After a year and a half of working tirelessly to accommodate remote and hybrid learning, elementary school educators in particular have an opportunity to reinvent the way we teach almost everything. Many have begun searching for new curricula to reverse the steady decline in writing proficiency that we’ve seen for the past thirty years or so. If you are overwhelmed by the sheer number and variety of writing programs out there, you’re not alone!
To confuse students (and teachers) even more, most writing programs require us to order new grade-level specific programs each year. Yes, the 5th grade writing program and graphic organizers are mutually exclusive from the 4th grade materials. Each year students have to relearn the writing process and new graphic organizers. Teachers spend until Thanksgiving teaching a brand new writing process ‒ valuable time is lost! In the end, any benefits that you gain with this new approach may be canceled out by the time and effort it takes to both implement these new approaches and re-orient students at the beginning of each year.
We at SQ Thinking have developed one universal writing program that covers curriculum standards from first grade all the way through high school. And it’s based on well-researched strategies for effective writing instruction. Keep reading to learn how it all works!
Universal Design for Measurable Progress Monitoring
SQ Thinking materials form one continuous system organized by the kinds of measurable goals special ed teachers use to fulfill IEP requirements. For example, an IEP may include the goal that “The student will be able to write a complex sentence in 4 of 5 sentences.” To meet this goal, SQ Sentence explicitly teaches word order sequencing using universal Sentence Maps that are learned in one grade and continued to be followed in subsequent grades. For example, in 2nd grade students may directly be taught a core sentence sequence:
ADJ + NOUN + ACTION VERB + PREPOSITIONAL PHRASE
(The immense brown bear bolted through the campsite at dark.)
This map or guide may be taught in the beginning of second grade, practiced and mastered by the end of second grade and then this Sentence Map is brought to 3rd grade. In 3rd grade, this universal Sentence Map continues to be used and guide student sentence writing. Teachers don’t reteach it, because the map was mastered the previous year. Students continue to follow the map along with the updated enhancements leading to greater sentence complexity. Foundational skills (Sentence Maps) are brought forward to subsequent grades versus recreating the instructional wheel every year. Do you see how the core 2nd grade sequence embeds within the 3rd grade enhancements:
INTRODUCTORY PREP PHRASE, ADJ + NOUN + ACTION VERB + ADVERB
Cumulative Learning Builds Writing Skills
Our program demystifies the writing process by introducing explicit Sentence Maps and continuing to use them at all grade levels. It begins with learning the “word order” and “pairs” of syntax (e.g., ADJ/NOUN; ACTION VERB/ADVERB) at the phrase and sentence level. The system is designed to be taught cumulatively, like math, to increase retention and working knowledge of writing skills. In fact, there are 10 Sentence Map levels that students begin learning in 1st grade and continue to build upon through middle school. These are universal levels that do not change and students can be seen in 6th grade referencing their level 2 and 3 maps that were introduced in earlier grades. The point is that the sentence maps are introduced, practiced and continually referenced throughout the grades providing a universal set of tools that students of all grades in your school continue to reference. After all, complex sentence writing is a universal, not a grade-specific, skill.
One Cost-effective Program for All Grade Levels
Using different approaches to meet school curriculum standards for each grade level takes away the continuity that leads to building higher-order writing skills later on. Our visual sentence mapping materials provide the explicit and systematic instruction students need to absorb these rules in long-term memory. This makes a big difference in middle school, when students are expected to self-regulate multiple interwoven activities in longer, more complex writing assignments covered in SQ Write. Though traditional curricula bundle lessons together for each grade level for you, it’s easy to divide SQ Thinking into grade levels according to your school’s curriculum standards. You’ll have a lot more control over your own curriculum, and your school will save big by sticking to one system. You’ll also have the flexibility to make adjustments along the way as your students’ proficiency levels rise!
Rather than packaging and selling our learning materials into distinct grade-level programs, we have found it much more valuable for the educators and students that use SQ Thinking products to strip away the extra packaging and focus on what’s important: the fundamentals of good writing. The simplicity of SQ Write materials makes them great for pairing with other subjects and creating student-led assignments as well. And once your entire staff is familiar with SQ Thinking, they will share a language to talk about writing instruction. The SQ Thinking system is the skeleton you need to close writing skill gaps and build up your school’s reputation for effective writing instruction.
Take a look at what sentence mapping looks like with SQ Sentence and download a sample. Please don’t hesitate to reach out with questions about getting your school on board with SQ Thinking!