Guided Writing is a program for teaching writing across the genres. It has three central features: 

• Writers learn to recognize and produce the essential characteristics of various genres. They learn, for example, what makes a strong piece of descriptive writing, how to generate enough detail, create one main impression, use precise language and specificity of detail.

• Writers learn how to handle the components of a particular genre by working on single aspects of writing at a time and honing their skills on small pieces. Writers learn how to create effective dialogue, how to develop a plot outline, how to write from the first person point of view.

• Writers learn what it means to revise their work. They learn how to shift the focus of the development of a piece from the rough material and ideas to a finished polished composition.

Guided Writing uses these instructional techniques within the framework of a daily writing program that depends upon students being encouraged and facilitated to write freely about the things that interest them and to keep a journal or notebook in which they record interesting ideas, words, images and experiences that may serve as material for more formal writing. Guided Writing uses literature on an every-day basis for demonstrating examples of the particular elements of the craft being learned and as a starting point for attempting some new skill such as experimenting with verb tense or point of view in a narrative piece. 

(Students in Delhi)

Central to Guided Writing is revision that takes young writers through progressive drafts of a piece of writing. This process begins with the teacher guiding writers in techniques for generating material for the piece, and follows through subsequent drafts in which, respectively, the focus becomes sensible order of ideas, varied sentence structure, and finally polished editing for conventions. All writers work on a similar piece, such as a description of a special place. This allows for a common instructional focus on the elements of descriptive writing and the sharing of student work, while still opening up the topic sufficiently to allow writers to draw on their particular experience and personal preference within the common topic. 

In this process of guided revision writers concentrate on achieving the specific focus of the particular stage being addressed. Feedback is given on each draft. This feedback is given to the group and strong examples from the student work are shared at every stage. Instruction then follows about what writers will tackle in the next draft. Writers are shown ways to handle the difficulties that may present themselves as they attempt the next revision. Again the response to the work is particular to the focus of the present draft. Again examples are shared to demonstrate how writers have achieved the objectives. This guidance and scaffolding helps writers solve problems, gain a broader repertoire, and experience success. Through the encouragement they receive at each stage of the piece and the practical help in moving through the development of a piece of writing, writers (and non-writers) experience what it is to develop a composition through several drafts. Many students have no idea what it means to “revise” their work until they are walked through that process, from beginning to end, at least once with a piece of their own writing.