Teacher Guide
Ten minutes a day: one sentence to fix out loud, one prompt to write. Here is how to run it, and how the year is put together.
The daily routine
| Step | Time | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Project | 30 sec | Open today's page, choose your grade band, and press Project. Teacher notes and TEKS codes hide on the projector. |
| 2. Fix It alone | 1–2 min | Students copy the sentence and fix it in their notebook or on a whiteboard. The page tells them how many errors to find. |
| 3. Fix It together | 1–2 min | Partners compare. Then students say each fix and why ("Monday needs a capital because it is the name of a day."). Open Show the fix; the red pen marks every change. |
| 4. Write | 5–8 min | Read the prompt aloud. Students write in the same notebook. K–2 students may draw first or dictate. |
| 5. Share (Fridays) | 2–3 min | Students read a piece aloud and rate themselves 1–4 fingers on the week's "I can" statement. |
Keep one writing notebook for the whole routine. By Friday each student has a week of drafts to choose from, and by May they have a year of writing.
The weekly rhythm
Every week has one theme, one genre, and one conventions focus per band. The days follow the writing process, but every prompt also works on its own, so a holiday or an absence never breaks the week.
| Day | Write | Fix It |
|---|---|---|
| Monday | Plan: list, web, sketch, or talk to find an idea in the week's genre. | The week's focus, plus review |
| Tuesday | Draft one part: a beginning, a paragraph, a stanza, a claim and reason. | The week's focus, plus review |
| Wednesday | Revise a weak model sentence with one named craft move, then do the same to your own draft. | The week's focus, plus review |
| Thursday | Quick-write a fresh topic in the same genre, fast. | The week's focus, plus review |
| Friday | Edit & share: edit one piece for the week's convention, then share it. | Two sentences reviewing the week's focus |
Fixing the calendar to your district
- School calendar (on the calendar and day pages) sets your first day of school. Week 1 starts that day, and each following school week gets the next week of writing.
- Skip typical Texas holidays and breaks is on by default (Labor Day, Thanksgiving week, winter break, MLK Day, Presidents' Day, spring break, Good Friday). Turn it off if your district is different and you would rather skip days by hand.
- When a Monday is a holiday, that week starts on Tuesday's draft. Monday's plan is still on the calendar if you want to use it.
- Settings and your grade band are saved in your browser only.
Differentiating with the grade bands
The same day exists in three versions: K–2, 3–5, and 6–8. They share a theme, so a teacher can project one band and hand another band's version to a small group. A fourth grader still working on capital letters can do the K–2 Fix It and the 3–5 prompt. See UDL and ELPS for more supports.
Grading lightly
Fix It is practice, not a quiz: count participation, not right answers. Collect Friday pieces every few weeks and look at two things: the week's convention used correctly in the student's own writing, and the week's genre features. That evidence is also what the SST checkpoints will ask for.
Shortcuts
- ← → turn pages and months; T jumps to today; swipe on a phone.
- Every month and day has its own link to share:
writedaily/#2026-10,writedaily/day/#2026-10-05. - All prompts and answer keys are also in one long, printable file: daily-writing-prompts.md.