2nd Grade Informative Expository Writing Stories & Booklets Checklists

Does your school have a writing curriculum that needs supplementing? Do you need a straight-forward template to complete the writing process in your classroom that will work with ANY informative, informational, or expository writing prompt? Your students will love using these templates to complete their writing because these templates make the writing process straight-forward and accessible for even the most reluctant writers. For example, do any of your students ever complain that they hate writing? This product has everything you need to successfully complete the writing process as painlessly as possible and for your students to enhance their grammatical skills, informative writing skills, understanding of the writing process, and general organizational skills. Often the hardest part of the writing process for kids is coming up with ideas and organizing their thoughts. These templates make the brainstorming and organizing easy for kids. This is also a great resource for emergency no prep substitute teacher plans, or for use as an assessment.

PRODUCT DETAILS:

• FILE TYPE: Download this printable 89 page PDF digital file to use with your students.
• WRITING PROCESS: This product assists students in completing the full writing process, and it also provides assistance and structure to help busy teachers, parents, and substitute teachers to support young authors. It can be so easy for children (and adults) to forget everything required to write a high-quality informative piece. This product with all its features and scaffolds will guide you and all of your students in even the most hectic of school days to complete the writing process with an exemplary essay.
• PRE-WRITING: This includes 24 informative writing prompts including fiction and non-fiction. You can choose one prompt to assign to your class, or students can choose their own prompt. This product also includes a planning page graphic organizer that is specifically for Informative writing. The planning page perfectly matches the structure of the writing page templates to make writing easy. Young learners need help learning to structure and categorize their thoughts when writing for the sake of flow, and this planning page is an incredible tool to help students do just that.
• TRANSFER WRITING: Do you have students that struggle to transfer their writing from the planning page to the writing page? This product includes two unique writing templates that incorporate the planning and rough draft on the same page. One of these templates is especially scaffolded for students that need extra help. This is also helpful for students that are reluctant to erase their work to make drafting and editing changes later, as the rough draft and final draft are separated. (For many students and teachers that would be very frustrating because they'd be writing their work twice, BUT there are some students who need a tool like this because the fear or reluctance to erase and change is a strong deterrent.)
• DRAFTING/WRITING: Once students have completed the planning page, they are ready to draft their writing in one of the provided booklet templates. I recommend that you demonstrate how to put the planning page beside their booklet on their desk, and also how to match each section of the planning page with the correct section of the booklet. You can demonstrate to students how to take the information from their planning page and copy it to their booklet using full sentences. Drafting is a stage in the writing process when students can experience emotional meltdowns if they have not adequately planned their writing. Thankfully for your students, you have taken out the frustration of the writing process by using this high-quality planning page and writing template that match perfectly. No more meltdowns! I often tell students during the drafting stage, "Congratulations! You've already done the hardest part - coming up with your ideas, and organizing them. This next part is a piece of cake! You're just copying down the ideas you already came up with! You can throw in a new detail here and there, and ta-da!"
• REVISING: This is another part of the writing process that can cause tears. "But, teacher I already finished my writing. I'm done! What do you mean I have to change my work? It's perfect!" Sometimes getting kids to revise can feel like pulling teeth. That's why I've included a comprehensive writing checklist in kid-friendly language in this product. It has examples or pictures for each line item in the checklist to aid in comprehension. For example, the checklist asks, "Did you use time adverbs like first, then, next, and last?" This is helpful in establishing sequence. The checklist also asks, "Did you use conjunctions like and, or, so, but, because?" This is helpful in adding to the complexity of sentence structures in the piece overall, as well as showing the relationship between concepts in the story. The checklist asks, "When I read my sentences, do they make sense?" Revising a story sounds like a big, immovable task until you break it down into small, manageable tasks with pictures and examples, which is exactly what my checklist does. I recommend having students first use the checklist to self-reflect on their own work, then having students pair up to read each other's work, complete the checklist, and implement the recommended changes so they have another set of eyes helping them revise.
• EDIT: I've always had students work on revising and editing in the same class session because they are in the mindset of both accepting and looking for changes to be made. My checklist is a great tool for editing, asking questions like, "Did I start sentences with capital letters?", "Did I spell words correct?", and "Did I end all sentences with punctuation?"
• PUBLISH: These attractive writing page templates will make for a beautiful final product when students are ready to finalize and publish their work.
• DRAWING: Each page has a place for students to illustrate their work to add meaning for their reader. The checklist also addresses the picture by asking, "Does the picture match the words? Is my picture easy to understand?"
• HANDWRITING: Each page has handwriting lines as many second graders could use support in working on their handwriting.
• RELIABLE TOOL: As all veteran teachers know, the writing process is cyclical and rarely linear as writers progress in their ability. My checklist is a reliable tool that can continuously be relied upon, no matter where a student is in the revising, editing, drafting, revising, editing, drafting process.
• STRAIGHT-FORWARD: Sometimes students can get lost and overwhelmed when transferring information from their plan to their writing page, especially if the pages are so different or lack headings. I address both of these problems in this product with levels of scaffolding so that all students can easily transfer their thoughts from their plan to their page.
• SCAFFOLDING: The 8 templates included in this product are levels of scaffolding. Here's a list of the templates in order from least scaffolding to most scaffolding: plain template, template with headings, plain template with checklist, and template with headings and checklist.
• BLANK TEMPLATES: This product also includes 10 blank writing pages for your convenience.

EASY TO IMPLEMENT:

• This assignment is a low prep option that you can literally print and go straight back to your classroom to implement IMMEDIATELY.
• It would also be great for emergency sub plans.
• You could display this passage on your projector, SmartBoard, or TV to utilize as a whole class, or you could print individual pages for easy differentiation.

HOMESCHOOL: As a note, this activity also works well for homeschool students.