About the Grade 4 Units

Written for children on the cusp of writing more academic texts, the fourth-grade units familiarizes students with the genres they will regularly encounter throughout school—thesis-driven persuasive essays, literary essays, and research reports. Each of the units begins where children are and then provides a progression of... more

“Writing allows each of us to live with that special wide-awakeness that comes from knowing that our lives and our ideas are worth writing about.”

—Lucy Calkins

Teaching Writing is Lucy Calkins at her best—a distillation of the work that’s placed Lucy and her colleagues at the forefront of the teaching of... more

About the Grade 5 Units

By the time children enter fifth grade, they will have been introduced to most if not all of the new skills expected of fifth-graders. The sequence of fifth grade units consolidates those skills and introduces the learning objectives called for in the sixth-grade standards: how to conduct research using primary sources, how... more

About the Grade 1 Units

The first-grade units are written for children who are just tapping into their burgeoning powers as readers as well as writers, and believe they can do anything. Students begin with the always-popular unit Small Moments: Writing with Focus, Detail, and Dialogue. In this unit students take the everyday events of their... more

About the Grade 2 Units

The second-grade units are written with seven-year-olds in mind. These youngsters are chomping at the bit for something new. They feel very big now and want work that feels big and important. That’s what they’ll get—this series invites second-graders into author studies that help them craft powerful true stories, science investigations... more