Start Here if Writing Instruction Feels Overwhelming
Teaching writing can feel complicated. One of the biggest reasons? Knowing where to even begin to move students’ writing from where they are to where you want them to go. Or where your program or state standards expect them to go. When looking at the writing your students produce in relation to that lofty goal, it’s no wonder that writing instruction feels so completely overwhelming.
While I can’t promise miracles, I can share a tried-and-true-path forward. A path that will help your students grow as writers in big, visible ways.
It all starts with determining where your students really are.
This is the work that makes all the difference.
Because when we skip this step, we end up teaching lessons students aren’t ready for.
Or worse, wasting time teaching lessons they don’t need.
A gymnastics coach would never expect front handsprings from a new gymnast who can barely do a forward roll. The coach would first determine what’s the very next step along the path to handsprings, beginning with the forward roll. Just like a gymnastics coach, we can take small, intentional steps to move students forward as writers. If we think like a coach, we can better chart those steps.
It’s the small, incremental steps that help us move students forward. When our teaching is pinpointed to exactly what students need and are ready for, big progress is made. This is the zone of proximal development at work.
Without understanding where that zone is, teachers can enter the danger zone of overscaffolding.
Overscaffolding doesn’t move learning forward. It can actually stunt learning. In her book Rebuilding Students’ Learning Power (2026), Zaretta Hammond bluntly (and rightly) reminds us that “too many supports for too long keep students in their zone of dependence, keeping their skills basic and limited to what they can already do.” She goes on to say that often, this happens because “we often get uncomfortable with student struggle. We don’t want to see our students suffering emotionally during the lesson or assignment.”
A gymnastics coach who wants to get the child who can’t do a forward roll all the way to a front handspring isn’t going to jump to practicing front handsprings right away. The coach would be doing all of the heavy lifting for the child (and literally lifting the child, in this case). Instead, they’ll build the foundation by first helping the child get that forward roll figured out, then move to a front walkover, then finally, a front handspring. In other words, the coach is going to work from where the child is, to remain in that zone of proximal development.
In writing instruction, too, we must find that zone of proximal development. That’s where we begin our teaching.
How?
It starts with gaining understanding–and accepting–current reality. We find out who can barely do a forward roll, who’s just about ready for front walkovers, and who just needs to refine the handspring, so to speak,
Here’s a super effective, efficient way to figure out that first stepping stone when it comes to writing instruction.
A step that makes it far less overwhelming for both you and your students.
It all begins with something called thin slicing. I first learned about this process from my training with Teachers College many, many years ago. It was recently reinforced in my ThinkSRSD training. Basically, it’s a quick sort of students’ writing.
- Give your students a cold write, in the kind of writing you’re about to teach. This could be anything from an opinion piece to an argumentative piece to a response to a prompt. Anything. Give them just one class period to do this. Don’t help. At all. Just observe. You’ll want to take note of who was able to get started right away, who kept getting up to sharpen their pencil, get a tissue, and stare out the window. Note who does any kind of planning and who just jumps right in. These are all important writing behaviors to jot down, because they give you a more complete picture of current reality.
- After you collect their work, sort their writing into three piles: below average, average, high. Then, from each pile, find one piece that most represents that category.
- Then, look across categories. Take note of what makes the high pieces so strong. It’s really ideal to have some sort of checklist or rubric you’ll be using to score writing later in the unit. That way, you can think through the different lenses of look-fors: organization, clarity, word choice, etc. Knowing these categories helps to define what makes these pieces strong. It’s ok if you don’t already have a checklist; this practice can easily help you develop one. You might note that your “high” category will have lots of room for improvement.
- Now look at the average piece. What makes it average? What’s there? What’s not? What would move that average piece up a level, thinking through those same lenses? Then do the same for the below average. What would it take to move up to the average category?
Check out the great video below from Melissa Morrison of Teaching to Transform to see the thin-slicing process in action:
When sorting this way, using your students’ actual work, rather than the lofty exemplar from your program or the big vision in your head, we stay grounded in current reality. These are below average, average, and high relative to your students.
This is an eye-opening process for teachers, as it shows you where the majority of your students fall. So often, we think “they’re all low,” but when you really sort through them, you might see that actually, you have more kids in the mid-range than you thought. I’ve seen this happen time and again with the teachers I work with (and have experienced it myself!).
Noticing and naming what your students are actually doing–and the baby steps that will move them forward toward improvement–is how we avoid leapfrogging over their zone of proximal development.
It’s when we’re too far outside that zone that overscaffolding happens. Just as the gymnastics coach isn’t going to jump right into teaching front handsprings to the child who can’t yet do a forward roll, we also must determine the small, incremental steps to move our students forward. It’s also how we avoid underestimating them. Rather than assume what first steps they need and risk wasting time on things they can already do, this process helps us find out for sure where the entry point into teaching is.
A quick word about those few well below-average kids.
You’ll always have a couple of kids who are much lower in skill than the rest of the class. The well below-average kids will be supported through more targeted small group writing instruction, in addition to your modeling during regular lessons. But we don’t start our next steps lessons at this level–that would be holding the majority of your kids back. If the majority of your class is in the “average” range, or even the “below average” range, that’s where instruction begins.
This may mean that, if you’re a fourth grade teacher, sure–your kids may not be ready to produce fourth grade writing. It may be that they’re actually more in line with second grade work. That’s ok. Taking small, incremental steps all year long to nudge students forward is the path forward.
Writing is a cyclical process that builds in layers. Students will learn to plan, elaborate, revise, and edit in bigger ways across time. Each go-around through the writing process builds skills. The next time you do the thin-slice process, you should see clear improvement.
Small improvements, repeated over time, are what lead to big results.
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Who is Coach from the Couch?? I’m Michelle, a 25+ year veteran educator, currently a K-5 literacy coach. I continue to learn alongside teachers in classrooms each and every day, and it’s my mission to support as many teachers as I can, because no one can do this work alone. Through virtual coaching calls, I’m available to you, too. I absolutely love working with teachers around the country to solve their literacy puzzles! Simply email me at michelle@coachfromthecouch.com or reach out for a coaching call!
Or, consider joining my Facebook community–a safe, supportive environment (really–no blaming or shaming allowed!) where you can ask questions, learn ideas, and share your thoughts among other literacy-loving educators!
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