Writers' Toolkit | DiscoverED

The Writers' Toolkit

DiscoveWRITE lessons are built around The Writers' Toolkit. These are key skills identified that support students in being effective written communicators.

Sentence Level

Students learn that a sentence is a complete idea and must contain a subject and a predicate. They learn to differentiate between complete sentences and sentence fragments (a sentence that is missing a subject or predicate). They learn to convert fragments into sentences.

Fragment: walked to the store (missing a subject)

Corrected to complete sentence: The boy walked to the store.

Fragment: the crayons

Corrected to complete sentence:The crayons spilled all over the floor.
Students learn that a run-on sentence occurs when two or more independent clauses are joined together without the proper connection. Students learn to identify run on sentences, and correct them using punctuation or appropriate conjunctions.

Run on:

I love to write papers I would write one every day if I had the time.

Corrected with punctuation:

I love to write papers. I would write one every day if I had the time.

Corrected with conjunctions:

I love to write papers and I would write one every day if I had the time.
Students learn that an appositive is a noun or noun phrase that immediately follows and renames another noun in order to clarify or classify it. They learn that appositives are used to reduce wordiness, add detail, and add variety to a sentence. They learn to identify appositives in a sentence, and add appositives to the middle and end of sentences.

Hermione Granger, a witch at Hogwarts School, is accomplished at spells.

My childhood friend, Anne-Marie, loved horses.

My brother often likens himself to Zeus, the god of thunder.
Students learn to identify the four core sentence types (command, exclamation, statement, question). They learn to write each of the sentence types as well as converting between types.

A statement sentence tells you an idea. It ends with a full stop.

Unicorns are mythical creatures.

A question sentence asks something. It ends with a question mark.

What colour is a unicorn?

Commands usually start with a command verb. It ends with a full stop or exclamation mark.

Look at the unicorn!

An exclamation sentence shows strong feelings. It always ends with an exclamation mark.

Wow, unicorns are awesome!
Students learn to expand simple sentences to contain more information. This is done by responding to specific who, what, when, where, how and why.

Kernel: She laughed.

When? Friday night

Who? Molly

Why? funny movie

Expanded sentence: On Friday night, Molly laughed because she was watching a funny movie.
Students learn to combine two or more sentences into one more effective one. This is done using a variety of other toolkit skills (eg. using appositives, conjunctions).

Nate took the subway every day.

Nate did not like the subway.

Nate needed to get to work.

Combined sentence: Although Nate did not like the subway, he took it every day because he needed to get to work.
Students learn that conjunctions are words that join our ideas together and give our reader more information. They learn to identify the purpose of common conjunctions are because, but and so and practice using these to construct compound and complex sentences.

Because tells us why something has happened, or why something is true.

I like the beach because of the waves and sand.

But tells us about a change in direction or a problem.

I like the beach but it is sometimes it is often very crowded.

So indicates a cause and effect.

I like the beach so we often go there for holidays.
Students learn that complex sentences are made up of independent and dependent clauses linked by a subordinating conjunction. They learn to use a variety of subordinating conjunctions to construct complex sentences.

After she ate dinner, Diana went for a walk.

Even though he tried, he didn't win.

Text Level

Students learn that transition words and phrases are words or groups of words that signal a relationship between two sentences. Students learn to utilise a variety of transition words to build effective paragraphs.

Apples are crisp and sweet. In contrast, oranges are juicy and tangy.

I have an important meeting. Otherwise, I would have joined you for lunch.

I enjoy cooking at home. Furthermore, I find it relaxing and a creative way to try new recipes.
Students learn to develop Single Paragraph Outlines (SPOs) in order to plan the beginning, middle and end of a coherent paragraph. They learn to convert SPOs to paragraphs.

Single Paragraph Outline:

TS. Every student in Year 5 should be able to recite times tables accurately and efficiently

1. It's part of the school curriculum.

2. easier to solve problems

3. handy life skill
CS. A sound understanding of multiplication improves speed and accuracy when faced with mathematical problems.

Converted to paragraph:

Every student in Year 5 should be able to recite times tables accurately and efficiently. Not only is knowledge of times tables a part of the school curriculum, it is also an essential skill to learn. Knowing the times tables makes it easier to solve maths and science problems. Multiplication is also a handy life skill you can use daily when shopping and cooking. A sound understanding of multiplication improves speed and accuracy when faced with mathematical problems.

Punctuation is embedded throughout each lesson, both explicitly and implicitly.

Students learn that dialogue is generally the written conversation between two characters or more within a narrative. It can also be the written thoughts or speech of a single character. Dialogue is taught as part of the whole text genre units.

Students learn the key basic rules of dialogue.

Rule 1: Use quotation marks before and after the speaker’s exact words, including punctuation.

“I stole the last piece of candy,” Bianca admitted.

Rule 2: Use a comma to separate the speaker from the quote if the tag is at the start.

Yolanda stated, “I love my new puppy.”

Rule 3: Start a new line when switching speakers.

"Hello, Jack. How's it going?" Jack asked, tipping his hat.

"Not too bad, just taking it easy," Amelia replied, sipping her tea.
Students learn to use boundary punctuation to show where a sentence starts and ends. They learn that sentences start with a capital letter and end with a full stop, exclamation mark or question mark. This is continually reinforced throughout sentence-level activities by providing students with sentence stems without boundary punctuation.
Students learn to use commas between items in a sentence list.

James went to the shops and bought apples, oranges, pears and bananas.
The cat, dog and bird played together in the yard.
Students learn that commas are used as a pause or to separate different ideas. They learn to use commas when a subordinate clause starts a complex sentence. Students learn that a comma is used when additional information has been added to a sentence such as the use of embedded relative clauses and appositives.

Comma for subordinate clause

Although she was tired, Toni went to the party.

Additional information (appositive or relative clause)

My brother, a musician, will perform tonight.

The children, who were in 5th grade, were very excited.

Handwriting is taught explicitly at the beginning of each lesson for K-2 students.

Students learn the correct letter formation for each upper and lowercase letter.
Students learn that each letter needs to sit on the baseline. They use the dotted thirds to size letters that are tall and letters that fall. Students learn on the line makes it easier for the audience to read.
Students learn that letters need to be similar heights and widths. They learn that gaps between letters are small and evenly spaced. Students learn that forming letters a similar size and spacing letters evenly makes writing easier to read.