BY TEACHERS, FOR TEACHERS
Writing with Design is the most comprehensive, interdisciplinary, and standards-aligned writing program available for K-12th grade students.
HOW IT WORKS
Three daily components boost skills, scores, creativity, and confidence.
VOCABULARY GROWTH
Our revolutionary approach to boosting vocabulary, called H-POP, helps emerging writers appreciate the power of words— and how to understand, spell, and use them with clarity and confidence.
COMPOSITION TIME
From one sentence responses to multi-paragraph essays, our steps, strategies, and engaging resources demystify composing. Students get daily practice putting their words to work by conveying and sharing ideas, experiences, and more.
SKILL DEVELOPMENT
Our skill-focused lessons are quick, engaging, and powerful activities that teach critical writing skills step by step. From organization fundamentals to transition words, students will learn, refine, and deploy the writing skills that will support them for the rest of their lives.
SET A NEW STANDARD
Our approach exceeds Common Core and state standards to cultivate the next generation of powerful communicators.
Writing with Design unlocks a love of writing in even the most reluctant students (and teachers).
Through high-impact professional development and continuing support, teachers in every department build confidence in their ability to teach and assess a student’s ability to analyze, write, and communicate. As students progress through the school year, they’re shown how to think critically and creatively—in ways far beyond language arts.
What’s included?
program implementation
Writing with Design is a cumulative curriculum, with each success supporting the next— for teachers and students.
Inform:
Strategy Session
We’ll discuss your school’s writing and academic goals and how Writing with Design can equip and empower you along the way.
Equip:
Manuals & Materials
Our program is designed to equip each teacher and classroom with the resources and guides they need to succeed.
Empower:
Teacher Development
We meet with teachers regularly to share material, analyze student writings, and help infuse writing across the curriculum.
These full-day, half-day, or mini sessions are integral to the successful implementation of Writing with Design.
Inspire:
Classroom Modeling
Our Lead Teachers demonstrate Writing with Design lessons and activities with your students. We’ll show you how to integrate these activities into every classroom— and boost the writing skills of every student.
Integrate:
Curriculum Launch
As teachers implement the Writing with Design system in their classroom and across the curriculum, we’ll be on hand to offer ongoing support, feedback, and advice. We’re here for you!
PLUS
Energizing Lessons
Watch your students excel with ready-to-write activities they are excited to do and share.
No more planning!
Rigorous Rubrics
Tailor and convey your goals to the specific needs of your students.
No more one-size-fits-all!
Valuable Assessments
Get real-time feedback to track your students’ growth and celebrate their success. No more guesswork!
“All I can say is THANK YOU! Our Writing with Design trainings and materials are spot on. Your guidance and model lessons made this shift in our teaching manageable and dare I say fun and easy?!”
Getting started
Writing with Design offers three levels of supported implementation
Roll out this proven program at the student or classroom level, or bring in our team of experts for on-site instruction.
Writing Resources
for Students
Equip your students with writing resources they can use in every class (and real life!).
These guides teach all aspects of writing, build your students’ confidence, and improve test scores across the board.
Ready-to-Launch
Teacher Guide Set
Our comprehensive teacher guides include:
Hundreds of fully-prepared activities, lessons, and resources your teachers can immediately deploy to make writing fun!
Step-by-step trainings that empower teachers to teach and evaluate student writing.
Monthly student performance assessments that allow your teachers to track (and celebrate!) real-time progress.
1-year access to our robust library of cross-curricular, multimedia, and theme-based prompts (coming fall 2023).
These resources were developed and tested in real classrooms by real teachers who know what it takes to teach a group of reluctant writers.
We refined the material so your teachers can enjoy the process.
Most Popular!
High-Impact Professional Development
There’s no better way to train and prepare your teachers than through on-site and video-based training, model lessons, and direct support.
Choose from full-day, half-day, or mini sessions.
Engage every department, from Science and History to ELA and SPED.
Improve your school’s Writing with Design implementation with modeled lessons for every department.
Schools that have participated in our professional development sessions noted remarkable improvement in their students’ overall writing quality and double-digit improvement in their assessment scores.
Teachers who are equipped and supported cultivate students who succeed!
3 Steps to Classrooms
of Confident Writers
Step 1
Book Your Strategy Session
A conversation about your school, students, goals, and how Writing with Design can help.
Step 2
Implement Your Writing with Design Program
Through engaging professional development and comprehensive, ready-to-launch resources, great writing will flourish in every classroom.
Step 3
Celebrate Your Remarkable Gains
Because empowered teachers inspire impressive test scores and students who communicate with confidence.
Get Student Results in Writing
We help students think about what they write, so they can write about what they think.
The results are exceptional, and these lessons go far beyond test scores. A child who can communicate is a child transformed.
Our Method
MEET STUDENTS (AND TEACHERS!) WHERE THEY ARE.
Then give them the skills and confidence to go further.
According to The Nation’s Report Card, only about 27% of students measure at or above the writing skill requirements for their grade level.
That means 73% of students are not equipped with even the most basic writing skills needed to succeed.
This is why the Writing with Design approach goes beyond arbitrary grade requirements to meet each student at their true skill level.
Our program uses three stages of instruction to teach students the steps, structures, and styles of writing. This curriculum breaks writing down into simple steps that progress along with the child’s abilities.
Using visual diagrams, students are shown how to conceptualize writing in a new, tangible way. Through specific ideas and illustrations, our resources demonstrate stylized writing so students can match examples to concepts.
WRITING SKILLS ARE CRUCIAL TO STUDENT SUCCESS—ON TEST DAY AND BEYOND
Show them how to love writing with proven, easy-to-integrate curriculum that empowers every teacher and student.
Frequently Asked Questions
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We are a K-12 writing program, developed by teachers for teachers.
As a teacher, Amber began searching for a better way of teaching students to improve their writing skills. Historically, U.S. school systems have lacked programs that are specifically designed to teach writing. Educators have been given prompts and literature units that encourage students’ thoughtful writing, but we’ve never had a “how to” guide.
When we look at how other subjects are taught - science, math or even reading skills, for example - writing instruction is sorely lacking the steps and structures other subjects ingrain. Grammar is perhaps the closest we’ve come to instilling structure in writing, but it isn’t the same as writing instruction.
Amber’s search for a better way of teaching writing began with an organic approach: by sketching ideas. These sketches turned into PowerPoint slides, which then morphed into handouts. The handouts became manuals.
For the past fifteen years, she’s been working with teachers across the country on the Writing with Design program. During this time, it has grown far beyond a syllabus or how-to guide; Writing with Design has become a paradigm shift on how schools approach writing.
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Writing with Design is a comprehensive program, aimed at being custom tailored to fit every classroom.
We teach all the structures of writing, steps to writing, and styles of writing—100% aligned with writing standards.
The WwD program includes:
Teacher training and professional development;
Written resources (Teacher Guides, Student Writing Guides);
Online resources (writing software containing WwD prompts, scoring rubrics, Mind Designs and Skill Focus Activities) and a 3rd party professional scoring service
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Most traditional curriculum is taught on a grade-level-based standard. Writing with Design is a teacher-and-student empowerment program, adding flexibility of use not usually found in grade-level-based curriculum.
Writing with Design is designed to meet each student at their current writing level.
Everything needed to teach at all levels of ability is included, whether you teach kindergarten or 5th grade, AP English or US History. We frequently work with English Language Learners, special education populations, and resistant writers. Our program works with these students - who may have more difficulty or less joy in writing - as well as gifted writers.
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WwD is 100% aligned to all state and national writing standards. Since all pillars of literacy are interrelated, many other ELA standards including reading comprehension, phonics, grammar, and word study, are addressed and practiced within WwD.
In addition, we have worked with universities to align with college-level expectations of writing and writing assignments, as well as SAT, ACT, and college entrance exams.
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Still a teacher at heart, Amber designed an approach to writing that serves as a stand alone curriculum as well as an often-missing foundational piece.
The 6 Traits of Writing provides an understanding of the general elements of strong writing. Writing with Design is based on extensive research and nearly a decade of classroom application and refinement.
WWD strongly addresses all 6 traits and goes even deeper by isolating 13 criteria of impressive writing so that teachers and students can specifically pinpoint what to work on to continually improve the quality of writing.
Any 6 Trait resources can merge nicely within Writing with Design’s format.
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Our teacher guide sets are the most comprehensive resource on writing available for PreK-12 teachers.
The first binder, Foundational Principles of Writing, lays the foundation for schools to see marked success with Writing with Design. In this binder, teachers are introduced to WWD’s approach and process, the 13 criteria we use to teach and score the components of writing across all domains, and pacing guides that vertically and horizontally align writing so all grade levels know what and when to teach.
The other binders are dedicated to the steps, structures, and stylistic components of the three domains of writing: informational, opinion/argumentative, and narrative.
Writing with Design is the only writing program to provide resources on all the types of writing within each domain.
For example, we don’t just say ‘informational writing’ but delve deeper into the types: describe, define, compare, sequence, show cause and effect, make connections, classify, construct, and deconstruct. This level of specificity ensures that students are receiving comprehensive and well-rounded instruction on each of the types—rather than just general information on the domain. In all, Writing with Design teaches and provides resources on 33 types of writing.