Teaching a student to write is more about learning how to craft a classroom that supports a writing space, giving students the space to write, and sharing the thinking behind your mindspace. Teaching writing is hard. Nobody really knows truly how.

There is the Writing Next Wreport. It outlines eleven strategies with adolescents. A bit older but the lessons apply in elementary school. I think we under estimate young writers. Children always have stories to tell.

Truth is there isn't much quantitative research on writing in the earlier grades. Donald Graves, Donald Murray, Lucy Caulkins, and others around Workshop. From a measurement standpoint writing is one of the hardest things to capture growth. Mainly because reductivist rubrics do not capture art well, and well single item assessments make for horrible modeling and multiple assessments in writing get mad expensive.

Writing is art and agency. Make a spot for these to thrive.