Get guided writing activities, prompts, and more to help your students develop their writing muscles in your classroom. This elementary school teaching resource collection was created by the expert ELA teachers on the Teach Starter team. These curriculum-aligned resources will save you time on your ELA lesson plans with classroom-ready printable and digital worksheets and activities that you can edit to differentiate instruction for individual learners.

What Is Guided Writing?

Guided writing is a technique used to help individuals improve their writing skills by providing them with a structure or set of guidelines to follow while they write. This can include prompts, examples, or specific instructions to help the writer focus their thoughts and organize their ideas more effectively. The goal of guided writing is to help the writer improve their writing skills and develop their own unique style over time.

What Does Guided Writing Look Like in the Classroom?

In a classroom setting, guided writing typically involves you, the teacher, providing students with a specific topic or prompt to write about, along with a set of guidelines or instructions to follow. This could include a specific word count, a specific format (such as a persuasive essay or a descriptive paragraph), or a set of key points that the student should address in their writing. You may also provide examples of well-written pieces that students can use as a model for their own writing as well as giving feedback on the students' writing so that they can improve their writing skills. Guided writing can take place in a whole-class setting, where a teacher leads the class through the writing process, or in small groups or one-on-one sessions where a teacher can provide more personalized instruction and feedback.

How Does Guided Writing Help Students Improve Their Writing?

Not sure if you want to add guided writing to your instruction techniques? Our teacher team has dug through the educational research on the topic for a more in-depth view. Research has found that guided writing can be effective in improving various aspects of students' writing skills. For example, studies have shown that guided writing can:

Improve students' writing fluency, increasing their ability to generate written text quickly and easily
Enhance students' writing accuracy, including improved grammar, spelling, and punctuation
Increase students' writing complexity, helping students achieve a higher level of sophistication and maturity in their writing.
Help students develop a greater sense of self-efficacy
Encourage students' motivation to write
Facilitate the provision of feedback and support from the teacher

Of course, the effectiveness of guided writing will depend on the specific approach and context in which it is implemented. For example, some research has suggested that guided writing may be more effective when it is used in conjunction with other writing instruction methods, such as independent writing, peer review, and self-reflection. In general, when guided writing is well-designed, it can be an effective tool for improving students' writing skills, but we suggest using it as part of a comprehensive writing instruction program.

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