Materials

 

What an Essential Curriuclum Kit is: Schools adopting Writing Alive's comprehensive day-by-day curriculum need an Essential Curriculum Kit (ECK) per teacher (a one-time purchase) and a Student Toolbox (STB) or Writer's Tools (WT) per student (yearly consumable).

The Essential Curriculum Kit along with the Student Toolbox or Writer's Tools contain everything a teacher needs to implement the curriculum with fidelity in order to obtain the highest degree of teacher success and to obtain the highest quality of student writing and passion for writing.

 
 

                       Essential Curriculum Kit Contents

 
           
 

Day by Day Curriculum Guide

The scoped and sequenced Writing Alive Curriculum Guides for each grade, K-8, are aligned to the CCSS and contain day by day lessons which build a common language of skills and genres.

   
 
 

Day by Day Resource Books

Primary grades need the Resource Book of blackline masters that accompany the handwriting curriculum and the many sentence games, sentence building charts and activities specific to the developmental level of grades K-2.

   
      
 

Magnetized Instructional Sentence Shapes with Punctuation 

A set of large write-on, wipe-off sentence and punctuation shapes for explicit instruction and modeling are included in each kit. Magnets on the back of the 32 sentence shapes make them easy to display on the classroom white board for teacher and student sentence building and modeling. Students also hold the shapes for interactive learning and speaking/listening skill practice.

     
 

Student Write-on Wipe-Off
Sentence Shapes 

Every week students manipulate these small sentence shapes to learn sentence structure and grammar skills. The colors, shapes and manipulation help students understand and internalize the skills.

   

Sentence Shapes

 

 
 

Letter Flashcards (Grades K – 3)

The teacher holds up a letter flashcard while students form the letters using a large arm movement, say the sound and key word. Available in cursive and printing.

                   Letter Flashcards for Grdes K-3.  
 

Student Toolbox (Teacher Copy) 

Student Toolboxes have a two-fold purpose:

  • After every skill lesson, students record their new learning in the Student Toolbox section. This section also contains lists (prepositions, irregular verbs, etc) that students use as a reference guide.
  • Students learn and practice revision skills each week on a short paragraph in 15 minute increments. Students then use these revision skills in their writing.
               
 

Online Teacher Resources

Teachers log on to project planners, brainstormers, rubrics, writing models, articles, daily sentence styling and sentence shapes to use on their Promethean or Smart Boards.

   

Online Teacher Reousrces: Clip of web page

 

 
 

Four-Step Skill Cards

Post on wall after each Four-Step Skill lesson to review daily.

                  Four-step Skills Cards  
 

 

            
 

Prompt Game Planners
(Grades 1– 5)

Throughout the school year students engage in prompt practice and games.
Size: 8.5" x 11"

   

         Prompt Game Planners for grades 1-5.  

 
 

Punctuation Pieces

Fruit Punctuation  (Grades K-5)
Using the Instructional Sentence Shapes, teachers model and students manipulate punctuating sentences and dialogue with pairs of bananas as quotation marks, oranges as periods, jalapeño peppers as commas and carrots as exclamation marks. Physically placing punctuation in practice activities helps students internalize placement (14 pieces)


Middle School Punctuation
Teachers use these traditional instructional punctuation pieces to model how to vary sentence structures for purpose and effect. Students learn how to correctly use dashes, parentheses, commas, semi colons, colons, periods, ellipsis, exclamation marks and quotation marks for writing and citing sources.

   

   

         

 
 

 

       
   

Link to secure ordering site

 
Supplemental Materials
 
           
 

Goal-Setting Revision Posters
(Grades K – 2)
 

These colorful posters provide students with a visual reminder of the revisions steps.
Size: 8.5" x 11"

       
 
 

Grammar Posters (prepositions, clauses, vivid verbs, transitions, and conjunctions)

Lists of vivid verbs for summaries, conjunctions for compound sentences and words and phrases for smooth transitions remind students to focus on word choice, fluency and style. Lists of clause starters and prepositions encourage students to vary sentence structures and to add details.

   

Grammar Posters: Prepositions, clauses, vivid verbs, transitions, and conjuctions

 
 

Camera Stamp
(Grade 4 – Middle School)

The camera stamp shows students where they need to “explode the moment” with a word picture to improve their writing.

   

                             Camera Stamp  

 
           
 

Link to secure ordering site

 

Mentor Texts
The suggested mentor texts, listed in each grade level’s Curriculum Guide, provide writing, plot models and enhance the lessons.

Your school may have most of these books in the Media Center. If not, you may order them through Amazon.com. Used library books are durable and inexpensive. A detailed list with authors is available in each Curriculum Guide and in the Administrative Support.

  Click here for more information about mentor texts
and book lists
 
         

 



 

 



Website design by Lightspeed Design & Branding Group