FROM THE DESK OF The Structured Writing Teacher

They can’t even write a sentence. It’s a thought I’ve had more than once, and maybe you have too. You pull a student for extra writing support. You’re ready to help them with paragraphs or structure or even that essay that’s due next week. But what hits you immediately? They don’t need paragraph help. They don’t need structure help. They need sentence help. So what do you do? Let’s talk about sentence-level writing as the foundation for writing intervention. Because once students can reliably write clear, complete, varied sentences, everything else gets easier... grammar, stamina, even confidence. This post is part two in my series on writing interventions. In Part One , I talked about reluctant writers—those kids who stare at a blank page and say, “I don’t know what to write.” In that post, we focused on mindset shifts and how to lower the barrier to entry. Now we shift gears. What happens after they’re finally writing... but the sentence structure is weak, awkward, or bare...

Some kids walk into your class already calling themselves “bad writers.” Before you’ve even passed out a notebook, they’re throwing up the walls. They tell you writing is boring. Or hard. Or pointless. Or “not their thing.” And let’s be honest... sometimes they’re not wrong. If all they’ve ever known is five-paragraph essays, worksheets, and their writing being picked apart in red pen, of course they don’t want to write. But here’s the part we don’t talk about enough: Reluctant writers aren’t just lacking skills. They’re often lacking trust . When Students Say “I Hate Writing,” What They Usually Mean Is... “I’ve failed at this before.” “No one’s ever told me what I did well.” “I’m afraid of getting it wrong again.” “My ideas don’t seem to count.” It’s easy to think we just need to get them “back to basics.” You know... diagram some sentences. Label the parts of speech. Learn how to write a complete thought. But I’m here to tell you: starting with grammar wo...