Before moving on in the writing process, it is a great place to have students create a writing goal.  This post will explain writing goals, how to choose a writing goal, provide ideas for creating writing goals, and a free writing goal template! These ideas are ideal for any writing curriculum and are a part of a series of mini lessons for writer’s workshop designed for scaffolding through the writing process.

What are writing goals?

Writing goals are something in students’ writing that they (or you) would like to see improvement.

How do you choose a writing goal?

Tell students to think of something that they frequently have to correct in their writing or something that they find difficult when writing in the past.  Explain that writing goals can change from one piece of writing to the next.  I find it best for students to focus on ONE goal in each writing piece.

If you (the teacher) are creating the writing goal:
1.  Anything that you have taught in a past writing lesson and are expected to use in future essays.
2.  One of the past lessons that they need more time to develop.
3.  Reward students who meet their writing goal.

What are some ideas to use as writing goals?

It can be anything related to the writing assignment. For example:

  • Writing in complete sentences
  • Using proper capitalization
  • Using proper punctuation (You can even be more specific.  (commas, end of sentence, quotation marks)
  • Organization
  • Fixing run-ons
  • Being more descriptive
  • Writing more detail
  • Writing less and deleting irrelevant details
  • Adding more million dollar words
  • Sticking to the topic
  • Writing topic sentences
  • Writing a better introduction
  • Using indents in paragraphs
  • Writing a better conclusion
  • Including more meaningful dialogue
  • Using correct spelling
  • Using transition words
  • Neater handwriting

Here are examples of writing goals.  GRAB THIS WRITING GOAL TEMPLATE FOR FREE.

I had a student say, “I can’t wait to write this story!”  I love hearing their anticipation.  I remind students that this first writing piece is step-by-step so they can completely understand the best strategy to take them through the writing process.  It will take many lessons to write each step to complete the story, but it will be so worth it!

This lesson is also included in the STEP-BY-STEP WRITING® Program with mini-lessons designed to scaffold through the writing process. Writing units included are sentence structure, paragraph writing, narrative writing, opinion writing, and informative writing. See what is included in the image below and click on it to learn more about them! You will turn your reluctant writers into ROCKSTAR WRITERS™! 

 

“I found this product toward the end of the school year, so I was only able to complete the first section on narrative writing.  It was FANTASTIC!  My students were very engaged in all of the activities.  I love how this unit breaks down each step into manageable steps and has practice with each stage of the writing process.  The finished pieces were great!” -Amy Frechette