In his book Focus, Mike Schmoker tells us, “Genuine literacy is still the unrivaled key to learning both content and thinking skills.” When it comes to the reading side of literacy, many districts across the nation—spurred by research, legislation, or litigation—have unlocked the skills and strategies necessary to ensure teachers have the right training and tools to explicitly and systemically teach students how to read.
When it comes to writing, however, those same districts often cling to practices that are antiquated and ineffective, leaving teachers unsure of how to best support students’ vast and growing writing needs. So, why haven’t more leaders embraced emerging research and transformed it into sustainable classroom practices?
That’s the question I asked myself in the fall of 2023. It was my first year as the K–12 reading and language arts supervisor in my school district, and I was tasked with “fixing” our writing program. Like many districts, our workshop-driven approach (which prioritized student choice and needs-based mini-lessons) had remained stagnant for more than two decades. After devouring research, attending conferences, and conferring with reading and writing experts, it became clear why leaders weren’t leaning into this literacy superpower: Writing instruction has a “too much” problem.
The “Too Much” Problem
Why does writing instruction have to be so complicated? Learning to write is really hard, even harder than reading. It takes up a lot of cognitive real estate in our students’ minds (Wexler, 2021). To compound the issue, many teachers lack the training and support necessary to teach writing in an explicit and vertically aligned way, nor are they able to identify essential components of a skilled writing program (Sedita, 2022).
Since there are so many facets to quality writing instruction, leaders are often unsure what to prioritize in order to create a K–12 writing program that is both explainable and maintainable.
By winter of my first year, I was more than stuck about what to do with our writing program; I was floundering. While I kept gravitating to the work of SRSD Online, Keys to Literacy, and The Writing Revolution, I didn’t know how to scale it, on a limited budget, for our 15 elementary schools, 5 middle schools, and 3 high schools.
That breakthrough came one January morning while I was observing an 8th grade honors class. At the end of a quick conversation with the teacher, she riffled through the exit tickets in her hand and quipped, “No one writes in complete sentences anymore.”
Those seven words struck me like 7,000. The teacher was right. On the whole, people don’t write in complete sentences like we used to. (Think of the last text you sent.) Since complete sentences equal complete thoughts, it became obvious where our writing program needed to begin. Thus, the idea for our “Year of the Sentence” was born.
With this starting point, our district’s literacy team—me, the reading supervisor, and three literacy coaches—began reviewing local and national data, training in the Hochman Method through The Writing Revolution courses, and consulting literacy experts as we developed our plan.
After grounding ourselves in the research, we chose a train-the-trainer model and identified nine sentence-level activities for teachers to embed in existing instruction. We created these activities for elementary reading units to help students strengthen both text comprehension and composition skills.
For secondary teachers, we demonstrated how to quickly create and differentiate sentence-level activities using The Writing Pathway, an AI-powered tool that generates writing practice aligned to different content areas in grades 3–12.
In September, just 24 percent of 6th graders could write complete sentences accurately. By May, that number jumped to 93 percent.
Back to the Basics
In the fall of my second year as the reading and language arts supervisor, we officially launched the Year of the Sentence, a districtwide writing initiative in which K–12 building leaders, teachers, and students were asked to make two commitments: (1) speak and write in complete sentences for academic purposes, and (2) whenever possible, substitute and support comprehension activities with sentence-level activities.
What did this look like in practice? The first commitment conditioned students to think before speaking. For example, if students were asked to name the capital of Pennsylvania, “Harrisburg” was no longer an acceptable answer. Instead, they might respond with, “The capital of Pennsylvania is Harrisburg.” Although our youngest learners could not write complete sentences at the start of the year, our teachers modeled and talked in complete sentences.
For the second commitment, we asked teachers to incorporate the sentence-level activities they learned in place of or alongside traditional checks for understanding. Rather than having students answer questions at the end of a chapter novel or textbook, for instance, we asked teachers to use these activities. When students were participating in a “non-writing” activity such as a discussion or debate, they were asked to summarize their learning through a sentence-level activity. This consistent and embedded approach meant that students practiced sentence-level activities during warm ups, mid-class checks, exit tickets, homework, and more.
Four Steps for Paring Down Writing
For districts seeking to launch a similar vertically aligned, researched-based approach to writing, narrowing the focus to sentences facilitates the shift from a “too much” problem to a “just right” solution. Here are four replicable steps we took in our first year.
1. Gather Data and Gain Clarity
We started by analyzing data from a recent curriculum survey that asked teachers to share their views on students’ prerequisite skills. Teachers noted deficiencies in grammar, spelling, and students’ ability to express thoughts coherently—skills that impacted students’ understanding of content and their ability to read and write.
To gain a better understanding of students’ foundational and sentence-composition skills, our K–6 classroom teachers also collected formative, ungraded writing samples from students three times a year. These “checks” were based on texts students were already reading and aligned to unit pacing guides.
Teachers measured results using a checklist the literacy team created based on Joan Sedita’s Writing Rope framework (2022) and state standards (see sample on p. 38). We kept the indicators simple—yes, developing, no—and told teachers not to “overthink” their scoring. The primary purpose was to take note of students’ range of abilities and plan accordingly.
The first set of data showed a clear need to focus on sentence-level work. In September, our teachers reported that just 24 percent of 6th graders were able to write complete sentences accurately (i.e., “fragment free” or “run-on free”). But by May, 93 percent of 6th graders were able to write “fragment free” sentences and 69 percent were able to write “run-on free” sentences. End-of-year data across elementary schools showed substantial improvements in students’ overall foundational and sentence-composition writing skills.
Because our district is large and there has not been a clear path to this work, we only collected writing samples at the elementary level in our first year. We wanted to ensure we had the right foundational skills identified before implementing this in all grades. This current school year, ELA teachers in grades 7–12 are collecting and analyzing writing samples using similar formats and checklists.
2. Build Buy-In
Strong instructional leadership is necessary for any school program’s success. Studies show that principals who leverage their knowledge of evidence-based literacy and leadership best practices can greatly enhance reading and writing development and overall learning in their school communities (Grissom, Egalite, & Lindsay, 2021).
To assist school and department leaders with implementation of the Year of the Sentence, our literacy team built a collection of resources that supported their existing work. For example, we created sentence-level “look fors” for elementary teacher observations (download the template) based on The Danielson Framework for Teaching and The Writing Revolution.
At the secondary level, the literacy team created department-specific training resources that included conversation starters and sentence-level engagement activities as a way to model and reinforce best practices using their own content and resources.
3. Overlay, Don’t Pay
Textbook companies often exacerbate education’s “too much” problem by including writing assignments that are neither developmentally appropriate nor standards-aligned. In the first unit, for instance, one assignment asks 2nd graders to complete a complex writing task without explicit instruction on building sentences. Cross-referencing with state standards revealed that many required skills aren’t introduced until later grades.
Because we are locked into multi-year contracts with our textbook publishers, purchasing new programs or hiring outside trainers was not feasible. Therefore, our team created a tool that allowed us to “mine for gems” in our existing resources. Using The Writing Rope framework (Sedita, 2022), we cross-referenced Pennsylvania Training and Technical Assistance Network’s (PaTTAN) writing scope and sequence (2021) with our textbook resources, assessments, and state-tested skills at each grade level. In 5th grade, as an example, we found that our textbook had solid lessons on skills such as punctuating initial dependent clauses, but lacked opportunities for sufficient practice on other state-tested skills like avoiding fragments and run-ons.
In the past, we let our purchased resources drive what skills we covered in our curriculum. Now, we have a tool that will ensure that there is a vertically aligned, standards-based progression of skills—regardless of the program. When we do seek new resources in the future, this tool will help us determine if they will be a good fit for our curricular and student needs.
4. Design PD with Purpose
When it came to our K–12 writing initiative, we invested in our own people. Starting in the summer and throughout this past school year, the literacy team trained our best elementary teachers on the writing sample administration. These teachers, along with secondary department curriculum leaders, were also trained on sentence-level activities to ensure there were sentence “experts” throughout the district.
During the PD sessions led by our trainers, teachers reported that they felt more comfortable learning with people they knew and were more apt to ask hard questions. We found the train-the-trainer model strengthened relationships and expediated learning in ways that would not have been possible with outside resources.
We ensured trainers were successful by having teachers present in pairs, providing common resources and tips, and adding letters of recognition to their files. Additionally, the literacy team created a cache of content-ready sentence-level activities and templates for teachers and housed them on our intranet. Our goal was for teachers to use their time for implementation and feedback rather than the creation of resources.
Why Sentences Work
Sentence-level activities bolster reading comprehension, long-term retention, and executive functioning skills. For middle and high school students, they’re low-prep, high-impact tools that strengthen writing stamina and reveal evidence of learning across content areas. As Joan Sedita explains, “The ability to understand at the sentence level is in many ways the foundation for being able to comprehend text” (2020)—and emerging research confirms this even applies to preschoolers and kindergartners (Sparks, 2025).
The sustainability proves the approach has been working. Teachers across all subjects continue embedding sentence-level activities in their instruction. This year, we are building on the foundation we put in place by moving in two directions: Grades K–2 are in the “Year of Handwriting,” reintroducing cursive to 2nd grade alongside a writing acquisition scope and sequence that parallels our reading curriculum. Grades 3–12 are tackling the “Year of the Mighty Paragraph,” focusing on paragraph-level composition through the Self-Regulated Strategy Development framework.
Teachers are seeing dividends. As one educator shared, “I’m excited that I can already see the benefits of the Year of the Sentence in my 3rd graders. Capitals and periods have been missing for so long! Not anymore.”
At the secondary level, students are leveraging their knowledge of sentences to write paragraphs across disciplines as a means to show their evidence of thinking and learning.
For districts overwhelmed by writing’s “too much” problem, sentences offer a “just right” starting point. The work is replicable, sustainable, and grounded in what matters most: ensuring every student can express a complete thought clearly. Start there, and the rest will follow.
