5th Grade · Writing · W.5.5, L.5.2

Writing Process Lesson Plan for 5th Grade

A ready-to-teach writing process lesson for 5th Grade, built around planning research, argument and narrative writing, paraphrasing and listing sources, revising for transitions, evidence and sentence variety, and editing for commas, tense shifts and titles. Print the plan, print the practice pages, and you are set.

Approximately 45 minutes

Learning objective

Plan research, argument, narrative and essay writing
Paraphrase a source without copying
List sources in a bibliography

Materials

Plan a Five-Paragraph Essay
Revise Writing for Voice
Edit Writing for Grammar and Spelling
Combine Choppy Sentences for Sentence Variety
Use Precise Verbs and Adjectives in a Science Description
Outline a Research Report With Note Cards
Pencils, and whiteboard space for the modeled examples

Lesson steps

1. Notice it first (5 min)
Put two sentences on the board, one that uses writing process correctly and one that does not. Ask students which sounds right before you name any rule. Noticing comes before naming.
2. Name the rule (I do) (8 min)
Now name writing process and state the rule in one sentence. Write it where it can stay all week. Model correcting the broken sentence from the warm-up.
3. Fix them together (we do) (12 min)
Work through four or five sentences as a class. Mix in one that is already correct, because students who are pattern-matching rather than thinking will "fix" it anyway and reveal themselves.
4. Independent practice (you do) (15 min)
Hand out "Plan a Five-Paragraph Essay". Students work independently. Circulate and watch for the students who can do the exercise but cannot explain the rule, since that gap shows up later in their writing.
5. Apply it to real writing (5 min)
Students find one place in their own writing folder where writing process applies, and fix it. This is the step that moves the rule from worksheet to writing.

Check for understanding

Read the last two sentences of each student's independent work. Applying writing process correctly in their own sentence matters more than getting the exercise items right.

Differentiation

Extra support. Students who stall: pull them into a small group and rebuild writing process with concrete materials or a simpler text before asking for the written work again. Do not send the page home as homework, it will just rehearse the misunderstanding.

Extension. Students who finish early: ask them to write their own writing process problem for a partner to solve, then check the partner's work. Creating a problem is harder than solving one and it surfaces whether they really understand writing process.

Skills covered in this lesson

Prewriting · Sentence variety · Revising · Descriptive language · Editing

Questions teachers ask about teaching writing process

What does the writing process look like in 5th grade?

Fifth graders plan, revise, edit and rewrite with some guidance from adults and peers (CCSS W.5.5). The work shifts toward research and argument: taking notes, paraphrasing, listing sources and answering a counterclaim. These sheets give each of those steps its own page.

How do I help my child paraphrase without copying?

Have your child read the passage, cover it, and say the idea out loud in their own words before writing. Then compare with the source and change any long string of the same words. The paraphrase page shows a source with choices first, so your child sees what a good paraphrase looks like.

What is sentence variety?

Sentence variety means mixing short and long sentences and starting them in different ways, so writing does not sound choppy (L.5.3.A). The three sentence variety pages have children combine short sentences, cut extra words and count words to vary sentence length.

Do the 5th grade writing process worksheets have answer keys?

19 of the 28 sheets have an answer key, including every editing and sentence variety page. The 9 planners and open writing pages, such as the argument planner, the story lead page and the setting builder, have no key, since each child writes their own piece.