The following standards for K–5 offer a focus for instruction each year to help ensure that students gain adequate mastery of a range of skills and applications. Each year in their writing, students should demonstrate increasing sophistication in all aspects of language use, from vocabulary and syntax to the development and organization of ideas, and they should address increasingly demanding content and sources. Students advancing through the grades are expected to meet each year’s grade-specific standards and retain or further develop skills and understandings mastered in preceding grades. The expected growth in student writing ability is reflected both in the standards themselves and in the collection of annotated student writing samples in Appendix C.

Standards in this domain:

• W.2.1.
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• W.2.2.
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• W.2.3.
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• W.2.4.
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• W.2.5.
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• W.2.6.
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• W.2.7.
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• W.2.8.
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• W.2.9.
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• W.2.10.

Text Types and Purposes

• W.2.1. Write opinion pieces in which they introduce the topic or book they are writing about, state an opinion, supply reasons that support the opinion, use linking words (e.g., because, and, also) to connect opinion and reasons, and provide a concluding statement or section.
• W.2.2. Write informative/explanatory texts in which they introduce a topic, use facts and definitions to develop points, and provide a concluding statement or section.
• W.2.3. Write narratives in which they recount a well-elaborated event or short sequence of events, include details to describe actions, thoughts, and feelings, use temporal words to signal event order, and provide a sense of closure.

Production and Distribution of Writing

• W.2.4. (Begins in grade 3)
• W.2.5. With guidance and support from adults and peers, focus on a topic and strengthen writing as needed by revising and editing.
• W.2.6. With guidance and support from adults, use a variety of digital tools to produce and publish writing, including in collaboration with peers.

Research to Build and Present Knowledge

• W.2.7. Participate in shared research and writing projects (e.g., read a number of books on a single topic to produce a report; record science observations).
• W.2.8. Recall information from experiences or gather information from provided sources to answer a question.
• W.2.9. (Begins in grade 4)

Range of Writing

• W.2.10. (Begins in grade 3)