knew we’d want
to remember, we jotted it into our Tiny Topic notepads. I think we need to begin to do
that again, only this time you’ll observe little tiny details (like shadows that drift across
your ceiling) that could become seeds for poems.”
You’ll want to teach children, then, how to take a glimmer of an idea and to get a
draft of a poem on the page. How does one actually go about drafting a poem? We’re
not sure. Some poets say you f ill yourself up with an intense feeling, and a concrete
image, and then write in a rush, almost as if you’d just run into the room to tell some-
one something and were so bursting with what you wanted to say that you spoke
with extra urgency, fast and furiously, directly to the person (in this case, the reader).
Some poets talk about how it starts with a line—just one line, dropped as if from the
heavens. Once the poet has a line, she plays in her mind with how it will go, almost
like one might play with different options for how to name a newborn baby—does

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that sound right? How about this? Once the poet has a tiny bit that sounds right, she
or he is off and running.
The important thing is that this should feel intense and joyful and unpredictable—
this is like a toboggan ride down a hill. You line yourself up at the top of the hill; you
wait until the way is cleared; you make sure everyone is aboard and that all feet are
tucked in, and then in a whoosh, the toboggan is off. There is a way in which writing,
like tobogganing, can’t be stopped midway.
Later, though, there is the talk about that ride—how was it? Should we try again?
And poets, like toboggan riders, can line themselves up differently, hoping the next
time for a smoother ride. That’s revision—that next ride. Most of the revision that will
work the best for young poets is not a f ix-up routine. It is about trying again.

Tinkering with Poems that a Poet Likes

Once a poet has written a bunch of drafts and one of those drafts—or part of one, any-
how—seems to be strong and true, then the poet can pull in to do a different sort of
revision work. He might tinker around the edges of the poem, trying to make something
alive and powerful even more perfect. Teach children that as poets revise, we also lift
the level of our poetry-writing skills, so the next poems we write incorporate all that we
have learned through revision.
One of the most engaging parts of revision will be playing around with different
line breaks. To illustrate the effect that different sorts of line breaks could make, you
might put each word (or each phrase) from a class poem onto a separate card, and then
use a pocket chart to show the class that changing the length of the lines can change
the feeling of the poem.
You might also push kids to think about language and word choice as a way to
create clear images with precise and extravagant language. They could think about
the difference between fry and sizzle, shine and sparkle, cry and bawl. You might comb
through the poem with children, showing them how to search for each action word,
pausing to ask, “What other words could f it here? Is there another word that can
say the same thing in a better way?” Then, too, you could set children up in partner-
ships to read their poems to each other, giving feedback and looking carefully for
places where everyday, commonplace verbs could be traded for fresher, more accurate
action words: jiggle or sway could replace move, moan and groan could replace complain.
Encourage your young poets to play around with language, listening to how words
sound, thinking about what images they convey, aiming always for precision, aligning
with the Common Core State Standards around the use of language. Both Sessions VII
and VIII in Poetry: Powerful Thoughts in Tiny Packages (Calkins, Units of Study, 2003) are
aimed at getting your poets to use more precise language, and we suggest you turn to
them for examples of what lessons around language might look like.
Part of the decision-making process involved in word choice is related to poets
thinking about the tone and rhythm of the poem. Is this poem serious or more light-
hearted? Does the poem read like the steady, cyclical collision of waves on the shore?

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Or does it read like the staccato trip and bubble of a stream gurgling over rocks? With
their partners, readers might think about how their poems sound and ask, “Does my
poem sound long and f lowing? Or does it sound bouncy and short?” Then you might
teach poets to comb through their poems and ask, “What word might f it the sound of
this poem better?”
You may also show students how poets use language and metaphors in power-
ful ways to convey the meaning and feeling behind their poems. Session XI in the
book talks about making an explicit comparison between ordinary language and poetic
language. You may, for instance, teach children to make comparisons and sustain
comparisons so as to give their readers pictures in their minds. You might start by
keeping an ear open to the kinds of comparisons kids are naturally using in their
everyday speech. Perhaps a child comments on a thunderstorm: “That rain cloud looks
like midnight!” You might name that as a simile—or a comparison—and explain that
poets use those types of comparisons in their writing. You’ll also want to teach kids
that poets try to compare two things in new, surprising ways. In a poet’s eyes (and
voice), a concrete object like the sun can be used to describe a nonconcrete thing like
a friendship or the love a mother feels for her child. Sometimes poets compare or join
two seemingly unlike things to convey an image, feeling, or bit of wisdom; for example,
“an alphabet of stars,” from the poem “Night Story” by Beverly McLoughland, sug-
gests that the sky of stars has a story to tell, that something is written in the sky. Most
people wouldn’t think to compare the alphabet to stars, but a poet sees the words, the
story in those stars.
To guide your young poets through some of this work, you may choose a few men-
tor poems or specif ic poets to show your children how they might play with language
and the placement of text to convey meaning. You could model your teaching after
the lessons you taught during the Authors as Mentors unit. You might teach children
how to create rhythm like Eloise Greenf ield, line breaks like Bobbi Katz, or imagery
like Valerie Worth. Encourage your writers to lay their poems alongside those of their
mentor author and ask themselves, “Am I really writing in the style of this poet? Am
I conveying meaning the way this poet does?” As you confer with your writers you
might ask them, “What are you trying to say as a writer?” “Where is the heart of your
poem?” “How are you using white space like Myra Cohn Livingston?” “Where are
you using repetition like Eloise Greenf ield?”
Writing partnerships will continue to support students as they craft their poetry. As
they’ve done in other units, partners can help each other think about the topics they
choose to write about, the craft of their poems, and the feelings they convey. They
could experiment with the use of language and how the poems are laid out on the page
with line breaks and white space. You could teach them to ask each other questions
such as, “Why did you choose to add a line break here?” “What small moment are you
trying to rewrite?” “Whose work are you trying to emulate?” Partners can also make
suggestions such as, “Have you thought of using this word instead?” Together, poetry
partners can play with language or line breaks to investigate other ways a poem could
sound or look, to match the meaning they are trying to convey.

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© 2011 by Lucy Calkins. Heinemann: Portsmouth, NH.
Edit, Publish, and Celebrate Anthologies of Poetry

Unlike other units where children choose one piece to publish, in this unit they might
pick a bunch of their own poems to make public. In the last few days of the unit they
could revise these poems, choosing craft moves they have learned so far. Just as they
do in every unit, writers will edit for spelling and punctuation, and here, for shape and
white space as well, so that their writing looks and sounds just the way they intend it to.
There are multiple ways you might wrap up and celebrate this unit. You might choose
to take these selected poems and put them into a class anthology, which belongs to the
classroom or is copied for each student. You might allow each poet to create his or her
own anthology or perhaps let each poet create an anthology that contains his or her own
poems as well as the poems by their mentor poets. Other alternatives could be to post
published poems around the school for all to see or to post them in nearby public places
like neighboring coffee shops. You might have students set poems to music or give their
poetry away, creating “literary gifts.” You might also encourage students to read their
poetry with a variety of audiences, perhaps in an actual coffeehouse or café, creating
the feeling of an authentic poetry reading. Another idea is to have children and adults
write poetry side by side with the children teaching the adults as they write. Perhaps the
children are in groups and leading stations where they instruct adults on how to gener-
ate ideas or craft their ideas into poems. Children and adults could also travel through
poetry centers together, creating collaborative poems as they go.
All of these options can provide a meaningful way for your students to create beau-
tiful f inal pieces, as well as share and celebrate their poems with the world. But in the
end, you’ll decide what works best for your children and your class.

A Curricular Plan for the Writing Workshop, Grade 2, 2011–2012 122

© 2011 by Lucy Calkins. Heinemann: Portsmouth, NH.
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