Curriculum Resources

How can you get started?

When you teach writing for publication in your classroom, you are also contributing to the creation of a skilled student writer who is familiar with all the stages of the writing process. How can you get started? The following free downloadable lesson plans and handouts have been created by SPI curriculum consultants and teachers in our partner schools. We invite you to use them in your classrooms.

SPI Downloadable Lesson Plans & Handouts

  • Planning and Curriculum Mapping

    The first stage in designing any curriculum is the planning phase. The handouts provided here offer ways in which you might map your own writing-for-publication curriculum.

    1. Planning Your Project: Laying the Groundwork - Written by our Director of Programs, this document suggests some critical questions to ask yourself as you begin planning your writing-for-publication curriculum. This is the next best thing to having an SPI curriculum consultant at your side!
    2. SPI Project Web Template - Created for planning workshops with our partner schools, this template illustrates some of the many objectives that go into planning SPI project curricula. This is designed to get you thinking about what your own project objectives are, which will better prepare you to begin your planning.
    3. SPI Project Web Model - This document illustrates the SPI Project Web template in use. It shows how one teacher began to identify and think through her objectives as she began to plan her SPI project.
    4. SPI Project Web Teacher Adaptation - An adaptation on the SPI Project Web, this shows how another SPI partner teacher modified the template to include some of her own objectives. We share this with you to encourage you to name and flesh out your own planning objectives as you begin to map out your project.

  • Writing and Revising

    At the heart of every SPI project is support in developing the fundamental skills of the writing process. Help your students take their writing to the next level with the provided handouts.

    1. Lesson Plan: Habits of Strong Writers - This lesson is a great way to begin any writing project. It helps students to identify what strong writers do so that they can begin to develop those habits for themselves.
    2. Reproducible Handout: Energizing Our Action Verbs - This handout works well when addressing with students craft and voice in their writing. Students should at least one solid draft of writing to work with.

  • Editing and Copyediting

    In the final phase of every SPI writing project, students and teachers prepare their final pieces for publication by closely editing as well as copyediting. The handouts here will support this work.

    1. Final Peer Editing Checklist - Designed to support students through the editing process, this checklist helps student to work together to prepare their writing for final publication.

  • Titling and Cover Lessons

    Who says you can't tell a book by its cover? Since all SPI projects compile students' final editing writing into a bound publication, students are typically invited into the "packaging" process. These lessons and handouts can help your students generate possible book titles and cover designs that grab their audience's attention.

    1. Lesson Plan: Titling a Book - This lesson uses past SPI publications to help students think about what makes for a catchy and appropriate book title. It identifies poetic devices authors often use when coming up with their own titles.
    2. Titling a Book Lesson Plan: Designing the Book Cover - This is a great way to introduce students to the elements that make for engaging book covers, and invite them to develop and design their own cover ideas.

  • Reading Prep Lessons

    Publishing students' work extends beyond the page to the sharing of their writing with a live audience. In a public reading, students celebrate their hard work and know that their voices are being heard. These handouts will help you to prepare your own students for a final reading.

    1. Getting Started: Basic Reading/Public Speaking Exercises - Compiled from the work of a few SPI teachers, these five simple exercises will get students practicing the core principles of public speaking, including projection and enunciation.
    2. SPI Reading Presentation Rubric - Designed by two of SPI's partner teachers, this rubric is designed to help students keep in mind the "criteria" of effective public reading. It also provides an excellent tool for peer feedback during reading preparation.

  • Interviewing Lessons

    Your specific writing project may include an interview component that allows students to connect with their families, neighborhoods, school or local community. Before asking your students to begin, take a look at these tips and handouts that were designed to help make your students' interviews a success.

    1. Creating Effective Interview Questions: The Dos and Don'ts - Adapted from Rick Ayers' Studs Terkel's Working: A Teaching Guide (2001), this handout takes students through the tips to creating effective interview questions, including a section on the importance of the follow-up question.
    2. Creating Effective Interview Questions: A Model - Building upon the first handout, this provides students with a model of interview questions taken from an actual SPI project. It illustrates how the student-interviewer considers the components and "do and don'ts" to create a list of effective questions.
    3. Creating Effective Interview Questions: A Template - This handout, based upon the model, is a blank template for students to use when creating their own interview questions.
    4. An Interview Checklist - Created by two SPI teachers, this checklist provides some critical as well as practical things for students to be aware of both before and during their interview. Using this checklist, we hope, will lead to a more pleasurable and successful interview!

  • Project Organization Materials

    These handouts were chosen to help you organize the many different stages and components of a writing-for-publication project. Please feel free to use and adapt whatever you think might be useful in your own classroom.

    1. Student Steps and Due Dates: A Model - Every publication project involves numerous milestones and deadlines that students must meet. This organizer was created by an SPI teacher to help her students stay aware of and to meet the various deadlines. This is a very useful document to revisit with students throughout the project.
    2. Student Steps and Due Dates: Blank Template - A blank version of the model provided, this template creates space for you to fill in your own project steps and due dates and, in so doing, to set your students up for success.