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Writing Bundle: Personal Narrative, Informational, Opinion & Fiction 4TH GRADE

This HUGE BUNDLE includes everything you need to teach, practice, and assess writing for the entire year! Students will complete four major units of study: personal narrative, informational reports, opinion essays, and fiction narratives.

More about this resource

My fourth grade writing bundle includes 4 ready-to-use writing units to help you teach personal narrative, informational reports, opinion essays, and fiction narrative with ease. Each done-for-you unit contains detailed lesson plans, mentor texts, anchor charts, student writing tasks, and rubrics–everything you need to be a capable, confident writing teacher with students who love to write. As an added bonus, this bundle also includes my poetry writing mini unit!

If teaching writing has ever made you cry, weep, tear out your hair, question your existence, or binge-watch reality television—because it’s just that frustrating and overwhelming—I made this resource for you.

If your students dread writing time more than meatloaf in the school cafeteria…I made this resource for them, too.

Teaching writing can be tough. Teachers tell me that their district-provided writing curriculum is

too long
too wordy
too complicated

Or worse, they don’t have any curriculum at all. Yikes!

But my fourth grade writing bundle makes teaching writing easy. This HUGE bundle takes all the guesswork out of teaching writing and gives you the tools you need to teach engaging and effective writing lessons without breaking a sweat.

This HUGE MONEY-SAVING bundle has EVERYTHING you need to effectively teach a full year of writing to students in fourth grade, including 4 major units of study:

Personal Narrative: Students learn how to write a small moment story with dialogue, a strong lead, interesting word choice, and paragraphs.
Informational Reports: Students learn how to craft a strong lead, choose interesting details, write topic and concluding sentences, and structure paragraphs.
Opinion Essays: Students learn how to use supporting facts and reasons, write topic and concluding sentences, and structure paragraphs.
Fiction Narratives: Students learn how to write dialogue, paragraphs, and transitions, and how to create strong characters, a problem, and a solution!

That’s 32 weeks of done-for-you writing lessons and activities! And all you have to do is print and teach. The lesson plans are that simple. Seriously.

Student-friendly mentor texts make it easy to provide illustrative examples of new writing skills. You don’t have to waste your time and money hunting down just the right book. Focused mini lessons and daily writing tasks simplify the writing process helping ALL students, even reluctant writers, experience success. Preprinted anchor charts make it easy to model new skills and engage in shared writing without wasting valuable time.

And best of all, my writing bundle makes writing fun for your students. Short, focused lessons keep students engaged. Simple, direct writing tasks help kids develop confidence.

Choice empowers students to write about things they care about and makes them more invested in their writing. And that’s a big deal because students who enjoy writing and get lots of practice perform better on standardized testing.

My writing bundles for grades 2-5 have received over 5000 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ reviews! So, if the thought of teaching writing leaves you more frazzled than a day with no wifi, this resource was made for YOU!!

How Our Writing Bundles are Aligned with the Science of Reading:

Structured writing routine: Our writing bundle is organized into 4 genres. Each 8-week unit is carefully structured, beginning with foundational skills before moving into more advanced skills. Students are taught a systematic approach to writing including: brainstorming, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing.
Explicit instruction: Daily lessons begin with explicit instruction including access to examples via mentor texts, modeling, and directed practice. Each skill is broken down into bite-size pieces so that students can learn one skill at a time. Students practice skills independently, working on one sentence or paragraph at a time.
Differentiation: Writing is differentiated through small group instruction that provides reteaching, additional practice, and support at appropriate levels.
Daily opportunities to write: The majority of the writing lesson is reserved for independent writing time, providing students with large blocks of time to write and practice skills every day.
Demonstrates the connection between reading and writing: Mentor texts provide concrete examples of writing skills and allow children to experiment with and apply sophisticated skills and language in their own writing. In addition, constructing their own writing pieces helps students recognize, connect, and understand these strategies when reading.

What’s Included:

Detailed teacher directions and suggestions for simple implementation
Unit-at-a-glance calendar for each unit
7 exclusive videos walking you through how to get the most out of these writing units
160 days of lesson plans that include guiding questions, materials, mini lessons, student work tasks, student share tasks, intervention, and several extension activities
55 original mentor text passages
10 sets of task cards
50 teacher anchor charts (blank and filled in versions)
57 student anchor charts and printables for writing notebooks
Conference and goal-tracking forms
Writing grades tracking forms
Rubrics for all four genres
List of 40 additional mentor text books (optional)
Variety of writing publishing papers
Student writing notebook covers and dividers
Teacher notebook covers and binder spines
Multiple ideas for author share celebrations
DIGITAL writing notebooks on Google Slides

Personal Narratives

Students learn how to write a small moment story with dialogue, a strong lead, interesting word choice, and paragraphs. Lessons include:

Setting goals
What is a personal narrative?
Generating story ideas
Narrowing your story idea to a small moment
Rehearsing and drafting
Writing a lead
Adding and punctuating dialogue
Adding details
Word choice
Show, don’t tell
Breaking writing into paragraphs
Transition words
Writing an ending
Editing
Publishing

Informational Reports

Students learn how to craft a strong lead, choose interesting details, write topic and concluding sentences, and structure paragraphs. Lessons include:

Setting goals
What is an informational report?
Generating report ideas
Narrowing your report idea to a seed
Research and note taking
Paraphrasing
Table of contents
Subtopics
Drafting
Writing a lead
Topic and concluding sentences
Word choice- adding vocabulary and definitions
Adding details
Transitions
Writing a conclusion
Text features
Editing
Publishing

Opinion (Persuasive) Writing

Students learn how to use supporting facts and reasons, write topic and concluding sentences, and structure paragraphs. Lessons Include:

Setting goals
What is an opinion essay?
Generating essay ideas
Drafting
Writing strong opinion statements
Writing a lead
Supporting your opinion with reasons
Considering your audience
Consider opposing opinions
Supporting your opinion with examples
Paragraphs
Writing a lead
Topic and concluding sentences
Word choice
Transitions
Writing a conclusion
Editing
Publishing
Generating deeper topics (research-based)

Fiction Narratives

Students learn how to write dialogue, paragraphs, and transitions, and how to create strong characters, a problem, and a solution! Lessons include:

Setting goals
What is a fiction narrative?
Developing characters
Developing setting (show-don’t-tell)
Problem & solution
Author point of view
Writing a lead
Creating suspense
Adding and punctuating dialogue
Word choice (strong verbs)
Paragraphs
Transitions
Writing an ending
Editing
Publishing

How To Use the Writing Bundles in the Classroom

A typical day of writing:

I recommend you set aside thirty minutes for writing each day (or more if you have it). Check out the sample schedules below. Each day follows the same plan:

Mini-Lesson (8-10 minutes): The day kicks off with a mini-lesson to teach a particular skill. The mini-lesson uses mentor text (remember, it’s included in the unit) and anchor charts. For the teacher version of the anchor charts, you can project and fill them out with the class, or print and display them in your classroom. The student versions are smaller so they can fill them out and keep them in their writing notebooks for reference.
Work Time (18-20 minutes): Students will apply the skill they just learned into their writing each day. The included writing tasks make it crystal-clear what to do during independent writing time–for you and your students. By the end of the unit, they will have completed two full masterpieces and many other independent writings.
Share Time (2 minutes): Students are encouraged to share a piece of their writing with a partner or with the entire class. This makes writing more meaningful to kids and holds them accountable.

Organization made easy:

The Writing Bundles are divided into 4 units of study: personal narrative, informational report, opinion essay, and fiction narrative which each comes in its own unit folder.
Each unit folder is further organized into multiple folders and files so it’s easy for you to find what you need.
Each unit comes with a daily schedule so you know exactly what to teach each day.
Detailed daily lesson plans make teaching writing easy.

Differentiation:

There are many ways to differentiate writing assignments:

These daily writing prompts are intentionally short and sweet so that all students, even those below grade level, can feel successful. Most tasks can be completed in 1-2 sentences.
More advanced writers can write longer responses, or work on a second masterpiece if they finish early.
Students can complete fewer task cards or work with a partner; you can also provide support to students as they work on task cards.
The process for teaching writing includes group conferencing time. These groups should be based on ability so that you can individualize your instruction to meet the specific needs of the group.

Why You’ll Love These Writing Bundles!

You’ll save hours of prepping and planning time. The daily lesson plans are easy to implement. All you have to do is print and teach.
Mentor texts are included. You do not need to hunt down or purchase any additional books! (Unless you want to. Far be it from me to stand between a teacher and new books.)
Digital anchor charts project onto your white board-so you don’t have to be Picasso or Renoir to anchor your kids in the lesson.
Pre-printed student anchor charts make it easy for students to follow along without having to write every word and draw complicated diagrams.
Digital student notebooks are perfect for 1:1 classrooms and a great way to save paper.
These lessons work for all students, even students below grade level.
Task cards incorporate movement, reinforce concepts, and make learning fun. Daily share time encourages students to take pride in their writing.
Direct writing instruction provides a solid foundation of writing skills that leads to increased test scores.
Aligned with the Science of Reading.

“BEST RESOURCE I’VE EVER BOUGHT!!!!!!!!! PERFECTION!!!!!!!!! You get it. You get what I need! You get what writing workshop is REALLY like! You get that the mini-lessons need to be MINI! You get what a 3rd grader can handle in one lesson. You get that a teacher doesn’t have time to read a 6-page lesson plan in a teacher’s edition. THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!!!!!!” – Kristen K.