How to Run The Writer's Playbook at Home

How to Run The Writer's Playbook at Home

A short guide for parents using the workbook.

If you have The Writer's Playbook in front of you, this page is for you. It covers running Friday's Writer's Workshop, plus the questions that come up most once a family is a few weeks in.

You do not need a teaching background to run this well. You need about twenty minutes a day and a willingness to talk about writing instead of correcting every page.

Where to start?

You may want to get to know me better and understand my philosophy of teaching writing! If so, watch this Homeschool Playlist on YouTube.

How to run Writer's Workshop at home

Friday is the day parents ask about most. It's the least scripted day in the book and it carries the most weight, so here is exactly what to do.

The book walks your student through five moves on pages ix and x. Your job is different at each one, and mostly smaller than you'd think.

Move 1: Start with a skill

Your student picks one Power Writing Skill to focus on. Just one.

Your job: stop them choosing three. A student trying to improve everything improves nothing, and one skill is what makes the writing reviewable afterward. If they can't decide, use the skill from Tuesday's lesson.

Move 2: Pick your street

Genre Street for a story or scene. Rant & Rave Road for an opinion or argument. Dare Drive when nothing sounds good.

Your job: if your student stalls, they are almost always on the wrong street. A kid with nothing to say in a story usually has plenty to say in a rant. Reroute them before you do anything else. It fixes most blank pages on its own.

Move 3: Set the writing goal

They choose a page goal or a line goal before starting.

Your job: keep it small enough to beat. A goal they hit builds more than a goal they miss. If last week was eight lines, aim for nine, not fifteen.

Move 4: Start the writing timer

This is the whole day, and it's where most families go wrong.

Your job is to do nothing. No spelling corrections, no reading over the shoulder, no questions. The goal during the timer is not good writing, it is not stopping. Bad sentences that keep going are a win.

Start at five minutes. Add a minute every few sessions. A student who can write for twelve minutes without stopping by spring has gained more than one who wrote three careful paragraphs in October.

The single best thing you can do is write alongside them for the same five minutes. It removes the feeling of being watched, and it shows them that adults find blank pages hard too.

Move 5: Find the Diamonds

When the timer ends, your student hunts for their best line and stars it.

Your job: read it back to them out loud. That's it.

This takes twenty seconds and does more than a page of corrections. It teaches them their writing already contains good things, and it trains them to recognize which things are good. A student who can find their own best sentence eventually writes more of them on purpose.

Your first Friday, start to finish

  • 2 minutes. Pick a skill and a street.
  • 1 minute. Set the goal.
  • 5 minutes. Timer. Nobody talks. You write too.
  • 2 minutes. Hunt for Diamonds and star one.
  • 1 minute. Read the starred line aloud.

Eleven minutes. Add time to the timer, not to the other steps.

If it goes badly

They freeze at the start. Wrong street. Send them to Dare Drive and let a dare decide.

They stop after two lines. The timer is too long for now. Drop to three minutes and rebuild.

They want you to fix the spelling. Not today. Tell them spelling gets fixed on a different day, and it's true, because Wednesday handles conventions.

What a week actually looks like

The book runs on a five day rhythm, and the rhythm never changes. That is on purpose. Once your student knows what Tuesday is, Tuesday stops being a negotiation.

Monday opens with a warm-up and a spiral that revisits something from an earlier week.

Tuesday teaches the week's Power Writing Skill.

Wednesday works on language and conventions.

Thursday is evidence writing, where your student makes a claim and backs it with proof.

Friday is Writer's Workshop, the longest day, where everything from the week goes into real writing.

Most days take fifteen to twenty minutes. Friday runs twenty to thirty because your student is drafting.

If a day is taking much longer than that, stop. The page is not worth a fight, and nothing in the book depends on finishing every line.

The six Power Writing Skills

Everything in the book points back to six skills:

  • Voice
  • Hooks
  • Sentence Complexity
  • Figurative Language
  • Vivid Imagery
  • Show Don't Tell

Your student is never working on all six at once. Each week zooms in on one. That is the single most important idea in the whole book, and it is the thing most writing instruction gets wrong. A student who is trying to fix everything fixes nothing.

When you talk about a piece of writing, talk about the skill of the week. Let the rest go.

Two other hard days

"This is boring" on a grammar day

Grammar in this book spirals. Every skill comes back later, in a different week, in a different form.

That means you never have to win a grammar fight on the day it appears. If Wednesday is going badly, write the answer in together, say the sentence out loud once, and move on. The skill will be back.

Resisting revision

Revision feels like being told the work was bad. Reframe it before you start.

The book's move is to have your student pick two or three specific goals before touching the draft, rather than "make it better." A goal like "add one place where the reader can picture what happened" is doable. "Improve it" is not.

How to respond to writing without grading it

You do not need to grade this workbook. Checking that the work is done, and talking about one or two answers, is enough.

Three questions that beat a red pen

  • Which part did you like best?
  • Read me your Diamond. Why that one?
  • What were you trying to do here?

Ask those and listen. You will learn more about your student's writing than any score would tell you.

On open response

Most of the writing in this book has no single right answer. Quick writes, workshop drafts, and most prompts are open response.

For those, look at whether your student tried the skill, not at whether their wording matches the sample in the answer key. The sample shows one way. Your student's way can be completely different and completely correct.

Two things that matter more than finishing every page

Skipping is allowed. Falling behind is not a real thing here. If a week gets away from you, start the next week on Monday and move on. The spiral will bring back anything that was missed.

The monthly reflection is worth more than it looks. At the start of each month there is a checklist and a reflection page. The reflection asks what feels easier now and what your student is proud of. Do not skip it to save time. Ten weeks in, a student who can name something that got easier is a student who believes they are a writer. That belief does more work than any single lesson.

A note on the answer key

The key at the back covers every item with a single right answer, and it explains the thinking behind the tricky ones so you can talk them through.

One exception worth knowing: the Grammar Quick Check in Week 1 is a starting point, not a test. A low score there is expected and is not a problem. It exists so you know what to watch for.

EXTRA SUPPORT

6th Grade Essay Rubrics

Extra Writing Page

 

More from The Structured Writing Teacher

Additional Curriculum for Purchase

If your student needs extra instruction, look through the resources available within the full-year classroom curriculum on Teachers Pay Teachers. You could purchase the entire bundle, or select only the topics you need.

FULL YEAR WRITING CURRICULUM RESOURCES ON TEACHERS PAY TEACHERS

The Writer's Playbook, Part 1: Months 1 to 4 is a thirty-two week writing and grammar program for sixth grade, available in two parts.