Cumulative Advantage

Writing Alive is systematic!
A school or district-wide common language with symbols, planners, checklists and rubrics begins in kindergarten and continues through the grades. At each grade level teachers build on the skills and common language learned in the previous grades, increasing efficiency.

Writing Alive is systematic!
One skill builds upon another. Following best teaching practices, skills and genres are spiraled to help students internalize the knowledge and application process.

The Writing Alive Day by Day Curriculum provides Monday through Friday lessons
with everything teachers need for thirty-two weeks of school. Four-step explicit language instruction begins every week. Students follow the writing process and revise using the same skill.

Proven Results!
Our schools' (schools who have adopted the Writing Alive Curriculum and Professional Development) test results stand as a testimony to the effectiveness of a systemic, systematic curriculum beginning in preschool and continuing through middle school. Growth is magnified by a common language. Keri Bade, fifth grade teacher at Red Hawk Ridge, received an award for the highest growth in her school district. She explains, “My school has been using Writing Alive for six years and by the time the students reach me, they have been using Writing Alive since kindergarten. As a result, they are so far ahead of any other class that all I do is build on their skills.” Writing continues to improve every year! Writing Alive progress is cumulative!

BEFORE Writing Alive
Grade 2 Writing Example

Wolves are really good hunters. First, wolves know how to get small animals and big animals. And they run around the woods to catch them and kill them and then eat them. Wolves are pretty smart.

Same Grade 2 Student
AFTER Writing Alive Models,
Instruction and Practice

Watch and learn! Wolves are master hunters. In the summer wolves prey on small animals in the grass or bushes. When they hear mice, rabbits, squirrels, ducks or fish, they pounce on them and gobble them up. In the winter wolves mostly hunt big, dangerous animals with the pack. They stalk and kill dangerous animals like elk, deer, caribou, bighorn sheep or moose by working together like a machine. When they spot a slow or limping moose, the pack encircles it and leaps on the animal, ripping at its flesh. Wolves use their intelligence to adapt their hunting to the time of year and available prey. Humans can learn from the wolves.

“Writing Alive is cumulative. With the implementation of Writing Alive, I saw the power of a K-8 systemic, comprehensive writing curriculum. Students, teachers, principals and parents were speaking the same “language.”
– Dakota Hoyt, Director of Professional Development, Pueblo No.60, CO