Teaching Strategies - Guided writing

Teaching Ideas and Units - Teaching Strategies

Guided writing

Writing
Bands A, B, C

What is it?

This is a teaching strategy that can be used to extend and develop text written during independent writing. It involves a teacher: guiding a small group of students in their attempts to create individual written texts; responding to students' attempts; and extending students' thinking during the process.

What is its purpose?

Guided writing is useful for a range of teaching purposes. It allows students to consider audience, purpose, topic, selection of text type, etc, when planning their writing. It allows writers to focus on conventions such as spelling, punctuation, standard usage and handwriting. It also may be used to encourage students to revise and edit their writing.

How do I do it?

The teacher chooses a writing focus based on the needs of a group of students. (Alternatively, the students may have identified the focus for themselves.)
The teacher then conducts a mini-lesson of approximately 10 minutes duration that addresses the identified writing focus.
The students are then encouraged to begin to write. The topic can be chosen by them, or by the teacher. It can be a new piece, or a continuation of work begun previously.
When the students are writing, the teacher moves among them, giving assistance and guidance as required. This time also provides opportunities to extend students' thinking in the process of composing, recording and revising, as well as giving them individual feedback.

How can I adapt it?

The focus for each session is chosen to meet particular students' needs. It could be a convention focus, such as reinforcing strategies for spelling, use of specific kinds of punctuation, or capitalisation. The focus could be on one of the 'authorial' aspects of writing, such as clarifying and extending ideas or organising and planning the structure of a text.
In the report of the guided writing project, Targeting Text, there are details of specific lessons using focuses such as writing descriptive sentences, developing plot, and strengthening sentence structure. There are also guided writing strategies for teaching students to write narratives, reports, recounts, expositions and procedures.

How can it be used to evaluate students' language learning?

Students' writing can be evaluated during the guided writing process as the teacher moves around the group. The products can also be analysed more closely afterwards and used as work samples in portfolios or records of development.

Where can I find out more?

The report of the guided writing project, Targeting Text, provides a detailed discussion of guided writing along with a wide range of teaching strategies.
Keys to Life: Teaching Writers, (1998) Longman, Victoria.
Useful suggestions for mini-lessons and ways of organising them can be found in Lucy McCormick Calkins' books:
Calkins, L (1986) The Art of Teaching Writing, Heinemann, Portsmouth.
Calkins, L and Harwayne, S, (1990), Living Between the Lines, Heinemann, Portsmouth.