WRITING GUIDELINES FOR DIFFERENT AGES

These writing guidelines will help you plan and assess your student's writing. They will help direct the focus of the assignments and give an estimate of the length of the writing.

Kindergarten through Second Grade: Sentence Development
End of Kindergarten: 2 sentences
End of First grade: 4 sentences
End of Second grade: 6 sentences
(Hey, we are ready to start paragraphs now!)

Third through Fifth Grade: Paragraph Development
End of Third grade: 3 paragraphs
End of Fourth Grade: 4 paragraphs
End of Fifth Grade: 5 paragraphs

Sixth through Eight Grade: Essays and Reports
Ninth Grade through College: Essays and Thesis
A GENERAL RULE OF THUMB: Two writing assignments per week at the appropriate grade level: one academic and one creative

WARNING: Don't rigorously enforce these writing guidelines; they are merely a rough estimate. A seventh grader might appropriately produce an excellent essay of five paragraphs that may be watered down with the addition of two or more paragraphs that are less relevant to the central theme.

Types of Writing

A. Academic - Communicating information in an organized format with an outline and central theme

B. Creative - Stretches their writing ability, develops their "voice" in all of their writing, and uses their imagination to improve their writing skills

C. Research Paper - Starting in fifth grade, the student may be assigned one "large" writing assignment per year of approximately the number of pages as their grade level

For instance, a five page paper would be assigned for a fifth grade, and a nine page paper for a ninth grader. When the student goes off to college and gets the standard assignment for a ten page paper in writing composition, he or she will simply think, "That's nothing, I had to do 12 pages in high school."

Write On: The Kid Friendly, Mother Pleasing, Gentle Way to Write
This curriculum has more writing guidelines in the informative instructor's guide and a wide variety of interesting and motivating writing activities for third grade and older. Write On: watch their writing take off.

Here are more tips to enhance your writing lessons:

Click here for information on the writing process.
Click here for writing prompts.
Click here for ideas on presenting the final product.
Click here for information on the six traits of writing.
Click here for a writing rubric and information to evaluate writing.
And don't forget the Write On Instructor's Guide FREE DOWNLOAD

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