The Writing Rope

Writing is a task as complex and multifaceted as reading—but it’s often taught as a single skill. Discover how to plan and deliver comprehensive, explicit, and evidence-based writing instruction with this groundbreaking book, aligned with IDA’s Structured Literacy approach and based on the latest research.
Joan Sedita's innovative Writing Rope weaves multiple skills and strategies into five fundamentals of a comprehensive writing curriculum: critical thinking, syntax (sentences), text structure, writing craft, and transcription (spelling and handwriting). Teachers of Grades 4-8 will get crystal-clear guidelines that demystify the process of helping students learn to write and write to learn across academic content areas. And with dozens of included templates, handouts, and other resources—available for download online—teachers will have all the tools they need to design and deliver explicit, high-quality writing instruction.
Perfect for professional development, this invaluable planning guide will help teachers apply the science of reading to the skill of writing—and help students master a critically important aspect of literacy.
TEACHERS WILL:
- Learn the fundamentals of effective writing instruction. Get research-based background knowledge about writing development, the five components of the Writing Rope framework, the role of fluent transcription skills in proficient writing, and the intentional choices proficient writers make about writing craft.- Apply evidence-based practices in the classroom. Teach essential skills all students must learn to become proficient writers, focusing on critical thinking strategies for generating ideas and gathering information before writing, strategies for each stage of the writing process, syntactic awareness and sentence writing, paragraph writing, and skilful structuring of different types of text.- Help students “write to learn.” Teach students how to use writing to enhance their learning across different content areas. Learn how to plan effective writing assignments in different content areas, and explicitly teach students skills for summarizing texts and writing about narrative and expository text.
PRACTICAL MATERIALS: Apply The Writing Rope framework to support your students’ writing skills with classroom activities, Connect to Your Classroom questions, suggestions for scaffolding, a Writing Assignment Guide to use with any grade or content area, and 40+ reproducible instructional resources for students and teachers.

Joan Sedita, M.Ed., is Founding Partner of Keys to Literacy (http://www.keystoliteracy.com), which specializes in professional development for adolescent literacy. She worked at the Landmark School for students with learning disabilities from 1975 to 1998. She was the lead trainer in Massachusetts for Reading First and a national LETRS trainer and author. At Keys to Literacy, she develops professional development programs that focus on content literacy instruction, as well as literacy planning models for Grades K–12.Ms. Sedita received her bachelor of arts degree from Boston College and her master of education degree in reading from Harvard University.