Writing Fundamentals

This program teaches key concepts of the writing curriculum for levels 3 to 5. Among other skills, students learn how to create clear, concise, interesting sentences and how to write a paragraph with a beginning, middle and end.

Getting Started-The Toolkit

Unit 1: Parts of Speech

Identify common and proper nouns, verbs and adjectives in given sentences.
10 Lessons

Unit 2: Sentences

Students will determine whether a given phrase is a complete sentence. They will test their understanding of the relationship between subject and predicate and various other rules that apply to proper sentences.
11 Lessons

Unit 3: Power Tools

Students will focus on understanding synonyms, antonyms and homonyms.
11 Lessons

Satisfying Sentences

Unit 1: Basic Sentence

Students will work to determine whether a given word is a person, a place or a thing. They will determine whether a given sentence is a sensible sentence or not and other basic sentence components.
5 Lessons

Unit 2: What Happens?

Students will work to understand and complete cause and effect sentences.
2 Lessons

Unit 3: Things that are the Same

Students will work to identify pairs of related words from a given list.
2 Lessons

Unit 4: Things that are Different

Students will work to identify pairs of different words from a given list.
2 Lessons

Unit 5: Compare and Contrast

Students will work to understand and complete compare and contrast sentences.
2 Lessons

Unit 6: Run-on Sentences

Students will work to understand and identify run-on sentences.
2 Lessons

Unit 7: One Idea, One Paragraph

Students will be taught to understand that each paragraph should have one main idea.
2 Lessons

Unit 8: Paragraph Structure

Students will be taught to construct a properly structured and formatted paragraph from given sentences.
2 Lessons

Unit 9: Topic Sentences

Students will be taught to understand the purpose of a topic sentence and choose a proper topic sentence for a given paragraph.
4 Lessons

Unit 10: Openings and Closings

Students will be taught to understand and identify effective opening and concluding sentences.
4 Lessons

Supporting Details

Unit 1: Ideas

Students will be taught to identify sets of connected words.
2 Lessons

Unit 2: Sorting

Students will be taught to sort words and pictures into categories based on real world experience.
5 Lessons

Unit 3: Adding Details

Students will be taught to choose correct additional details for a given event
3 Lessons

Unit 4: Fact or Opinion?

Students will be taught to understand whether a statement expresses fact or opinion. They will work to determine whether a fact supports a given statement and to understand the importance and applications of opinions.
5 Lessons

Unit 5: Power Words

Students will be taught to identify whether a given adjective is comparative or superlative, understand and complete given similes and to understand subject-verb agreement and choose the correct verb to make them agree.
8 Lessons

Checking It Twice

Unit 1: What Are You Looking For?

Students will be taught to understand the basic principles and tools of editing.
1 Lessons

Unit 2: Checking Quotes

Students will be taught to place quotation marks where required in a given sentence.
2 Lessons

Unit 3: Perfect Punctuation

Students will be taught to place punctuation marks where required in a given sentence.
3 Lessons

Unit 4: Careful Capitals

Students will be taught to capitalize words where required in a given sentence.
2 Lessons

Unit 5: Strong, Descriptive Words

Students will learn to choose an appropriate action verb and adjective for a given sentence.
4 Lessons

Unit 6: Is That A Sentence?

Students will be taught to identify the subject in a given sentence, to determine whether a given sentence is a complete sentence or not and to create new sentences.
5 Lessons

Unit 7: Perfect Paragraphs

Students will be taught to construct a perfect paragraph by adding or subtracting given sentences.
2 Lessons