The Common Core State Standards are national standards that indicate what K-12 students are expected to learn in math and the English language arts. The standards themselves are lengthy and span K-12, but it's important for parents to understand the goals of the standards and ways to support school instruction at home.

This What Works Clearinghouse practice guide presents three evidence-based recommendations for helping students in grades 6–12 develop effective writing skills. Each recommendation includes specific, actionable guidance for educators on implementing practices in their classrooms. The guide also summarizes and rates the evidence supporting each recommendation, describes examples to use in class, and offers the panel’s advice on how to overcome potential implementation obstacles. This guide is geared towards administrators and teachers in all disciplines who want to help improve their students’ writing.

In this video, learn three fundamental paragraph types that will help any writer meaningfully organize their writing. Paragraphs -- even basic ones -- help both the reader and the writer make sense of and build connections between ideas in a piece of writing. This video features:
1 Idea, 1 Paragraph
Single-Sentence Paragraph
1 Idea, Multiple Paragraphs (+ Transition)

As we’ve talked about in Paraphrasing Text Evidence (• How to Paraphrase Text Evidence , professional writers paraphrase more often than they directly quote. So, how do we decide when a direct quote is the best way to support an idea? In this video, Rebekah shares three times writers choose to use a direct quote instead of paraphrasing and gives two important tips for how to quote with sophistication like the pros.

In this video, learn two ways to summarize an event. Summarizing events is a core component of storytelling and essential to any form of writing. Being able to summarize an event shows not only an understanding of the event itself, but also chronological reasoning and analysis. This video features:
Observation + Cause-Effect Sandwich
Observation + Explanation + Analysis

Let’s learn about importing existing courses from Google Classroom, Canvas, or Office365 to Scrible or create a new Scrible class!

There are many ways to use a tool like Scrible in your classroom. Let’s explore some options for using Scrible in our classrooms!

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In this final post, I'll now turn to some instructional strategies to support ELLs at the middle school level as they work with an element of one of the CCSS writing anchor standards. I'll conclude with some resources on writing for ELLs.

Introduce your students to the stages of the writing process with interactive questions, activities, and examples.

The road to writing consists of two distinct but related paths. Students who successfully travel these paths often have had teachers and/or parents assisting them to safely navigate their way. Successful navigation frequently results in reinvigorating students' enthusiasm for writing even if they struggle with learning disabilities.

As part of assessments and/or high school graduation requirements in many states, students must pass a writing test. In most of those tests, students are given a writing prompt and are asked to compose an essay following the prompt's instructions. For my ELL students, the writing test posed one of the biggest challenges to their successful graduation. It's not surprising that they struggled since writing is usually one of the last language skills in which students develop proficiency.