How-To Writing: Motivating Students to Write for a Real Purpose

This lesson plan provides teachers with step-by-step facilitating instructions, rubrics and graphic organizers, and an interactive essay map for planning how-to writing. Appropriate for third through fifth grades. What do students need to know to succeed in fourth grade (or third or fifth)? What supplies are needed? What rules and steps should be followed? These and many other questions provide the framework for students to write how-to essays for a specific audienceu2014future fourth graders. Although this lesson focuses specifically on fourth grade, it can be easily adapted for third or fifth graders. Students first learn about the how-to writing genre by reading an assortment of instruction manuals. This also demonstrates how how-to writing relates to their everyday lives. The teacher then models each step of the writing process as the students write about how to be successful fourth graders. After students publish their writing, the final drafts are saved for the following year's fourth graders to read at the beginning of the next school year. text taken from site