Procedural Writing Teaching Resources

Explore procedural writing worksheets, templates, prompts and more to teach your students how to write a procedure text.

This collection of resources is aligned with the TEKS and Common Core English curriculums, and each teacher-created resource has undergone a careful review process by a member of our ELA teacher team. That means it's ready for your lesson plans and your students!

Is this your first year teaching this part of the expository writing curriculum? Or maybe you just need some fresh ideas? Read on for a primer from our teacher team!

What Is Procedural Writing?

Sometimes called procedure writing or "how to" writing, procedural writing is the process of writing step-by-step instructions or directions that tell the reader how to complete a task, such as playing a game or cooking a meal.

Why Do We Teach Procedure Writing?

There is a lot to cover in the writing curriculum, so why should you take the time to plan lessons around procedures?

Simply put, learning to write directions helps kids learn to think logically and may even help them learn to follow directions more closely!

The procedural writing for kids that we teach in elementary and middle school also paves the way for more technical writing skills as students advance and become more experienced writers. Maybe one day, one of your students will write the standard operating procedure manual for a device you pick up at the store!

Tips for Teaching Kids How to Write Procedures

Looking for some tips to form your lesson plans? Our collection is full of ready-made ideas, but we didn't stop there!

Here are some ideas from our teacher team!

1. Expose your students to procedural writing in a variety of formats.  From numbered lists that walk a reader through a process step by step to some of your favorite picture books that use a more narrative format, there are plenty of formats that this text type can take.
2. Empower students to think of themselves as experts. Procedural writing can be a lot of fun for kids when we allow them to choose a topic that they know a lot about and become the "teacher" as they write the procedure of how to complete a task they know well.
3. Brush up on verb tenses. Procedural writing is typically written in the present tense, directing the reader to do something right now. It may be helpful to revisit what present tense verbs look like!
4. Scaffold writing with a graphic organizer. This may be obvious, but mapping out what happens first, next, etc., before sitting down to write the entire text ensures students can organize their thoughts and don't miss any of the important steps in their procedures!

Procedural Writing Examples for Kids

So, what sorts of texts fall under the procedural writing umbrella? There are countless examples that your students will likely have seen out in the real world and right in your classroom, including:

• Recipe instructions
• Driving directions
• Classroom procedures
• Video game menus
• Laundry instructions on clothing
• Board game instructions
• Some classroom anchor charts

Students have plenty of topics that they know well and may draw upon to write their own procedure texts — like how to wash your dog! 

Need more ideas to share with the class? You can also explore the variety of procedural text examples throughout our resource collection, with resources created to help students write guides on any of the following topics:

• How to carve a pumpkin
• How to make a sundae
• How to cook a turkey
• And more!