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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Super Synonyms List
Boost your students’ vocabularies with a synonyms list to reference in their daily writing lessons.
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Persuasive Writing Planning Template
A planning template to use when writing a persuasive or opinion text.
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Dressing Up A Sentence - Interactive or Printable Activity
Encourage students to add more descriptive language into their sentence writing with this activity.
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Complete and Incomplete Sentence Task Cards
These task cards are best used as independent practice or formative assessment assignments during sentence structure lessons.
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Amelia Earhart Constructed Response Worksheet
Use this passage, second grade writing prompt, and worksheet to help students write a constructed response paragraph about Amelia Earhart.
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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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Opinion Writing Teaching Slides
Teach your students about the structure and language features of opinion texts with an interactive teaching slide deck.
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Synonyms or Antonyms? Upper Grades Sorting Activity
Identify synonyms and antonyms with a sorting activity designed for upper elementary students.
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Ocean Animals Report - Crab Writing Template
Research, write and create a crab report with a printable crab-themed animal report template.
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Using Possessive Nouns - Task Cards
Practice writing phrases using the correct singular or plural possessive noun with a set of task cards.
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Write About It! Spring Sentence Writing Worksheets
Introduce new writers to writing complete sentences in early grades with a group of kindergarten writing prompts about spring.
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Write About It! Winter Sentence Builder Pack
Differentiate writing instruction in primary grades with a group of leveled informational writing prompts about winter
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Identifying Positive, Comparative, and Superlative Adverbs - Task Cards
Identify positive, comparative, and superlative adverbs in sentences with a set of twenty task cards.
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Possessive Nouns - Interactive Clipcards
Provide digital possessive noun practice activities for your learners with a Google Interactive activity.
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Adverbs Scoot
Build vocabulary and grammar skills with a game of Comparative and Superlative Adverbs SCOOT!
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Adverbs Match-Up
Skip those comparative and superlative adverb worksheets and try out an adverb matching game.
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Simple, Compound, and Complex Sentences Sort
Practice reading, identifying, and writing simple, compound, and complex sentences with a sorting activity.
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Capitalize it! Task Cards - Primary
Reinforce capitalization for proper nouns, the pronoun ‘I,’ and the beginning of sentences in text with this set of task cards.
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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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Past, Present, and Future Tense Worksheets - Grades 1/2
Provide students with additional verb tense practice with worksheets focusing on changing verbs into past, present, and future tense.
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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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Capitalization Task Cards (Grades 4-5)
Practice capitalizing less frequently occurring words (historical periods, events, languages, races, nationalities, and more) with 28 text task cards.
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What's Missing? - Alphabet Worksheet
A set of worksheets to practice writing the letters of the alphabet in order.
- Guided Writing Activities Templates
- Guided Writing Activities Games
- Guided Writing Activities Writing Templates
- Guided Writing Activities Worksheets
- Guided Writing Activities Task Cards
- Guided Writing Activities Interactive Activities
- Guided Writing Activities Word Walls
- Guided Writing Activities Sorting Activities
- Guided Writing Activities Graphic Organizers
- Guided Writing Activities Craft Activities
- Guided Writing Activities Instructional Slide Decks
- Guided Writing Activities Dominoes
- Guided Writing Activities Mini Book
- Guided Writing Activities Matchup Games
- Guided Writing Activities Posters
- Guided Writing Activities Card Games
- Guided Writing Activities Cut and Paste Worksheets
- Guided Writing Activities Flashcards
- Guided Writing Activities Board Games
- Guided Writing Activities Dice Games
- Guided Writing Activities Color by Code
- Guided Writing Activities Bingo
- Guided Writing Activities for Pre-K
- Guided Writing Activities for Kindergarten
- Guided Writing Activities for 1st Grade
- Guided Writing Activities for 2nd Grade
- Guided Writing Activities for 3rd Grade
- Guided Writing Activities for 4th Grade
- Guided Writing Activities for 5th Grade
- Guided Writing Activities for 6th Grade