Why Use Skill Lessons
Conventions, along with other traits of good writing, including sentence fluency and word choice, need specific attention to help writers clarify their compositions. Without effective use of these individual elements of composition, writers are not able to clearly convey their ideas, and the overall meaning of a composition is lost.
Instruction on strong openings and endings, in both fiction and nonfiction writing, ensure writers engage their readers in a story or topic by starting and ending each composition with a strong voice.
How to Use Skill Lessons
The use of conventions means incorporating correct capitalization, grammar, paragraphing, and spelling within a composition. Use the same common lesson plan for each convention’s focus, such as capitalization, deletions, insertions, paragraphs, punctuation, and spelling.
Focus on only one convention at a time and differentiate as needed for students' varying developmental writing levels. Match students' writing skills to the leveled examples and resources provided. Word choice lessons follow a similar format with a single, common lesson and differentiated support resources.
Openings and endings each have their own lessons for fiction and nonfiction texts. Each lesson has differentiated support resources for the four developmental writing levels—beginning, early developing, developing, and fluent.
Sentence skill lessons address the four kinds of sentences. Each type of sentence has its own lesson and worksheets that build students' understanding of each sentence type through progressively more challenging practice.
