How to Teach Writing in Your Literacy Intervention Lessons

Something that we are really passionate about in literacy instruction is the need to hit on all 5-Core Components of Literacy in every lesson. Not only do we address these with students as they pertain to reading - but also how they relate to writing.

That being said - one of the most common questions we get is…

How do I teach writing?

Let’s break it down a little bit.

In EVERY lesson that we teach students, we work through the 5-Core Components of Literacy for reading and then go back through each of them for writing. We know that reading and writing are reciprocal processes, so it is CRITICAL that we support the following areas in every lesson.

Phonological Awareness for Writing

When working through phonological awareness for writing, this is where we will target skills like segmenting, auditory discrimination, and sound identification to help prime the brain for spelling and writing.

Phonics for Writing

Phonics is the connection between the orthographic (visual) components and phonetic (sound) components of our language. When we target phonics in our writing instruction, we want students to be able to hear a sound and know exactly what letter/letters make that sound.

This is the portion of our lesson where we complete our auditory drill (for more information on why you absolutely MUST include this in your lesson, click here) before moving into reviewing spelling (to target previously learned concepts) and new spelling to solidify whatever phonogram/concept we are going over that day.

Vocabulary for Writing

When working on vocabulary, we will have students sort words into nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs and then have them pick words to use in a sentence. This way, we can be sure that they are categorizing the words and applying them correctly.

Fluency for Writing

Writing fluency looks like having students practice writing and making it more automatic.

This may look like practicing letter formation and handwriting with our youngest students (and older students if they need it). It may be helping make spelling or sentence-level writing easier and more automatic for students.

During virtual learning, we will have students practice fluency as it pertains to assistive tech (like voice typing and using the technology available to them) and with typing in general.

Our focus on writing fluency is to make the process of writing easier and more automatic for students. Different children may need different supports here. As the instructor, you can use data from lessons to help determine what areas need the most practice!

Comprehension for Writing

To address comprehension, we will have students complete sentence combining tasks that ask them to take two sentences and combine them into one using a conjunction, without changing the meaning of the sentence. This shows that the students understand the conjunctions and how sentences need to come together.

We will also work through different styles of writing. We explicitly teach them how to write narrative, informative, opinion, and persuasive paragraphs (which can easily be adapted to essays for older students) as well as summaries. Being able to understand the different styles of writing will be critical for them as they navigate school and supports their reading comprehension as well.

Now that you know what to target in each area, the question becomes…

How do I pull this all together?

For more information about how we pull this together easily into our lessons, check out the video below!

Then, be sure to jump into our FREE workshop - How to Align Your Writing Instruction with the Science of Reading for more information about how we structure lessons to support students’ writing development.