Here’s My Take…
Walk into any upper elementary classroom—grades 3 through 6—and you’re likely to see students sitting in small groups with a text in front of them, being asked to “analyze the author’s purpose,” “infer meaning,” or “cite text evidence.” These are valuable skills, no doubt, and many of our classrooms look just like this! But there’s a problem with this picture: many students can’t read at the level being asked of them, and more importantly, they haven’t been taught the foundational skill that makes close reading possible—writing.
The Upper Elementary Reading Crisis
By third grade, instruction often shifts from “learning to read” to “reading to learn.” This assumes students have mastered decoding, fluency, and basic comprehension. But the reality is, many haven’t. And even if they can decode, they struggle with comprehension.
This disconnect grows wider each year. Teachers are tasked with helping students “dig into the text.” Still, many students can’t follow the thread of an argument, distinguish between main and supporting ideas, or understand how an author develops a theme. These aren’t just reading problems—they’re thinking problems that stem from an underdeveloped understanding of how texts are built.
The Missing Piece: Writing
Here’s the truth: You can’t deconstruct a text if you’ve never constructed one. Students are being asked to analyze structure, tone, theme, and argument without ever having practiced how to create those elements themselves.
This is where writing comes in. Writing is not just a subject alongside reading—it’s the foundation. When students write, they learn how ideas are organized. They see how sentences build into paragraphs, and how paragraphs support a central idea. They start to grasp the choices authors make and the effect those choices have. In short, writing teaches students how texts work from the inside out.
Why Sentence Structure Matters
The first step isn’t essay writing, it’s the sentence. If students can’t write a complete, coherent sentence, they’ll struggle to comprehend complex sentences in their reading. Teaching sentence structure—how to build clear, grammatically correct, and meaningful sentences—lays the groundwork for both writing and reading success.
Writing as the Road to Reading
Here’s what effective instruction could look like in grades 3–6:
- Start with Sentence Mastery Writing Mechanics Rubric
Teach students how to write clear, complete sentences. Focus on subject-verb agreement, transitions, conjunctions, punctuation, and sentence variety. - Move to Paragraphs and Informative Writing
Show students how to group related ideas into paragraphs with topic sentences and supporting details. Informative writing helps students practice organizing factual information—a key skill for reading nonfiction texts. - Introduce Narrative Writing
Narrative writing develops students’ understanding of story elements—character, setting, plot—which makes it easier for them to analyze fiction and identify those same elements in their reading. In addition, teaching students how to write dialogue will help them analyze characters’ words in texts they read. - Develop Argumentative Writing
This teaches students how to make a claim and support it with evidence—all essential to reading texts and understanding the author’s purpose or point of view. - Apply Writing Knowledge to Reading
Once students have built texts themselves, they’re far better equipped to take them apart. They understand what an introduction does, why an author chooses certain words, how structure supports meaning, and where to look for main ideas and arguments.
I start my ELA block with 15 minutes of writing daily. The first six weeks of school, we focus on sentence structure, then I move to explicitly teaching informative writing, next narrative writing, and finally argumentative writing.
Have a look at my 5th Grade writing rubrics to see the clear expectations I provide for my students.
FIND RUBRICS TO HELP PROVIDE CLEAR WRITING EXPECTATIONS
Final Thoughts from 5th Grade
The current model of reading instruction in the upper grades often puts the cart before the horse. We ask students to interpret, infer, and analyze without giving them the tools to understand how texts are built in the first place.
Writing is not simply an add-on to reading instruction—it’s the solution. If we want stronger readers, we need to start by building better writers.
Let’s teach writing—not just as a companion to reading, but as the foundation for it.
Because writing instruction is so often treated as an afterthought in most reading programs, I found myself constantly searching for ways to give my students the foundational skills they were missing. About a decade ago, I started designing my own writing resources to fill that void—tools that would help students build strong sentences, organize their ideas, and write with clarity and purpose. These materials became the cornerstone of my ELA instruction and my TPT store, allowing me to better support reading development through intentional, structured writing practice.
Thank you for reading to the end! SEE MY WRITING RESOURCES
