Reading Aligned Writing Guide: An Instructional Decision-Making Tool

Empowering Writers is excited to introduce a new Pacing Guide option, a side-by-side approach, designed to help teachers intentionally integrate explicit writing instruction alongside their core reading program. Additionally, an embedded assessment tool now provides the ability to monitor growth and inform instruction throughout the year.

Designed as a supplemental solution to address time constraints, this lesson sequence provides the structure and clarity needed to strengthen areas that comprehensive reading programs do not fully address. It equips teachers with practical tools to teach writing explicitly—while reinforcing reading comprehension, text analysis, and response development.

Why This Matters

Strong writing skills are not built in isolation—or in a single lesson. Growth over time requires repetition, reflection, and recursive practice. This sequence is intentionally designed to:

• Reinforce essential writing skills across units and texts
• Promote transfer between reading and writing
• Support organized, well-developed, and elaborated student responses
• Maximize instructional time by connecting reading and writing instruction
• Provide clear focus areas for modeling craft, structure, language, and conventions
  

By integrating purposeful reading responses into daily instruction, students deepen comprehension, clarify their thinking, and strengthen their ability to communicate with clarity and intention.

This sequence does not replace your existing curriculum—it enhances it. It supports teachers in building confident, capable readers who think critically and write with purpose.

Coming soon! Explore the new lesson sequence within your Empowering Writers resources today.