Our Core Philosophy and Terminology

What it is: Teaching students to analyze the structures, tone, audience expectations, and conventions of specific text types before they begin writing.

Why it matters for your school: Genre studies makes writing more transparent and accessible. Instead of guessing what a teacher wants or an assignment asks for, students learn the predictable features of successful writing within and across disciplines.

What it is: A schoolwide approach that aligns writing instruction, expectations, and support across subjects and grade-levels during the same academic year.

Why it matters for your school: Horizontal alignment ensures that students encounter consistent writing language, expectations, and support across their classes. Teachers collaborate more effectively, reducing redundancy and helping students transfer writing skills between disciplines.

What it is: An approach in which students return to the same piece of writing over time, refining it through multiple rounds of drafting, feedback, and revision.

Why it matters for your school: Students learn that strong writing develops gradually. Iterative writing encourages reflection, persistence, and continuous improvement.

What it is: A shared vocabulary used to discuss how writing works.

Why it matters for your school: Consistent terminology across grade levels and classrooms reduces confusion and strengthens instruction. Students can transfer writing skills more effectively when teachers use a common language for feedback and analysis.

What it is: A writer’s ability to reflect on their own thinking and decision-making during the writing process, understanding why they made certain choices, where a draft needs improvement, and how to revise it effectively.

Why it matters for your school: Metacognitive awareness helps students become independent, self-regulating writers who can evaluate and improve their own work without relying entirely on teacher direction.

What it is: An instructional approach that treats writing as a multi-step process that includes planning, drafting, feedback, revision, and editing rather than a single graded event.

Why it matters for your school: Process-based writing shifts instruction from evaluation to coaching. Teachers can support students throughout the writing process, leading to stronger final products and more meaningful learning.

What it is: The understanding that writing is not a linear process. Writers often move back and forth between planning, drafting, researching, and revising as their ideas develop.

Why it matters for your school: Recognizing writing as recursive creates a more authentic and flexible classroom environment. Students learn that revising ideas and reworking drafts are essential parts of effective writing, not signs of failure.

What it is: Teaching grammar as a set of purposeful choices that shape clarity, style, voice, and impact rather than as isolated rules to memorize.

Why it matters for your school: Students learn how sentence structure and grammatical choices affect meaning and effectiveness, leading to stronger and more intentional writing.

What it is: Reading a text to analyze what the author says and how and why that author communicates in a particular way.

Why it matters for your school: Rhetorical reading strengthens the connection between reading and writing. Students learn to recognize effective strategies and apply them in their own communication.

What it is: The study of how writer, audience, purpose, and context shape effective communication.

Why it matters for your school: Students move beyond rigid writing formulas and learn to adapt their communication to different audiences, purposes, and situations.

What it is: Low-stakes, informal writing activities used to help students process and deepen understanding of content.

Why it matters for your school: Writing to learn improves comprehension, retention, and critical thinking across subject areas while providing teachers with valuable formative assessment opportunities.

What it is: A long-term approach to writing instruction that intentionally builds writing skills and expectations across grade levels over multiple years.

Why it matters for your school: Vertical alignment creates a coherent developmental pathway for student writers. Instead of reteaching the same skills each year, teachers build progressively on prior learning, resulting in stronger writing growth and greater instructional consistency across the school.

What it is: A writing theory that views writing as socially constructed, shaped by cultural norms, communities, audiences, and shared expectations rather than by individual expression alone.

Why it matters for your school: Constructionist approaches help students understand that effective writing changes depending on context, audience, and purpose. Students learn how communication works differently across disciplines, professions, and communities.

What it is: A writing theory that combines personal writing and self-expression with critical analysis of culture, power, language, and social systems.

Why it matters for your school: Critical expressivism encourages students to connect their lived experiences to larger social and academic conversations. Students develop both personal voice and critical awareness.

What it is: A writing theory that emphasizes personal voice, self-expression, reflection, and the writer’s individual experience as central to the writing process.

Why it matters for your school: Expressivist approaches help students develop confidence, authenticity, and ownership over their writing. Students learn that writing is a tool for thinking, identity formation, and communication, not solely an academic task.

What it is: An approach to writing instruction and communication that prioritizes the needs, experiences, backgrounds, and accessibility of real readers. Human-centered writing design emphasizes clarity, empathy, usability, and audience awareness throughout the writing process.

Why it matters for your school: Human-centered writing design helps students move beyond writing for grades or teacher approval. Students learn to create communication that is purposeful, accessible, and responsive to authentic audiences.

What it is: An instructional approach in which students study writing itself, examining how writing works, how writers make choices, and how texts function in different contexts.

Why it matters for your school: Writing About Writing helps students become more flexible and transferable writers. Instead of memorizing formulas for a single assignment, students develop a broader understanding of writing that they can apply across subjects and real-world situations.

What it is: An umbrella term for assessment approaches that move beyond traditional points-based grading systems to emphasize growth, feedback, revision, and mastery.

Why it matters for your school: Alternative grading practices encourage deeper learning by focusing students on improvement rather than point accumulation. They also create more meaningful feedback conversations between teachers and students.

What it is: The structured methods a school uses to provide students with ongoing, actionable input on their writing. This includes instructor feedback, instructor conferences, and peer workshops, all designed to support revision throughout the writing process.

Why it matters for your school: Strong feedback systems make writing development continuous rather than event-based. When students receive feedback from multiple sources, they gain clearer guidance, more revision opportunities, and a stronger sense of how to improve their work over time.

What it is: Two complementary types of assessment used to support and evaluate student learning. Formative assessment occurs during the learning process and is designed to guide improvement, while summative assessment occurs at the end of a unit or task to evaluate overall learning and performance.

Why it matters for your school: Formative and summative assessment create a balanced approach to evaluating writing. Formative practices, such as drafts, feedback, conferences, and peer review, help students improve before final submission. Summative assessments provide an understanding of learning and achievement at a point in time. When used intentionally, both support clearer instruction, more meaningful revision, and more accurate understanding of student growth.

What it is: A framework for prioritizing feedback during the writing process. Higher-order concerns focus on ideas, organization, argument, audience, and development, while lower-order concerns focus on grammar, punctuation, spelling, and formatting.

Why it matters for your school: This framework helps teachers provide more effective feedback by addressing the most important writing issues first. Students learn that strong ideas and organization matter before sentence-level editing.

What it is: A grading approach in which students are evaluated primarily on the labor and effort they invest in the writing process rather than only on the perceived quality of the final product.

Why it matters for your school: Labor-based grading promotes equity by recognizing effort, persistence, and growth. It encourages students to take risks and engage fully in the writing process without fear of getting it wrong.

What it is: A simplified rubric format that identifies clear expectations for proficiency while leaving space for individualized feedback on strengths and areas for improvement.

Why it matters for your school: Single-point rubrics make assessment clearer and more flexible. Teachers spend less time navigating overly complex scoring systems and more time giving meaningful, actionable feedback.

What it is: An assessment approach in which students participate in evaluating their own progress, often through reflection, conferencing, portfolio work, or negotiated grading practices.

Why it matters for your school: Speculative grading increases student reflection and ownership. Students become more engaged in understanding their own learning process instead of being overly concerned with grades.

What it is: An instructional approach that minimizes or removes traditional grades in favor of feedback, reflection, conferencing, and self-assessment.

Why it matters for your school: Ungrading shifts attention from compliance and performance toward authentic learning and revision. Students are more likely to take intellectual risks and focus on long-term growth as writers.

What it is: An educational approach that integrates writing instruction and writing-to-learn activities across all subject areas, not only in English classes.

Why it matters for your school: Writing Across the Curriculum reinforces the idea that writing is a tool for thinking in every discipline. Students strengthen communication, comprehension, and critical thinking skills while teachers across departments develop shared instructional practices.

What it is: A dedicated academic support space where students receive individualized feedback and guidance throughout the writing process, often through peer tutors.

Why it matters for your school: A writing center creates a culture of revision, collaboration, and academic support. Students receive personalized assistance that builds confidence and independence while reducing the stigma often associated with seeking help.

What it is: A trained student tutor who works collaboratively with peers to provide feedback, ask questions, support revision, and guide writers through the writing process instead correcting errors.

Why it matters for your school: Writing center peer tutors help build a collaborative culture of writing and revision. Students often feel more comfortable discussing their ideas with peers, and tutors themselves develop advanced communication, leadership, and critical thinking skills.

What it is: An instructional approach that teaches students how writing conventions differ across academic disciplines.

Why it matters for your school: Writing in the Disciplines prepares students for authentic academic communication by helping them understand that effective writing varies by field, audience, and purpose.

What it is: A student’s ability to apply writing knowledge and strategies learned in one context to new writing situations, disciplines, or audiences.

Why it matters for your school: Writing transfer ensures that writing instruction has lasting value beyond a single assignment or classroom. Students become adaptable communicators who can successfully write across academic, professional, and real-world contexts.