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3rd grade · English Language Arts · Unit 15 of 21

Plan Your Writing

Topics, audience, purpose, planning tools and kinds of writing.

What your child practices

Practices choosing a topic from experience, thinking about audience and purpose, using planning tools such as webs and organizers, and telling narrative, informational, descriptive and persuasive writing apart.

New York State Learning Standards learning standard: 3W2; 3W3 · choosing a topic, purpose and audience, and the kinds of writing

How we explain it

Children can open this short lesson before they practice.

  1. Pick a topic you know about, like something that happened to you.
  2. Your audience is who will read it. Your purpose is why you write it.
  3. Narrative tells a story, informational teaches, descriptive paints a picture and persuasive tries to convince.

Example: A poster says, “Walk to school every day!” What kind of writing is it? The poster wants people to do something. Writing that convinces is persuasive. Answer: persuasive writing

Plan Your Writing in New York

In the New York State Learning Standards, this is unit 15 of 21 in 3rd grade English Language Arts, after Word Pictures and before Make Writing Better.

Gradelings describes a child's practice on this unit as Beginning, Approaching, Meeting or Exceeding (Four practice steps). That reflects practice, not a report-card mark: the teacher decides the mark.

Source: New York State Education Department (NYSED)

Sample questions

A taste of this unit. In the app, questions change every time and get easier or harder to match your child.

  1. Question 1

    A note to a younger child should use…

    • no words
    • simple, friendly words
    • very hard words

  2. Question 2

    A list of topics for a story is a kind of…

    • planning
    • erasing
    • publishing

  3. Question 3

    Asking yourself questions about a topic helps you…

    • lose your place
    • find ideas to write
    • fill the page with ink

  4. Question 4

    Drawing a picture before writing can help you…

    • think of details
    • skip the writing
    • forget the topic

  5. Question 5

    The purpose of writing is…

    • the reason you are writing
    • the color of the paper
    • the length of a word

  6. Question 6

    Why plan before you write?

    • It is only for adults
    • It makes writing slower for no reason
    • It helps your ideas stay organized

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