Guided Writing Activities Teaching Resources
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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Grammar TVs - Nouns, Verbs, Adjectives, Adverbs, Pronouns, Common Nouns, and More
Teach your students about nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, common nouns, and more parts of speech with a fun set of tv-themed parts of speech posters.
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Pumpkin Parts of Speech Worksheets
Review three parts of speech by sorting nouns, verbs, and adjectives with these four pumpkin-themed cut-and-paste worksheets.
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Google Slides - Adjectives Interactive Activity
Provide your students with engaging, interactive activities to help them improve their usage of descriptive adjectives.
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Adjective Emoji Four in a Row
Match emoji picture cards with their corresponding descriptive adjectives with a fun game of Four-in-a-Row.
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Using Commas in Dates and Series - SCOOT! Game
Practice using commas in dates and series with a whole-class SCOOT game!
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Do/Does Subject Verb Agreement Worksheet
Provide students with additional subject-verb agreement practice with a worksheet focusing on using DO and DOES correctly.
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Google Slides Interactive- Past, Present, and Future Verbs Activity
Develop student skills using the correct forms of past, present, and future tense verbs with this Google Slides Interactive activity.
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Find It! Noun Game
Practice recognizing and using nouns with this set of 5 game boards.
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Revising Our Writing - Adding, Deleting, and Rearranging Worksheet
Practice revising writing by adding, deleting, and rearranging text for substance and clarity.
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Capitalization Scoot Activity
Practice capitalizing words at the beginning of a sentence, the personal pronoun I, and the names of people with a set of 20 task cards.
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SPLAT! Capitalization Card Game
Practice capitalizing the pronoun I, the names of people, and the beginning letter in sentences with our set of 20 capitalization game cards.
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Simple Sentence Dominoes - Set 1
A set of 30 dominoes to assist younger students with building simple sentences.
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Editing Checklist
Help your students with the editing process with this editing checklist.
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General Writing Checklist (Printable Poster for the Classroom)
A writing checklist poster to use with your primary students across multiple genres.
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General Writing Checklist
A writing checklist for primary students to use across multiple genres.
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Using Quotation Marks - Task Cards
Practice adding double quotation marks to direct speech with printable quotation mark task cards.
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Veterans Day Vocabulary Cards and Writing Center
Help your kindergartners and first graders understand the meaning of Veterans Day with a Veterans Day Write the Room display.
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Recycling Writing Prompts - Primary
Show off your procedural writing skills with a pack of recycling writing prompts.
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Using a Thesaurus - Worksheets and Anchor Charts
Practice using a thesaurus with a printable thesaurus anchor chart and differentiated practice worksheets.
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Using Descriptive Adjectives - Tree Sloth Writing Prompt
Help your struggling writers build their skills with a descriptive paragraph prompt worksheet about tree sloths.
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St. Patrick's Day Writing Prompt Worksheets
Celebrate St. Patrick’s Day and write imaginative stories using a collection of narrative writing prompts.
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Valentine's Day Opinion Writing - Resource Pack
Write some really “sweet” Valentine’s Day essays with our differentiated Opinion Writing Essay pack.
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Valentine's Day - Writing a Personal Narrative Resource Pack
Boost your students’ “sweet” writing skills with a Valentine’s Day Narrative Writing essay pack.
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Valentine's Day Informational Writing - Writing Prompt Activity Pack
Sweeten up your informational writing lessons with a Valentine’s Day Informational Essay pack.
- Guided Writing Activities for For Kindergarten
- Guided Writing Activities for For 1st Grade
- Guided Writing Activities for For 2nd Grade
- Guided Writing Activities for For 3rd Grade
- Guided Writing Activities for For 4th Grade
- Guided Writing Activities for For 5th Grade
- Guided Writing Activities for For 6th Grade