TEACHING STRATEGIES

7 Powerful Strategies for Teaching Writing in Any Class

20 May 2025/ By Zineb DJOUB

No matter what career or pathway students choose, developing their writing ability is crucial. But most students struggle with writing. They stare blankly at the page, overwhelmed by the thought of putting their ideas into words. They hand in assignments with incomplete thoughts or rushed sentences.

It’s not because they don’t care or aren’t capable. The truth is, writing is hard. And if it’s not taught with clear, step-by-step guidance, it can feel like a mountain too steep to climb.

Students often haven’t been shown how to break the writing process into manageable chunks. Instead, they’re expected to “just write,” with little instruction on how to structure their thoughts or develop their ideas. Combine that with little encouragement to write regularly, and it’s no surprise that many feel stuck.

We, as teachers, need to focus on strategies for teaching writing that offer students the right kind of support at the right time.

Here are 7 essential strategies for teaching writing in any class.

1. Start with explicit instructions

We need to provide explicit instructions instead of simply assigning writing. Students learn to write through clear, logical steps, starting at the sentence level.

The idea that students can develop strong writing skills just through reading and writing (the “writing is caught” approach) isn’t backed by research.

Also, the assumption that high school or university students can automatically write interesting, grammatically correct sentences isn’t always true. I’ve had ESL students at the master’s level who still write sentence fragments.

That’s why strategies for teaching writing should begin with sentence-level skills, even when teaching more advanced writing.

This might not sound exciting—especially if your focus is essay writing—but let me tell you: students can’t write good essays if they don’t know how to write compound and complex sentences or use conjunctions to connect ideas.

Start by breaking your instructions into manageable parts. For example, when teaching paragraphs, begin with sentence-level work, then move to topic sentences, supporting details, and linking ideas to form a clear structure.

With essays, start with the thesis statement, then move on to sentence structure within paragraphs, and finally, how to connect those paragraphs effectively.

Also, make sure students understand what they’re writing, why, and for whom. Understanding purpose and audience helps them see the value of writing—and makes them more engaged in the process.

2. Model the writing process

It is important to provide plenty of demonstrations to help our students understand what constitutes good writing.

However, modelling should focus more on the process of writing rather than the completed, refined product. This means we should consistently show students how good writers go through the steps of writing—from planning to drafting to revising.

A great strategy to use here is to write alongside your students, making visible all the difficulties and rewards that come with the act of writing.

Students need to understand that even teachers experience writing struggles. Learning this—and seeing their teacher write with them—can be incredibly motivating and help them see writing as a process they can improve through effort.

3. Encourage brainstorming through prompting

Writing and thinking are deeply intertwined. Students need to think critically about their ideas before they start writing.

But how do we encourage that?

First, familiarity with the topic is required. Students can’t write about something they don’t know much about.

When the topic is unfamiliar, the task becomes doubly hard. The brain is juggling too much, trying to figure out what the topic even means and how to put ideas into words. That’s a lot to ask.

That’s why we need to embed writing into regular classroom content and encourage students to write across disciplines.

For example, in a history class, students can write a journal entry from the perspective of a historical figure or write an argumentative piece about a key event. This approach strengthens both content understanding and writing skills.

So, how can teachers prompt brainstorming?

• Assign a short reading or listening activity related to the topic
• Follow it up with a class discussion
• Use higher-order thinking questions to spark ideas
• Incorporate graphic organisers to help students structure their thoughts

 

Further, student interest plays a huge role. When students care about the topic, their motivation and effort increase.

So, whenever possible, choose relevant, engaging topics—and give students some choice in what they write about. Even small choices can boost ownership and creativity.

4. Provide deliberate practice

To help students develop their writing, we must offer them ample and meaningful opportunities to practise.

Effective strategies for teaching writing include deliberate practice—not just doing more writing, but working step-by-step with clear guidance and focused feedback.

Start with guided practice, where you offer scaffolding and support.

Students can work on tasks like sentence expansion or completion, practising transitions and connections between ideas, reordering paragraphs in an essay, or revising outlines.

As their confidence grows, they move toward independent writing—crafting their own sentences, paragraphs, or full essays with less support.

I want to stress that sentence-level activities are important at every grade level. Even with older or more advanced students, revisiting sentence construction regularly makes a difference.

You might spend the first 10 minutes of a lesson reviewing sentence skills before diving into longer writing tasks. This small habit builds a strong foundation for more complex writing.

5. Scaffold the writing experience

In any classroom, there is a wide range of writing abilities and different writing issues.

For this purpose, scaffolding students’ writing must involve differentiating tasks and support based on students’ individual needs.

For example, before asking students to write a full paragraph, you might guide them through brainstorming ideas, selecting key vocabulary, and creating a sentence frame to structure their thoughts.

You can also scaffold writing with:

• Sentence starters or frames
• Anchor charts or checklists
• Graphic organisers for planning
• Model texts with highlighted features
• Peer or teacher conferencing during drafting

 

As students gain confidence, they gradually reduce the support. For instance, remove sentence frames but keep the checklist. Eventually, they should be able to plan, draft, and revise independently.

Effective scaffolding not only helps students succeed on the task, but it also builds their confidence and independence as writers. The goal is to stretch them just enough so they’re challenged but not overwhelmed.

When planning your lessons, ask yourself: What kind of support does this student need to take the next step in their writing?

6. Monitor progress with flexibility

Monitoring is one of the most essential strategies for teaching writing, and when done right, it can truly boost students’ writing development.

But let’s be honest: checking students’ writing during class and giving feedback can feel overwhelming, especially when you’re dealing with large groups.

Also, dragging piles of papers home to correct is exhausting and not sustainable for your productivity or well-being.

So, should we give up and assume students will figure things out on their own?

Of course not. But we do need to rethink how we approach monitoring.

Effective monitoring isn’t about being rigid or correcting every word. It’s about being flexible and intentional. You don’t have to check every student’s writing in every lesson. Instead, try a more manageable system:

• Review a few students’ work in class while others continue writing.
• Ask two or three students to write their responses on the board and go through the corrections as a group.
• Use peer review or group correction to keep others involved.
• Take just a few papers home to review—rotate each time.

 

And if some writing goes uncorrected? That’s okay. You can always address it in the next lesson, during breaks, or even through quick conferences.

The real goal of monitoring is growth, not marking.

Simply pointing out errors or scribbling comments doesn’t guarantee improvement. I’ve found that many of my students overlooked my feedback—it wasn’t making a lasting impact.

So now, I keep a record of common writing issues and turn them into mini-lessons to teach, reteach, and discuss those areas with the whole class. It’s been much more effective.

Also, remember: monitoring shouldn’t be your job alone. Students need to take ownership of their learning, too. You can help by:

• Giving them chances to correct their own errors.
• Holding writing conferences to explore their challenges and brainstorm solutions.
• Encouraging them to keep an error log or chart, which they revisit before submitting future work.

 

Empowering students to monitor their own writing doesn’t just reduce your burden—it helps them become more reflective, independent writers.

7. Use dynamic and formative assessment

Let’s be honest—if we had to grade every single thing our students wrote, we’d burn out quickly. But here’s the good news: we don’t have to.

Research shows that students are more willing to take risks and write more freely when they know not everything will be graded.

So instead of focusing on the final product and assigning a mark every time, let’s shift toward formative assessment—a way to support their growth without the pressure.

That means using tools like portfolios, checklists, rubrics, and writing conferences not just to evaluate but to guide. The goal is to help students improve, not just get a grade.

Here are a few ways to make your writing assessment more dynamic and impactful:

• Give mid-process feedback—check in after the first draft, not just at the end. This gives students a chance to revise with purpose.
• Share anonymised samples of student writing on the projector and have the class provide feedback together (this also builds a stronger writing community).
• When marking, don’t try to fix everything. Highlight a few recurrent or high-impact errors and leave space for students to think.
• Encourage students to take responsibility for their editing—self-correction leads to deeper learning.
• Hold brief writing conferences with individuals or small groups. These one-on-one chats can be way more effective than scribbled comments that often go unread.

 

As Kelly Gallagher points out in Teaching Adolescent Writers, students often learn more from talking through their writing than from reading corrections. And really, isn’t that what we want? Writers who think, reflect, and grow.

To conclude, shift your mantra from “pointing out mistakes” to “supporting improvement.” The aim is not to fix everything. Writing is a process, not a performance. Instead of focusing on errors, focus on progress and celebrate the effort, the risks taken, and the growth.

When students feel supported and encouraged to improve, they’re more likely to keep trying. So, let’s be their guides and coaches to help them develop their writing.