Students will be taught four specific skills that are essential for creative writing: characterization, dialogue, action writing, and descriptions. Students will learn techniques to help guide their writing in each of these areas by direct instruction and by analyzing how successful authors do it. They will also be able to engage in a teacher-directed writers workshop with their peers and teacher to help fine tune their own writing. The teacher will provide resources to analyze, recorded instruction, instructional activities, group work, and writing prompts as well as specific, intentional feedback to help students improve their skills.

Students will focus on each of these skills for one week each and will complete one assignment for each of these skills. Students will answer questions about the mentor texts in order to pinpoint the focus of learning the specific skills for each week. They will complete group activities to study other works of art and generate ideas with each other, such as working together under the teacher's guidance to be able to analyze the mentor texts and understand how the authors use each skill in their writing. Students will be able to share ideas for brainstorming and be guided in the revision process as they help each other polish their final drafts. Students will also submit their assignment each week for teacher feedback which will focus on the specific areas of content and skill for the week. Teacher feedback will point to specific areas of their writing that they have done well or need improvement in order to display full mastery. 

The format of each week will be as follows:  Teacher will give direct instruction on the skill for that week. This will take place via video and teacher-delivered notes. Students will read sample texts and answer questions that help them identify and analyze the skill being taught that week. Students will then be directed to a writing prompt designed to engage them to employ the learned skill for the week. They will submit brainstorm for review, discuss with peers, write a first draft, peer edit and receive teacher feedback on their draft, and work on a final draft by implementing the peer and teacher feedback they received. Students are welcome and encouraged to ask for teacher feedback more than just the one required time.  Students will have many opportunities to share their process with each other as well so they can learn from each other as well as from the teacher.

Week 1 will focus on characterization. Week 2 will be a focus on dialogue. Week 3 we will learn about action writing, and the final week will focus on creating vivid, clear descriptions.